This story inside me.

If you picked this up...would you keep reading it?

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The earth has always fascinated me. The precarious nature of humanity fills me with an almost preternatural calm. I know that my soul could be sent away from here and I would be gone as easily as the waves wash away sandy footprints from the shore leaving behind only the empty shells of long dead ocean creatures in its crashing.  This isn’t to say that I am not afraid of dying for I have so much left that I want to do but I am not afraid of death. Fate will take me at a moment of his choosing without asking me permission. Of course, this is not a universal truth. Some believe that Fate can be tempted, tricked, and some believe that he does not exist at all; that the world and all its perfect balances are simply a matter of coincidence. I am not by any means a philosopher but I do believe that there is one thing that is certain:

Everything looks good with blue jeans.

Seriously, everything that is, except fat. I know, I used the “f” word. There are things worse than fate and one of them is fat. But still, in 2005 I found myself laying on my bed and sucking it in desperately trying to fasten a pair of size eights. I finally got them buttoned and I stuck out my belly in the long mirror. Not too shabby I thought to myself as I shut the light off and flounced out of my room with as much energy as any almost graduated high school senior. I suppose I should lay off the lunch floated across my mind. In my head it was an airplane pulling behind it a banner. The red wording flapped through the sky like a bulletin to the world. As the plane turned around I could see the other side. In big black letters the banner read “Sara gained 10 pounds.” I laughed at myself and slid into the driver’s seat of my white 1999 Pontiac Sunfire and put it into gear to back out of our long driveway. I pulled into the parking lot of Palmer High School twenty minutes later and prepared myself to be late, again, to math.

       That weekend I would be going into the city to shop. Once in Anchorage I would sneak a size 10 off the hanger and buy them with the size sticker down so my friends could not see. I would put the size eights into what I promised myself would be semi-retirement and would complete senior year without further incident from my waist line.

       And so it goes for all of us skinny seniors gone fat. For some it is a love of food, others a slowing of the metabolism. There are those among us who have had children or who have gotten married. And then there are those of us who took out the stresses of difficult classes, horrendous schedules, and bad relationships on a box of pizza and a package of oreos so often that it would soon become an easy habit. I am one of those people. This is a (mostly) true story.