Teagan Oliva
I began glaring into mirrors when I was seven years old.
It was a fiery, hateful glare that skimmed over my skin and picked out each imperfection to inspect under an internal magnifying glass. I hated the way my hip bones jutted out too far and how my bony knees didn’t look strong enough to fall from the monkey bars. I hated how my fingers overlapped when I wrapped them around my wrist and that my top two ribs on either side of my torso were visible from the surface. I hated that I wasn’t allowed to eat more than one thousand calories each day and that during my best friend’s party, I wasn’t allowed to have a slice of her Hannah Montana birthday cake. I hated the mirrors, and each time I glared at them, I think I hated myself a little bit more.
“Look at how small and delicate you are,” you said to me as we drove to my second grade Christmas play. “I wish that I was as small as you.”
This made me smile. All I wanted was to see you happy with me. I looked down at my bright red dress lined with white fur and my black flats that slipped off of my feet because of the too-small tights that squeezed my skin into place. We arrived at the gymnasium where Dad was waiting with Tony, Ashley, and Kenny. He broke out into a huge grin at the sight of me.
“Hey there, princess,” he said as I approached. I beamed with genuine warmth in my veins. Dad was secretly my favorite person of all time, and I wished that he didn’t have to work so much. Every month, we went out for an ice cream day, just the two of us, because Dad said we didn’t get to spend enough time together. I loved those days the most because they were our days, and I got to eat ice cream instead of plain Greek yogurt.
I was escorted to the back hallway to wait with my classmates before the play began. We were all squished together, squealing in excitement with each person that showed up. Mrs. Freezer did her best to keep us as quiet as possible, but how do you keep a gaggle of second graders contained? I tugged on the sleeve of my dress that continued to slide down my shoulder. The youth sizes that I would normally wear did not fit my narrow shoulders, so we settled for an XS that hit an inch above my knees. So there I sat, in my too-big-in-the-shoulders dress waiting for our second grade Christmas play to start. Mrs. Freezer was getting annoyed by my constant tugging of my dress, so she marched over to ask what was wrong with me.
“My dress is too big,” I said. “It keeps falling off my shoulder.”
I watched Mrs. Freezer’s eyes carefully scan my body. It was as if she were looking at me for the first time and noticing all the bony features that jutted out from my skin, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as she continued her examination. I knew that my thinness wasn’t a bad thing because you told me it was good to be skinny and that it made me beautiful. But for some reason, a part of me doubted that my ribs should be as visible as they were. That was the beginning of my uncertainty.
Over the course of the next four years, I would sneak into the kitchen at night to eat small amounts of anything that I could find—just enough that you would never notice. I ate anything that was available to me, like bread slices or spoonfuls of ice cream or even pads of butter. Over time, it became an addiction, and the best part was that you never noticed, not even after you left.
My friends always asked why you left in sixth grade. I just shrugged and told them that you needed to go take care of your parents. That was what you told me in a mere text message on the morning that I woke up and you were gone. You ended your message with a heart and a pair of parentheses that enclosed the words “don’t forget to watch what you eat.”
But you weren’t there anymore, and that meant you didn’t get to dictate my diet. It became a game of how much and how fast I could shove carbs and sugar into my mouth, spitefully gaining weight, a slap in the face to your absence. My mind boggled at the number of pounds I was able to gain in such a short amount of time, and soon, I looked like my friends. My clothes grew too small very quickly, so we had to go out and buy new ones. I think that Dad was proud of me for learning to grow on my own and for going against what you had instilled in my mind for so long. It was refreshing, invigorating, and restoring to eat what I wanted in whatever portion I chose. It was all of these things until it wasn’t, and then it was exhausting.
By junior year, your absence seemed to weigh on me just a little bit harder and softer at the same time. I continuously told myself that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t care. It seemed normal to me at that point—the constant explanation to new people, having to hear “your parents” every day, numbing Mother’s Day posts across social media, and every game that came and went with Dad sitting in the bleachers, making a point to never miss a moment of my sports career. But in the back of my mind, I felt angry and sad every second of every day and wondered why I had let you do this to me.
