j.l.g.

when i was little, i was always the fat kid, which i'm grateful for now. i hated it at the time but because of it, i always had to make up for it, i always had to be smarter or funnier or have a better trapper keeper than the other kids. eventually i lost the weight but it never went away. i still think about it all the time, whenever i eat or cook i can't not think about how this food will affect me. but then i realized it's the same with skinny kids, they probably feel the same way. i've known people who can't keep on weight and i can't understand it for the life of me.

and THEN i realized this is just weight, can you imagine all the spectrums of other things in the world like this? i've known kids with big noses or big chins and that's always the first thing they look at on me, i can tell it preoccupies them the way i think about being a tubby. and it goes beyond that too, probably, even if i can't undertand it. people probably worry about things that actually matter.

once i knew a girl who was perfect, who didn't care if you were a few pounds heavy or light or if you had a snaggle tooth. she didn't see any of that. i never got to know her well enough to know how she managed to do that. she died in a freak accident years ago and so i never will. it's one of those things, like the kids who can't gain weight, that i'll probably never understand.

right now i'd rather never know. but i'm glad i knew her, it gives me hope that maybe i'm not just overcompensating for my faults.