An essay topic "Blue" was thrown to me. Or rather a few topics were thrown to me but I chose Blue as it was the only narrative piece. Or rather i like narrative pieces and this is the only available option. I fiddled around with a bunch of ideas, and yesterday I saw a traffic sign which was blue, which also inspired this piece.

I'm not anorexic, but I do have some weight issues and insecurities about how I look and all that. Please R&R, comments will be appreciated before i edit this again and finally turn it in next year.

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I dreaded the mornings, when I would have to change into my school uniform. I hated shedding my grossly oversized pajamas to get into my white blouse and blue pinafore. It was excruciatingly painful to see myself in the pinafore. I hated it. I hated the way I filled out the pinafore, with my flabby arms, and my protruding stomach. Why couldn’t I be as skinny as everyone else is? I just yearned to be normal, to be like everyone else. Everyone else looked so slender and lithe in the blue pinafore. Most of my classmates hiked up their pinafore to their knees or above, revealing long slim legs, or muscular and firm legs that did not wobble with cellulite. I did not amend my uniform, as I had nothing to show. I would much rather hide my legs, and more preferably, all of myself.

I often wondered how I did not end up in the Trim and Fit club at school. How was it possible for me not to be overweight, with such flabby arms and so much fat clinging to my body? I felt like a whale in my blue pinafore, swimming around with the elegant dolphins in the ocean. I never felt comfortable, and always felt like someone was staring intently at me, in silent criticism of my body.

I loathed the blue pinafore, and the way it made me feel. But most of all, I loathed my body.

The first time I tried to do anything to change myself was when I was thirteen. It was only then that I felt embarrassed for being larger than other girls. It was painful to note that I was the only girl ordering a large-sized shirt for the upcoming sports meet. In photos, I was the girl with the round chubby face in contrast to my friends’ thin, oval-shaped faces. I sulked over it while my parents comforted me by claiming it was all baby fat and that I would lose it as I grew older. But everyone else my age was so sickeningly skinny! I took action. I cut down on junk food, stopped eating the deliciously sinful dishes my mother whipped up, and stuck to a healthy diet. I did not pick up any sports as I was too embarrassed to. I did not want to attract queer glances, or even more brutally, mockery. I could hear the sneers in my mind as I dismissed the option. I lost a little weight, perhaps two or three kilograms, but I never did feel good about myself.

It got worse as I grew older, and proceeded onto secondary school. The girls grew up. Appearances truly mattered now. The stick-thin girls in class complained about their fat thighs, moaned about their chubby ankles, poked their non-existent paunch. They competed with one another to see who was fatter. My self-confidence dwindled to zilch. If they were whining about their weight, I ought to feel even guiltier. I was unknowingly obese, the truth splayed out in front of me only now.

I hated myself. I abhorred the uniform, which did not flatter my shape. Each day in school was torturous. I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. I dreaded it and wished I could lose all the weight with a snap of my fingers. I wished I could emerge from the stifling cocoon and emerge as a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly, to shed all the weight and sashay down the street, tall and slender. Day by day, I was sinking deeper and deeper into a pool of depression. I could not pull myself out. I was so ashamed of my repugnant body. I was repulsed by it, and I wore large baggy clothes to hide it.

My otherwise rather healthy diet dwindled each day. I forced myself to eat less. Self-restraint is a tricky thing. It was easier in the day, because I could busy myself with other things like homework to distract myself from my growling stomach. Nightfall was the worst and most painful time. My stomach would growl and I could hear it churning the nothingness in it, craving for food. I prayed for sleep to dissolve me, but sleep came slow, as my brain would be sending signals begging for food. Another part of my brain would resist, urging me that I did not need to eat at night, and that once I slept I would be fine. Yet again my body pressed on, sending low growls, telling me that resistance was futile, that by not eating would only serve to weaken me and stun my growth. Mind over body was my mantra. My eyes would remain open till the wee hours of the morning. I just laid on my bed without sleeping some nights. I would stare at the blue uniform, the huge form hanging limply on the hanger, and swallow my saliva in fierce determination, begging for sleep to take me away.

Every waking hour was a fierce battle between my mind and body. I ate. Bit by bit, I would cut the food up into tiny shreds, analyzing them before taking long slow bites, hesitant and unsure, as though I were consuming poison. It did not feel right to eat. After time, my body somehow stopped begging for food. I lost my appetite. Not too long after, there was concrete proof that I was losing weight. When the next semester rolled around, I dropped five kilograms. I was not as delighted as I should have felt. What I felt was not triumph, but emptiness. I was too weak and exhausted to care. I was numb.

School was torturous. I could barely focus on the lessons. My few friends bored me. Rather, I bored them. Unknowingly I stopped talking altogether. A few nods, a prerequisite word or two. I stopped going to the canteen with them during recess. I stayed in class, or hid in the secluded library. I tried studying. In the end I would awake to the bell chiming. I would have to trudge back to class for more arduous lessons. My mind was not on the subjects I took. It was elsewhere, I don’t know where though. Teachers called my name. Classmates threw erasers. They jabbed pencils at me. I would open my eyes. But I was never fully awake.

