Sugar

Write about something so sweet, it makes your teeth hurt.

The chocolates were so sweet and rich that her stomach churned and her teeth ached, but every time she shoved a new one in her mouth she felt a sort of grim satisfaction. Her, fat–as if! Sure, overweight–she was pushing 220 for a long time coming. But fat was such a vulgar word. It carried so many connotations of ugliness and hate. As she caught sight of her bloated belly poking out under her t-shirt, she popped another chocolate in her mouth and furiously blinked away tears. Her boyfriend just dumped her because of her weight, this was no time to cry. It was time to get angry, to take up arms, to rally a crew of young body-positive Instagrammers to her cause. But instead of picking up her phone, she picked up another damn chocolate as his words echoed around her brain.

“You don’t take care of yourself anymore.” Well, not entirely true. Sure, the cigarette habit was not the best, and takeout 5 days a week could be construed as poor self-care, but at least she was feeding herself. There was a time she would shy away from the mere idea of consuming a single calorie. The image of her brittle bones, the sack of skin she turned herself into, would keep her eating for a while yet.

Sure, the weight gain had taken her by surprise. But she marveled at her new body. The weight of it, how grounded she felt in it. As if her tie to the universe somehow grew stronger. Her “metabolism” had been the envy of all her high school friends, somehow keeping her thin no matter what she ate–or, at least, that’s what she told them. Back then, she floated through the world like a wisp, anxiously aware of her size, addicted to feeling small. In this body, she felt safer. She no longer felt like a victim of circumstance, out of control. Maybe to the untrained eye, she was losing control of her body, of herself. But in reality, in this skin, she never felt so confident.

So she ate another chocolate, relishing the sweet rich flavors that made her teeth ache. He could talk, the world could talk–but she loved her body, loved every inch of it, fat or not. It finally felt like hers–and she intended to keep it that way.