Chapter 1

Splayed footed I stood on the scales and smiled as the pointer settled on my chosen number. The thrill of finally having control over my own body wouldn’t cease, it was as if I had placed my finger in a plug socket, the buzz was so great. I half expected to look up into the mirror and see my hair standing on end from the shock.

Instead I saw my damp hair; pulled back sharply by a clip. The chocolate brown of its wave’s dark against my milky pallor. Stepping off the scales I removed a makeup wipe from the shelf above the sink and began to wipe away the last of what my shower did not quite catch. Minus my mascara and smoky eye shadow my deep blue eyes seemed somewhat smaller in my well rounded face. Pinging the wipe into the corner bin I picked up my tooth brush and squeezed a small amount of paste onto its bristles. By the time my teeth were half way clean I had of course managed to get paste on my nose. No idea how I managed it, but there you go.

My teeth have always been the part of myself I recognise the easiest, off white and even without the help of braces; they have been the one thing besides my eyes that had not been affected by the yo-yoing weight of my youth. Mother was always very proud to point out that I had never had a filling in my life when people would raise eyebrows at me, scrutinizing her parenting technique. As if good dental hygiene somehow offset obesity.

Rinsing I readjusted my towel and swept into my bedroom. My dressing table chair gave a creak as I sat down, unwrapping the towel to sit naked before the mirror. The lights gave my smooth skin a rosy glow and cast deep shadows where flesh fell to folds. My skin had always been part blessing part hard work, a variety of skin creams have kept my break outs to a minimum unlike my poor sister who was plastered from the ages of 12 to 20.

Rummaging in the table draw I pulled out my bottle of baby power and being the laborious task of powdering my cleavage and many curves, warmth and excess moisture are not friends to healthy skin, my warm folds are far too accommodating to certain pests; and that includes my last couple of ex boyfriends irrevocably.

My friend since my early teens and my enemy through varying intermittent years, my breasts have never, not caused a stir. The girls at school used to whisper I’d had a boob job, after all what kind of 12 year old jumps four sizes in a summer? The continued growth soon put paid to their rumours. So by the time my friends were using my bras as summer hats the girls had just given me up as a freak of nature, though the occasional whispers of ‘They don’t count if you’re fat’ could be heard.

Putting the powder aside I began to apply my body lotion in liberal amounts. Over my saucer sized areola, the curves of my knees and elbows and across the streaky landscapes of my stretch marks. Speckled across the expanse of my thighs, hips and stomach they are an army of small red lines that tell stories I would could not forget. Pounds lost, pounds gained, some marks I could even attribute to certain break ups. Some of the paler almost ghostly ones dated back to my 3 second teenage growth spurt. One day some may tell stories of pregnancies failed or flourished, but for now they just spoke about me. As I ran my hand across the rippled texture that no amount of lotion could hide, I smiled at my own success.