“Damn it.” I said to myself. The scale was always a nightmare. Especially when the result was gaining weight. “What else am I supposed to do? Starve myself?” I step off the scale and put my slippers back on.
You’re fat and you’ll always be fat. And they’ll never let you forget it. That…thing. It spoke again. The monster that lived in the back of my mind. In the far corners where it fed on my fears, doubts, and insecurities, most of all. And with my recent weight gain, I might have well served them up on a silver platter.
I inhale deeply. Just stay calm. Breathe. It’s only one kilogram. You’ll get back on track. You just have to try harder. I throw myself onto the bed, onto my back with my head hanging over the side. “It’s hopeless. This is the third diet I’ve tried and I’m getting nowhere.” I sit up and ponder for a moment. What do I tell mom? She’ll think I’m not trying. I don’t know what else to do. I decided to just rip the bandage off and get straight to calling her. After two ringing tones, she answers.
“Hey, Yasmine. Did you weigh yourself?” she says immediately. I know we talked earlier before you told me to go to the scale, but can’t you take a more gentle approach?
“Yeah…” I pause and hesitate to answer. She then breaks the silence.
“You gained weight, didn’t you?” I could hear the disappointment in her voice.
“Just a kilogram. I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m really trying.” It took me every ounce of my emotional strength not to cry.
“Well, clearly you’re not. Either that or this diet is nonsense, which I highly doubt.”
She’ll never accept you completely because you’re fat. You’ll never be good enough. There it goes again. It just loves doing that. Waiting until I’m at my weakest and then pouncing, ravaging my mind for all the insecure and self-hating thoughts.
“I’m sorry, mom. Next week will be different. I’ll have lost the kilogram. I’ll try harder.” I had to put on my robot voice for that. Otherwise mom would know that I’m upset and lecture me…again.
She sighs. “Alright. We’ll see. By the way, when are your finals?” My third semester at university finals were on the verge of starting.
“Next month. We haven’t gotten the schedule yet, but we’ll start on December 31st,” I replied with my robot voice still in play.
“Ok. Don’t forget to study, then. At least an hour or two a day,” she reminds me. I really need to end this conversation. “Ok I will.”
“Do you need anything?” “No, thank you.”
“Ok then. Love you.” She finally ends the call. “Love you too. Bye.” Finally. I wish we didn’t have to talk about the diet every call.
It wasn’t always like this. I used to be able to lose weight easily when I was younger. People kept telling me to stop dieting because of how thin I looked. Now, that’s just a distant memory, barely intact even. But then I was enrolled into that school and was faced with those people. Things got worse after my parents split. In my condition, food was just about the only comfort I had during that rough period in my life. You can blame the thing in my head for that.
Just eat. You’ve got nothing else to do. You don’t have anyone to tell you it will be ok. You might as well try coping for as long as possible. That’s the same monster that tells me afterwards how huge I look.
I go back into sulking position: Back on the bed, head over the side. All I want to do is just breathe in, and breathe out. Just lay there for a while. My mind runs through past memories. Concerning the current situation I’m in, I find myself wandering through a memory that happened back in 2009. Back when I was in that hell hole of a school.
I’m sitting in the far end of the class. And I’m surrounded by those same people that always pop up in my head whenever I feel like crap. Those bullies.
“Don’t you ever stop eating?”
“You’ll never get a boyfriend with that fat ass of yours.”
“Oh look! She’s gonna cry again! Everybody watch out for the waterworks.”
“Pathetic.”
“Waste of space.”
“Ugly.”
“Nerd.”
“Teacher’s pet.”
Their faces start warping. Molding into each other and fading into the darkness. And I’m alone. All alone in the dark. My head down on the desk, hiding my face while I sob. Then…
“Yasmine,” a voice calls.
I’m startled awake. Have I been sleeping? I look at my phone to check the time. How long have I been out? It’s been around half an hour since I ended the call with my mom.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Why were you sleeping? It’s only 5:45,” my little brother, Shady, asked, with a bit of concern on his face.
“I just fell asleep. What’s up?” I sit up on my bed and rub my eyes. Then I look up at Shady. He wasn’t as concerned, but he still looked at me trying to figure out what’s wrong.
“I just came in to check on you. I knocked and you didn’t answer, and it’s too early to be sleeping, so I let myself in.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” After I spoke, I noticed I still had my robot voice on. That was when he got worried.
“What happened?” he asked. “I know that you called mom earlier. Did she yell at you or something?”
“Uh no no. It’s nothing.” I tried to mask my depression by shifting back into everyday gear.
“Yasmine…Tell me what’s wrong.” Shady sounds like me sometimes. I’m 6 years older than he is so I practically raised him. Well…I helped in raising him. Sometimes I’d use a motherly tone whenever I had to remind him to do something important, like doing his homework or studying. And he sometimes manages to use that tone with me when I’m upset so I’d tell him what’s wrong.
“Nothing. I’m fine,” I replied. I didn’t want to dwell on it anymore because I didn’t want to cry. I hated it when I cried. I’d feel pathetic and vulnerable.
He starts insisting. “Come on. Just tell me what happened.”
“I SAID I’M FINE.” I took a harsher tone with him. He fell silent. Then he looked down on the floor for a moment.
“Okay. I’ll just go, then,” he says walking away. I feel even worse now because of my snapping at him.
“I’m sorry,” which caused him to pause and look back at me. “I’m just not in a good mood. And if you could help, I would tell you. But you can’t, so it’s better to just leave it alone.”
