Fatal Impact

Sleep, Train, Play

"Hey, do you wanna hang out on Saturday?" My best friend had asked me. "We finally have a weekend free of homework," she laughed. 

"I'm sorry. I can't," I told her. "I have a netball game in the morning, and then I have swimming in the afternoon."

She looked disappointed, but she smiled anyway and gave my shoulder a gentle, playful shove. "Oh come on! You do sport every day of the week, I'm sure you can skip one weekend."

"I can't," I said, shaking my head. "I've been slacking off a bit and need to make up for it." I walked to class quite quickly after that. I couldn't bear to see her disappointed face again.

                                                          ~ * ~

When I was nine years old, I walked in on my parents having a conversation about me. "We need to get her into some kind of sport," my father had said. "She's getting lazy, and she's getting bigger than most children her age."

By the time I was fourteen years old, I had joined every sports club that I found. If it wasn't a sport, then I was doing some form of exercise. "You're getting lazy!" I would shout at myself whenever I felt too tired to play or train.

My sport schedule got so hectic at one point, that I didn't have a minute of free time between school, homework and sport. It really took a massive toll on my social life. Which only gave my parents another thing to lecture me about.

I couldn't go late night shopping with my girlfriends on a Thursday night because I had training. Games were on Saturday's and Sunday's, so I didn't go to the movies or to parties.

After every game or training session, I would run up to my room as soon as I got home. Before I looked at myself, I would keep my eyes closed and beg no one in particular to reward my hard work with some weight loss.

I was disappointed every time I opened my eyes. There were physical changes in my body, but no physical changes in my weight. Which led to me starving myself to help it along.

The only thing that satisfied me, were the numbers displayed on my scales slowly dropping. Kilogram by kilogram was dropping from my body, but nothing changed.

Even when the scales told me I was losing weight, I was never completely satisfied. It seemed like no matter how much weight I lost, I wasn't getting any thinner. It was the same old image in the mirror. The same fat body, and the same reflection repeating the same words to me. "You're getting chubby there, missy."