Esther enjoyed quiet nights. She loved admiring the night sky and was fascinated by windows. Her favorite window at home was the one in her bedroom. It was a big glass window with white wooden casings. It helped her ‘think bigger’. She really disliked mirrors or reflective surfaces of any kind but that window was different. It had a great view and she could hardly ever see herself in the glass.
Tonight was a quiet night, so she was happy. Ideally, she would sit in her reading chair next to the window and read till the moon went to bed. Just the thought of it excited her; gave her something to look forward to. She looked at the wall clock hanging over her bedroom door and smiled to herself, ‘A mug of milo won’t be bad for the night, oo’.
It was 11:05pm. She brushed aside the persistent voice that kept telling her ‘its too late to be eating’. She had heard enough of that from practically everyone around her and she was tired of it. Making the beverage was as exciting for her as the reading idea. Before she snuck back into her room, she grabbed two bread rolls from the kitchen counter as a souvenir.
Lucky for her, everyone else was locked away in their rooms. She wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on the cons of late night eating. Being the only plus sized daughter, she got those lectures a lot. But not tonight, she was giving herself a treat! Safely back in her room, she smiled in excitement; it was going to be a long cozy night.
Three hours later, she had finished reading her favorite novel, A Tall Tale of Tears. She thought through the events of the book one at time, as she prepared to go to bed.
She imagined a life that was very different from reality and incredibly similar to the life of the main character. Esther thought to herself; I will give anything to be blond, and slim with so many boys struggling to get my attention. She looked at her chubby face in the bathroom mirror and imagined how she would look with blond hair. She sucked in her cheeks and pressed her palms against her face to see how it would look without the broad visage.
Slowly and unwillingly, her eyes swept over the image in the mirror: the floppy belly that rested on the edge of the sink, the flabby arms she hated to see and the overall rounded nature of her figure.
She could hear her mother’s voice in her head; ‘You need to lose some weight, its not good for your health!’. She would say, ‘Esther, you are beautiful but you need to be health-conscious.’ Esther agreed with her mother: she was beautiful. She would work on losing some weight. She would start tomorrow without fail this time around.
Esther turned off the bedroom lights and hid under the covers. She felt sleep take over as she thought through her plan. She had done this many times: mentally select her jogging attire, mentally set an alarm, motivate herself, and set a goal to lose 8 kilos in the next 2 weeks…She liked her vim.
Before she drifted off into dreamland entirely, her last thought drifted to the snickers chocolate bar she saw in the fridge. As she allowed sleep to take over her consciousness, she decided: ‘Maybe I’ll have a bite or two before I go jogging in the morning’.