My anger with you was an addiction I’d fuel with large-scale portions that you would have grounded me for, and it was beginning to become an issue, as my body began to bulk much more than I intended. A combination of basketball, volleyball, golf, weight training, and teenage years was sending my body into hysterics. I soon noticed that I was gaining weight at a rapid pace, in a way that made me sick to my stomach. This is when I started to hear your voice again, saying, “You can’t be beautiful if you’re fat.” I was completely lost, confused, and utterly hopeless at coming to terms with my body. I was torn between starving myself to lose weight and be skinny and beautiful again, or continuing to overeat to prove a point to you. This is what you did to me. You made me question every physical aspect of myself.
Over the course of my junior year, I had fallen into a toxic routine of undereating and overeating, never finding a healthy rhythm. I was gaining weight and then losing it almost by the day, finding both a sense of comfort and grief in the system. Each time I became too skinny, I felt satisfied because this is what you would have wanted. But then I became angry, because you were the one who made me this way, so then I would eat until I felt like throwing up just to spite you. It was a destructive routine that I couldn’t break no matter how hard I tried.
Ashley prided herself on her ability to lose weight and stay at that perfect athletic medium. I had always felt outrageously jealous of the fact that she was able to tell you “no,” when all I had wanted to do was make you happy. You knew not to mess with her, or with the other kids for that matter. I always wondered why you chose me to be the “perfect” one, the one that you were able to sculpt and carve however you wanted. Even in your absence, I wasn’t able to rid myself of your words or your opinion. I wanted to be like Ashley with every bone in my body. I wanted to be able to look you in the eye and tell you to leave me alone, or that you weren’t me so you didn’t get to dictate what I did. Unfortunately, your carved words had penetrated my mind much too long ago for me to wipe them away.
I wish that you knew how much I yearned to be like my friends, who weren’t subconsciously counting every calorie that moved past their lips. I wish that you knew how pathetic I felt every time I slipped up and switched from too skinny to too big. More than anything, I wish you knew how I felt on the morning that I decided to change.
It was the morning of my senior night volleyball game, a day that I had dreaded since the beginning of my senior season. Every other senior would be walked out, arms linked between two parents. But for me, this was just going to be another reminder to everyone in the bleachers that you were gone. My mind was racing all day. My stomach churned. I had eaten a muffin for breakfast that morning and had noted that I started my day off with over two hundred calories. My mind refused to settle even as I sat in class and attempted to listen to my teachers or do my homework; all I could think about was that damn muffin.
When the bell rang for third period, I hastily stood up and rushed myself to the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs near the choir room. Nobody was ever in this bathroom, so I felt a wave of relief and solitude wash over me as I stared at myself in the mirror. My face was flushed and pale, with angry eyes that glared back at me. My muscular figure that I had worked so hard for last semester was all but scrawny bones now. It was a joke, this game that I was playing with myself. There were days that I had the perfect frame, muscular and athletic, and there were days that I had too many bones visible from my skin or too much skin covering those bones. No matter what I did, your voice still remained in the back of my mind.
“Don’t ever turn out like me.”
Maybe it was because you had failed yourself so long ago. You thought you were in this deep, dark pit that you would never be able to climb out of, and so you resorted to me. You thought that I could be the skinny version of you. You wanted me to be so perfect, so small, so fragile that eventually, someone would comment on how you changed my life and saved me from the dreaded world of obesity. You wanted to be validated.
I shoved myself away from the sink and stared at myself for even longer. I didn’t know it at that moment, but this was the exact few seconds that I decided to change. I didn’t care what you thought of me, or what I looked like. I didn’t want you to have the satisfaction of owning my body any longer. All that I wanted was the ability to look at myself with vacancy. I wanted to feel emotionless whenever I came face to face with a mirror, rather than pinpointing every imperfection that I saw. I will never know why I chose this day to be that first moment. What I did know was that I was done, and I didn’t care what you had to say anymore, because the person staring back at me was not you; it was me.
Teagan Oliva is a sophomore at RMC currently majoring in English education. She loves her ENG 122: Creative Writing class and her entire women’s golf team with all her heart, and she can’t survive a day without a cup of coffee.
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