His face softened a bit from his previous upset expression. “It’s okay. Anyways, if you do want to talk or just hang out and forget about it for a while, then come to our room.”
“Sounds good.” I smile at him. He smiles back, and then leaves my room.
I exhale deeply. This sucks. I decide to open my laptop and watch a movie. I picked out a good comedy one. I needed a good laugh.
Next day, my older brother, Sherif, knocks on my door.
“Hey, Yasmine. How are you doing?” he asks with a bit of concern.
I pause for a moment. “…Shady told you that I was upset, didn’t he?” I sighed and looked up at him.
“Why does that have to be the reason I’m here? Can’t I come check up on my little sister?” We’re 2 years apart in age, but he’s more of a twin, so I could tell he’s fibbing. I know when he starts nodding his head sideways slightly but quickly. He always does that if he’s avoiding a question with another question. I then give him my classic one eye brow up stare.
He remains silent. Then decides to spill the beans. “…Okay yes. Shady told me yesterday that you were in a bad mood and to leave you alone for a bit. But I did genuinely come to check on you.” Sherif was looking at me with innocent doe eyes.
“Well I’m fine. No need to worry about me. After all I’m the worrier out of the three of us.” I tried to fake some sort of assurance in my tone.
“Well, I’m going to run a couple of errands. You wanna join me? We’ll stop for anything you want! My treat!” Sherif asked with his usual happy-go-lucky character.
“I don’t know. I’m not feeling up to getting out of the house.” Please don’t insist, please don’t insist, please don’t insist. I was hoping he wouldn’t persist. But then he makes the excuse which I can’t refuse.
“Well you’re coming. Besides, one of my stops is that computer maintenance shop you took my laptop to and I don’t know the way.” Sherif is terrible with directions. If I tell him the street name and the way to get there, he’d call me a trillion times on the way to ask a million questions like, “Which left was it?” or “What was the street name again?” It was either that or I would be on the phone with him the whole way, and I don’t have enough patience for that.
I let out a deep and loud sigh. “Ugh. FINE. Only because you’d give me a headache with your nonexistent sense of direction. And I’m driving.”
“Ok then. Only to the computer repair shop, though. I’ll handle it the rest of the way. Now, get dressed and let’s go go go!” Sherif chants with enthusiasm.
“Sheesh, where do you get all this energy? It’s 5 PM, calm down, and leave so I can change. Don’t worry I won’t take long because I’m not putting on any makeup,” I tell him, everything he needs to hear so he’d stop chanting and get out of my room.
I wear my comfy boyfriend jeans, a t-shirt, my burgundy converses, and put my hair in a top bun. I look in the mirror to check out the overall look. Meh. It’s not like I’m meeting anyone. I spray some body mist, grab my purse, and head out with Sherif. We’re walking to where the car was parked. Suddenly, “Think fast!” Sherif tosses me the car key. Me being my clumsy self, I fail to catch it.
“Sherif! Why’d you do that?!” I yell at him.
“Excuse me for thinking you’d catch a single car key. And it was a great pass. I’m practically Michael Jordon,” he gloats. The car key landed and rolled under the car.
“Well there’s no way I’m kneeling to get it. And ‘THINK FAST’ isn’t a great pass. Don’t forget, I’m the one who played basketball for 2 years,” I say with a tone of annoyance to my speaking.
“Whatever, Kobe,” Sherif says with mocking sarcasm. He kneels down to get the key.
Just as he does, the weirdest coincidence happens. Looking over the car, across the street from where we were parked, a familiar face walks out of the mobile shop on the curb.
It was Khaled Ibrahim. A guy I met almost 4 years ago on a family holiday. Oh my God. Wait, was Khaled always that…cute? I should go say hi…wait… I then remembered. I looked horrible. I was wearing comfy and unflattering clothes, no makeup, and my hair was in a bun (not even the cute messy kind). Not to mention my weight gain since that holiday. He wouldn’t recognize me, that’s for sure. Oh no! Khaled was about to look over. Just before he did, I averted my gaze and pretended like I didn’t see him. I thought being less conspicuous would make me less visible.
“Aha! Got it! Here you go.” Sherif finally hands me the car key and I unlock and get in the car. Once we’re both in with the doors shut, I go back to looking at Khaled across the street. This is so weird. I wonder what he’s doing here.
“Uh, Yasmine?...Yasmine? What are you staring at?” Sherif asks, baffled by my inquisitive behavior.
“Um, remember that holiday we took to Alexandria? Maybe 3 or 4 years ago?” I asked, still keeping my eyes fixed on Khaled.
“Yeah? What brought this up now?” he asks.
“Well…remember that guy we met back then? His mom and our mom went to school together and we bumped into them over there? Well he’s right across the street,” I point in his direction. Just then, Khaled starts walking to his car. He gets in and drives away. Gone too soon.
“I think I remember him. He didn’t talk much,” Sherif says, while also maintaining his gaze on Khaled, “and so what if he’s there? No need to make a fuss out of it,” his nonchalance was practically emanating from him. “Wait, in fact why were you staring at him so much?” As if it wasn’t obvious enough.
“Well he looks different. Kinda cute actually…” I couldn’t say that without my voice going into a higher pitch.
“Ugh. Here we go. Stop swooning and get into driving mode. I don’t feel like partaking in a car accident because you’re too busy day dreaming about a guy, or ever for that matter.” Sherif then turns on the radio which pulls me out of my trance.
“Oh right. Right. To the computer repair shop it is.”
Khaled Ibrahim…well as much of a coincidence as it was, it was definitely one worth seeing.