So Papi had to help keep the peace, and he made us both feel heard. Mostly, I think he just wanted us to be happy together, our little family, and he’d do anything to make it so.
It’s not that we never had nice moments, my mom and I. We did. We both loved reality television. We were always singing old-school Mariah Carey. Shopping brought us together, too, especially when it came to clothes: Mom liked to say she never met a sale she didn’t like, and she taught me to dress well, to appreciate the thrill of finding a good garment—which was especially tough to do as fat women.
We also had fun cooking together, dedicating ourselves to delicious food and savoring our creations. My mom was an amazing cook; her love language was food—lots and lots of it, seconds, thirds, even fourths—and she took great pride in feeding others good meals until they wanted to burst. I developed such a joy for eating when I was standing next to her in the kitchen, concocting a meal and delighting when Papi loved what we’d made for him. There was something so pure about the taste of a scrumptious recipe, something so simple, and it brought us happiness together. As a family, we were fat, and maybe we didn’t love that about ourselves, but we accepted it.
But then we lost him.
Without him, the balance and the joy in our home were lost, too. Without him there to separate us or draw us together when we needed it, my mom and I couldn’t stop fights before we said things we didn’t mean, couldn’t fill a silence before it got too big.
I was thirteen when my dad died and I was fourteen when my mother’s body changed. Mine was changing, too, but not in the way I wanted. I developed, but also widened, going from having “baby fat” to just being “fat-fat.” At a time when I was becoming interested in boys and men, I realized how interested boys and men were now becoming in my mother.
As my mom shed her old body and habits like a snake shedding its skin, the things that brought us together began to disappear: no more sitting on the couch watching reality TV; no more shopping for clothes together (we couldn’t patronize the same stores); absolutely no more cooking together unless it was grilled chicken and broccoli, no delighting in indulgent meals or whipping up decadent desserts—no, nope, never. Food was no longer a celebration. We ate to survive and nothing more.
I tried it her way for a while. I really did. But I missed my dad, I missed my mom, and I missed my old life. I missed food.
So she shrank. I didn’t.
Instead, I refocused. I amped up my writing, which helped me escape my brain. I went online and began to share stories of beautiful girls with happy endings, which made me feel joyful and whole, even if only for a bit. And then, slowly, through those writing communities, I ended up finding feminism and the fat acceptance movement, and I moved on to writing stories about girls of all sizes, from all backgrounds. It started to impact the way I thought about bodies, about nourishment, about diets, about myself.
And that was maybe the final wedge between me and my mom. When I tried to talk about some of the things I was learning or questioning, I was swiftly shut down. Her body had been a “prison,” she said, and mine was, too. I could be “free,” if only I could commit to being thin.
She started looking at me critically, saying things like, “Do you really want to eat that?” “Are you sure you should go back for seconds?” “That’s what you’re wearing?”
I try not to let it get to me. I recognize that my mom’s thoughts about her body and mine are not healthy. And yet…
My own relationship with my body is so complicated. I am endlessly surrounded by messages that tell me to love myself, to celebrate stretch marks and soft rolls, to take charge and take up space, to be unapologetically me. Show off that visible belly outline! Rock a fatkini! All bodies are beach bodies! I get that. I celebrate that. I believe that.
But I’m also surrounded by messages that tell me I need shapewear, I need to lose weight, I need to fit into straight sizes, I need to look like an Insta girl, I need to be tiny to be loved. Even my lived reality seems to support this. I don’t mean to seem shallow, but it’s like, when everyone goes out of their way to tell you “what a pretty face” you have, you notice.
Is it any wonder, then, I still find myself wishing so badly for this body of mine to be smaller?
I’ve quietly tried the diets and the shakes and the workout plans and the control tops and the wasting-birthday-wishes-on-thinness—and simultaneously, I’ve gotten involved in the fat acceptance movement, celebrating Fatness and following the #fatfashion hashtag like it’s my religion. I believe that people can be healthy at any size. I think other fat girls are absolutely beautiful.
But my mind struggles to bridge the gap between the two ideologies. I’m fat, and I celebrate other fat people, but I don’t quite celebrate me. It makes me feel like a fraud.
My mom says I’m unable to lose weight because I don’t want it enough, but she couldn’t be more wrong: I would secretly give anything to be thin, while outwardly and openly rebelling against the idea that anyone should have to.
Food comforted me then and still comforts me now. The rush of happiness I feel when I bite into a chocolate chip cookie, the ache of a belly that’s a little too full, the anticipation before digging in to a meal—these things bring me joy.
Because of that, I guess I can see why my mom doesn’t believe that I try to eat better and exercise, even though I do. It’s just that sometimes I look at my mom’s lithe body and all the enviably thin bodies around me and my efforts feel futile. It’s hard not to turn to food, which is so reliable and so easy.
I return my gaze to the shake on the counter and turn it around in my hand a couple of times. The label boasts ONLY 210 CALORIES AND 24 GRAMS OF PROTEIN, and for a brief moment, I consider giving it another shot.
But no. I throw the shake in the trash and pull out my phone to order some food instead. If I hide the evidence of what I’m about to do, my mom won’t scold me—and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
Chapter Four
I do nothing all Saturday except read, write, and mess around on the internet. Mostly, I post new pieces of writing and chat with my community of online friends who help critique my work and offer support from the sidelines, which is really nice. In my real life, only Amelia knows I write, and sometimes even that feels scary; sharing my writing is one of the most vulnerable things I can imagine.
But there’s something thrilling about it, too, especially when it’s well received. I’m addicted, and my hobby often keeps me so rapt that I don’t even feel time passing.
When my phone buzzes midday Sunday, I see a text from Amelia.
Jake’s? it reads.
She’s referring to the small coffee shop downtown where we (and, I’ll be honest, most people from my school) hang out. I glance down at myself—still wearing pj’s even though much of the day has passed me by, my curly-now-frizzy hair piled on my head, a mess from excessive lounging around—and feel the brief temptation to pretend I didn’t see the text at all because it would require me making some kind of effort.
And to leave the sanctuary of my room—which is a sanctuary, by the way, from the twinkling white lights to the mountains of books to the window seat where I love to read. I’ve worked really hard to curate this very particular Instagram aesthetic and I only leave it when I absolutely must. It’s the introvert in me.