'Chunky'

Carissa Halston

I didn't attend college immediately after high school.

I was a child model; I figured I could pursue that.

My hair was whitish-blonde when I was little.

I was skinny and looked vacant enough that my face lent itself to print ads.

At sixteen, I got an agent.

So many meetings.   So much talk.

“You're going places.”

Magazines.   Runways.

They all wanted the thin blonde who pouted on command.

All my baby fat was gone by seventeen.

By eighteen, it was replaced by cellulite.

My agent stopped calling.

My most recent jobs got older and older and since my face was too round to be recognizable, I couldn't even point to the pictures and say, “That's me.”

So I got a dayjob and worked in an office until I was twenty-two.   Monday through Friday, nine-to-five, sitting in a chair.   My posterior grew like the population of New York.

I hated myself, but not nearly as much as I loved food.   I enrolled in community college and studied communications.   Communications: the degree for people who like to talk.

I only wanted to discuss who I used to be.

I was a beautiful child, Goddammit.   Everyone always said so.   I wasn't a bad looking teenager.

And now, all I ever hear is,

“What fabulous hips you have.   You'll have no problem with kids.”

Around my second year of college, I met someone.   He was nice.   Nice enough that I said yes when he proposed.   Nice enough that I didn't think, “Hey, wait…” until after the I do's.

My schooling went on.   I took out more loans.   Being married, I got even more money from the government.

“All at a low interest rate, I assure you, ma'am.”

I graduated without incident.   I had a degree, just like everyone else.

I took another office job.   There I sat: back where I started.

But this time, I was a college graduate with a husband.   Neither were qualities I felt significant pride over.

My mother suggested therapy.   More specifically, she suggested her therapist.

“Great woman.   A little snide at times, but who isn't?”

I told her all my problems.

She told me that although I was a little chunky, that was nothing to be ashamed of.   After all, I wasn't morbidly obese and I should be thankful for that.

Chunky?

Don't describe my frame like it's peanut butter.

But I chugged along.   Work.   Therapy.   Home.

Office.   Talk.   Marriage.

Cry.   Vent.   Work.

My husband suggested maybe we could join a gym together.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

I took up binge drinking instead.

It was fun.

I could pretend I was pretty again.

You know how college kids say, “Drink ‘til she's cute?”   Well, that works with a mirror too.   I'd get blasted, do a strip-tease in front of a mirror, pass out, and my husband would drag my fat, naked carcass to bed.

This went on for months.   I had no will power.

I gained another thirty pounds.

My husband assured me that all was well.

“I've always liked big girls.”

My student loans started coming in.

I sat down to figure out my budget.

Afterwards, I retrieved a bottle of vodka and my mother's bottle of Vicodin.

I woke up with a tube in my arm and a nurse telling me how lucky I was.

“A person of lesser size wouldn't have lived through it.”

Hooray.

I joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

I'd listen to Dick and Jane tell their sob stories.

“I drank to forget.

I drank to pretend.

I drank to suffer delusions of grandeur and escape my horrible life because a sickening blur was better than sitting in a rut.”

I kicked myself off the wagon.   Listening to that was worse than therapy.

I left my husband and moved to the opposite end of the state.

I took out a loan to get my stomach stapled.

I'm 135 lbs, I'm 5'4”, and I'm enrolled in beauty school.

I get to lighten my hair for free and I get to talk.

This job was made for me.