spineless

So often I've let careless words that have slipped out from loose lips govern my every thought and action. I can never forget the feeling that leaves me trembling whenever my over-analytical brain reads too much into what may possibly be just a sweeping statement - a fleeting comment. When people say I don't look 'fatter' or anything, and in an instant it sends my mind reeling, and all I can think about is I must be perceived as pudgy for the term 'fatter' to be used instead of 'fat'.

Insult my lack of punctuality, my style, my mannerisms, and I can take it, but insult my weight or body shape and I surrender. It's K.O for me and you will most probably have me in tears.

Some part of my body is knotted up, in anxiety and fear, whenever a photo of me is being taken that I have no preview of. Group photos, class photos, passport photos. When I ask to see them I don't let go of the breath I am holding, until disgust or relief upon revealment purges it out of my system.

I never forget backhanded compliments or 'playful' insults thrown in my direction, ever. Long after my permissive, gracious heart has offered forgiveness, I am still able to playback your exact words in the exact same tone in my head, and it's what I like to do sometimes as a form of self-mutilation when masochism champions hedonism.

Contributes to the school of thought that you can forgive but forgetting is a whole other story.

I want to embrace my body, my mind, myself. But I am weak, and I am very, very human. To be honest, I have let society alter my visions and mindsets and because of that I have this irrational fear of being marginalized. I want in. I want to be in the revered centre where I am skinny and beautiful and I say the right things and do the right things. Right because the media said so, not because my mother said so.

Isn't that tragic? That my mother tells me I'm regular and that's okay, and that's nice, and that's good. But I choose to listen to society who is so hell bent on insisting I need that gap in between my thighs and that line in the middle of my abdomen to be happy, to be accepted.

The saddest part; society triumphs in the end. Because as much as I am acutely aware of this deception I continue to sink deeper and deeper into my character.

The Holocaust is not over. The 21st century is Nazi Germany, the media is Hitler. Only the torture chambers are in our heads. I am but a 1940s Jew falling to my knees at the feet of the Fuhrer.