I had to eat a bit at home. My parents would otherwise notice. Sometimes I felt so guilty for eating, I felt compelled to puke it out in the privacy of my bathroom. Otherwise I would play around with the food. I thought I was being smart. I sliced up the food, arranged them in a way that looked like I had eaten quite a lot. My parents noticed my listless self. Stress, I told them. They believed me. They always did.

I was a wreck. I knew it. I was not happy like I had intended. I felt sick. I was not in control. Mind over body? Something else was controlling me. I was powerless. I could not bring myself to eat. My favourite dishes remained untouched. Each bite of food tasted like rubber. Inedible and disgusting, it did not belong in my mouth. I had willed that to happen. Now that it did, I ought to be so pleased, so accomplished. I puked after that.

Sleep was something I awaited eagerly. It hardly came. Night after night, I stared at the blue pinafore. Tears were my company. I craved to be skinny. I was dropping kilos, but it was not enough, not quite enough.

I was a zombie. I was there physically, but it never quite felt like it. I did not pay attention to the world around me. People passed; a haze of faces. I looked with seeing. I heard without listening. I drifted on, painfully numb.

One day my mum entered my room, and propped a plate of piping hot apple pie on my desk. She had just baked it, she beamed at me, my favourite of her dishes to cheer me up since I had been so stressed out lately. I refused politely. She cajoled me. I held my ground. She dug the fork into it and waggled it in front of me, tempting, taunting. I felt sick as the scent hit my nose stronger than ever. NO I DON’T WANT TO EAT. She was taken aback by my strong reaction. She left the room with the pie quietly.

I had seen the hurt in her eyes, the pain in her eyes as she stared at me like she did not recognize me, like I was someone else entirely.

I felt as though cold water had been dumped onto me, and I was left shaking. The world started spinning, and I felt suffocated. The walls seemed to be pressing in, closer and closer towards me. I dashed out of the room, out of the house.

My head was whirling. I tried to run, but I had no energy do so. I staggered along. I knew not where I was heading, but I pressed on. Everything was whirling faster and faster as I passed more houses. Everything else continued spinning, when something tall and blue up ahead caught my eye. I approached it. It was a traffic sign. I stopped, and focused very hard on it. It said – “Dead end.” That was the last thing I saw before I spiraled into complete darkness.

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Blue. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the blue ceiling, followed by the blue walls. The shade was familiar, and haunting. But I could not recall what it reminded me of.

I ended up in hospital. My mother cried. My father held her. The doctor pronounced that I had anorexia. I had dropped fifteen kilograms in a span of a few months. I was introduced to two people whom I would be working with very closely, a therapist and a nutritionist. I refused food initially, which kept me on drip.

Then I saw my mother, heard her ragged weeping; I heard her blaming herself for not noticing my sudden weight loss. I picked up my knife and fork, and hesitantly, like a child learning to cope with utensils, I cut the fish, bit by bit, before finally bringing a small piece to my mouth. I was learning to eat again. Slowly, but I was trying. Even if it was not for me, it was for my family at least. Unconsciously I had hurt them, as much as I had hurt myself in my bout of depression and self-induced hurt.

It was weird talking about your personal problems to a complete stranger, but I did just that. I needed to. I owed that to myself. I needed help. She told me how beautiful I was just being myself. She said it was society’s unhealthy obsession with being skinny. Beauty radiates from within. Clichéd as it was, she repeated it over and over again to me, like a mantra. I finally bought it in the end. I was too drained out to bother about my weight now. I was exhausted.

My nutritionist planned a healthy diet for me, and I promised to stick to it. It was a promise to myself, more than anything. I wanted to get well.

I was not allowed back to school until my therapist permitted me stable enough to cope. I took strolls in my neighbourhood, taking in the smell of the grass and flowers by the roadside. I watched as the finishing touches were being made to a neighbour’s house. Funny that I had missed the entire renovation process. What else had I missed out on while I was torturing myself? Right then, I knew I had to go back to school. I was missing out on the company of my friends, the boring stillness of classes, the dull drone of my teachers, the ton of work to catch up on!

Now, I look at myself in the mirror, holding up the blue pinafore. I had not noticed how thin my arms had become, how frail my frame was. I was not even fat before, perhaps a little chubby, but definitely not the whale I perceived myself as. I put on my blouse, and slipped on my blue pinafore. I look deathly pale against the blue of the pinafore, but the pink is slowly returning to my cheek, and to my health. I look long and hard at myself. The blue is warm, and welcoming, no longer a cloak to hide myself under. I pick up my bag, and head off to school.

I realize now that the butterfly was always there within, waiting to come out. I had stifled it under my blue pinafore. Now, I have finally set it free.