Love Doesn't Come In A Size 11

I was never a thin body type. My baby pictures showed a chubby, cute baby, and as the years wore on, the only thing I lost was the cute part.

I don't mind not having a ton of friends, or being the one on the fringes of the group. Honestly, I don't care. I work best on my own, always have. I'm not really a "Hang with the group" person. I really only have two sometimes-friends and a librarian who lets me hang out with her at lunch, which is alright by me. The fewer people who I have to deal with in a day, the better things turn out.

But there is something I wish I had. Or rather, wish I had back.

I had a boyfriend for about 8 months my freshman year.. He dumped me a week before Valentine's Day. I was looking forward to not spending it alone so much.

I loved him. I've never loved anyone the way I loved him, before or after. And I thought that for the first time in my life, despite all my insecurities, I'd found someone who loved me no strings attached. Who found something he wanted to love.

Guess I was wrong. He started dating another girl that March. Bastard went from a size 11 (me) to a size 2 (her). He wanted a student model, not a model student.

My sophomore year, I became my own evil twin. My grades slipped, I stopped eating, started exercising like a psycho, and to my delight, lost twenty pounds before October. I lived on half-slices of plain whole wheat toast and diet pills. Headaches kicked up--I started taking Advil like candy. 40 pounds gone by February. I was a size 6. Not good enough. I stopped eating altogether unless I couldn't help it. I exercised like crazy. No one noticed until I passed out in the bathroom.

I didn't have an eating disorder, before you ask. Eating made me fat, repulsive, ugly. I wanted to be anything other than the disgusting thing I'd been all my life. Perhaps the route I chose was not the best.

My chemistry teacher found me in the stall. They sent me to the ER--Ms. Brennan came and visited me. She made me look at a mirror, told me how beautiful I was. I didn't believe her. I still don't.

I lost another three sizes my junior year. I stopped going to the counselling sessions my parents set up for me. I was the skinniest I'd ever been. I wore makeup every day. I suffered through contact lenses I could barely stand because my glasses made me look too intellectual. No one cared.

I threw myself back into my schoolwork with a vengeance. I'd barely passed the year before, for other people's approval, and look where that got me. Nowhere. My grades didn't care about how I looked. They gave me exactly what I put in.

I still wasn't eating. I was still exercising mercilessly. My performance consumed me. Another size smaller.

The school psychologist called me into her office one morning. I don't know how I was planning on spending my day, but an intervention wasn't it. I cried in front of another human being for the first time since I was twelve that day. My mom came to pick me up at noon--my crying jag wasn't finished when she walked in.

My ex had been through eight girls, all prettier than me, by the time I found myself on mandatory check-in status with the psychologist.

My senior year finds me a straight eight student, dateless, and reluctantly eating my way back up to a size 4. I passed my ex in the hallway one day. He asked if I wanted to catch a movie. I told him to fuck off.

In my sophomore year, I would have said yes. I'v learned that it doesn't matter if I'm dangerously thin or model beautiful. In my mind, I will always be the size 11 who wears glasses and a frumpy hairstyle and couldn't care less about make-up because I don't get noticed anyway.

I have no one who cares, but I've come to terms with that. I'm going to live for myself because I have no one else to be living for. Here at the end of my life in high school, I've had one person who almost loved me. One person.

Love doesn't come in a size 11. But Life does.