Imperfections

Prologue

[Dedicated to tianajade for the lovely cover.]

Beautiful . . . What does that word even mean?

For some, it may mean to have a beautiful complexion or nice facial features, to be tall or to have gorgeous hair. It could even mean to have a lovely personality. To me, it meant to be skinny, the complete opposite of how I felt. For proof, I only had to look at the scales – they never lied, no matter how much I wished they would.

I always hated this part of the day – stepping onto the scales; it always made me feel uncomfortable. But in my mind, I knew that there was a tiny little part that secretly enjoyed this, and that not-so-secretly wanted me to continue it. Taking a deep breath, I took the leap and stepped onto them.

“Come on, come on,” I muttered anxiously as I stared at the number that was slowly, but surely, rising. As soon as I had stepped on, the number had skyrocketed from zero, and now it was slowly making its way to impossibly high number – well, for me anyway. I tapped my fingers impatiently against my hip as I waited for the number s to stop. It was almost agonizingly painful to wait, the numbers never seeming to stop when I wanted them to.

At last, after a few moments, the set of scales that I was standing on finally beeped to a stop. Looking down to near where my feet were, I stared at the red numbers that blared out at me. My lips pulled down into a frown as I tore my gaze away from the flashing numbers. Slumping forward, I rested my head against the cold tiled wall, trying to hold back the tears that wanted to escape.

A few seconds later, my gaze was drawn back to the blinking red numbers that always seemed to call out for my attention. No matter how much I had willed the numbers to, they hadn’t changed; it was still the same crappy number that they had been only moments ago.

Taking my feet off the machine, I watched as the numbers disappeared instantly, sighing with relief when they did so. Now that they were gone, I could pretend that that had never happened, that the results had turned out differently. But no matter how much I tried to convince myself that it was okay, I knew that it wasn’t.

Walking over to the sink, I placed my arms on it and leaned most of my weight on them. Lifting my eyes from the small droplets of water that slowly dripped from the tap, I let my gaze drift to the mirror.

Narrowing my eyes, I scowled at my reflection as I studied myself, looking for something that I liked. People always said that it was important to love yourself, to look past the things you didn’t appeal to you to find the beauty within. So far, I had found nothing and instead of loving myself, my hatred had only grown.

Because all I saw when I looked in the mirror were all the small little imperfections that I carried which, put all together, seemed to make one big mess.