David and the other kid finish their song. I step onto the platform with my friend Tommy. We insert our coins into their respective
slots. I choose the medium setting while
Tommy chooses hard. I envy Tommy and my
brother because they are both rail-thin, and I am almost two-hundred pounds, standing
at five-foot three-inches. A few of my
fatter friends can play on hard-mode, but it’s usually just the skinny ones who
can move fast enough for it. I’d started
playing Pump It Up for fun, but it quickly became frustrating. Over the year or so we’d been playing, David
and my sister, Sarah, had lost about ten pounds while I gained twenty. I’d hoped that the exercise would help me lose
weight but it didn’t. I wanted to be the
girl that walked into the room and made every man’s jaw dropped. I wanted to be doted on and loved, and being
fat was not getting me there.
At fifteen years old I am surrounded by stick-thin friends
that only dated other stick people. In response, I develop an eating disorder.
It’s been two weeks since I’ve stopped eating, and I’ve
successfully lost five pounds. My
stomach growls angrily as I slam my feet on the platform’s corresponding
arrows. I think about how much I hate my gelatinous belly, and how I’d be able
to play hard-mode without its sway. The
song finishes. Tommy and I step down from
the platform. My vision tunnels and I
feel like passing out, so I sit down beside the Pump It Up machine in an attempt
to make the world stop moving. David
comes over to me and asks if I’m OK.
I tell him I’m fine, but it’ll be years before I admit to my
anorexia.
--Kristin Kolb
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