Fat Chance by Brandi Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

thin? Could I live with a lifetime of sore stomach muscles, exhausted from the binge and purge cycle? Could I do it?
     
    I can't. I don't want to. I'd rather be fat than live with that kind of sickness.
     
    "I'd rather be dead than be fat."
     
    Would I? Would I rather be dead than be fat? I'm a healthy woman. Large as I am, my body is actually rather fit and I am pretty strong. I'm not likely to die of natural causes anytime soon. Still ...
     
    Standing there in a stall in the bathroom, I feel a tear slip down my cheek as the old urge rises up. Growing up as a foster kid bullied about my status and my weight, I'd always battled feelings of worthlessness and depression. I'd always battled the idea of suicide.
     
    Once, I'd stolen a page from Janet's proverbial notebook, and I'd listed all the possible routes of suicide that I could think of. I'd listed the pros and cons of each method.
     
    When I was fifteen, in the foster home before I was placed with Janet and her husband Jim, I'd chosen an over-the-counter painkiller and taken three quarters of a bottle with a glass of vodka from my foster father's desk drawer. He came home early that day and found me, so here I am. Still alive. Still fat. Still miserable.
     
    I'd try again, but now I'm not alone anymore. I don't have a ton of friends because I don't go out; my insecurity doesn't allow that. But I have a family now, and aside from Rick, they love me. I'm standing there staring at that floating toilet that always terrifies me, and I'm thinking again of suicide. I can't believe myself.
     
    "I'd rather be dead than be fat."
     
    I don't know that I'd rather be dead. What I do know is that something has to give. I can't walk that path again; it would tear Janet apart to think that she's failed me somehow, even though she hasn't. It would kill my sisters, for them to realize that as close as we are, there are just some times when I can't turn to them.
     
    I can't do that to them; I can't put them through another death in the family just because I'm fat and humiliated and full of self-hatred. I can't take myself out of their equation, not after they have fought so hard to include me over the years.
     
    Besides, my giant ass will need a giant coffin, something close to the size of Rhode Island. And I can't afford that.
     
    "Oh my God," I mutter to myself, drying my eyes and cleaning myself up to return to work. "I need therapy."
     
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
    I really do need therapy. Over the past week, my thoughts of suicide have become more frequent. I can't help it; it's the combination of my own self-disgust and my realization that I disgust others. It was bad enough before, when I was being so cruel to myself on a daily, hourly, basis. But now? It has spread to other people, people in my workplace, no less.
     
    I know that I'm a good person in general, and I know that I don't look that terrible. I suppose I'm even sort of pretty, you know, for a fat girl. But I just can't live like this anymore.
     
    It isn't even the mirror, really, that drives me to therapy. I have my bit of injured pride, and it definitely has a place in all of this, but that's not it, really. I don't know, maybe it's the sense of always being disgusted with how much I hate my own body, how it sort of leads to me simply hating myself . I even stereotype myself!
     
    I'm ashamed, every single time I eat, no matter what it is. I'm ashamed, every time I shop for clothes, because I need a special store that carries clothes for my body, because I am seen as unworthy to buy clothes in the "skinny" stores.
     
    It's not really that other people feel that it's okay to be cruel to me, though as I've said, it does hit my vanity pretty hard. What really sends me into suicidal thoughts and makes me realize that I need help, is that I am no better, that I am being cruel to me . I have turned into this vile, nasty person, spending all of my time being horribly, emotionally abusive to myself .
     
    This, I