Does it matter that I'm fatter?

12- Rolls

I used to have this friend in high school, Aaliyah, we weren't really close but out of all my friends I was fond of her the most. We used to read all the same kind of books and have week long conversations about those books. Sometime around ninth grade she stopped eating lunch with everyone else. And she started doing really dumb things like pinching her stomach fat, which fitted between her index finger and her thumb, and telling me to see how fat she was. I mean was she telling me to see or was she telling herself. I really couldn't understand why in the world she was doing that to herself. I sometimes used to wonder if maybe she was anorexic but it just didn't add up. According to social media and all the movies I'd watched, anorexic people cut their wrists, they are rebellious as hell, they were depressed. Aaliyah read books with me, we swooned over fictional characters, we laughed almost every single day of our high school lives, she was happy, right?, please tell me she was happy. Now three years later I think I understand what she was saying. I mean she may have been anorexic and I may be a binge but it was kinda the same obsession. Getting fat may be a happier way to die young but it hurts the same way.

I stand in front of my mirror looking at the wrinkles in my thighs and my protruding belly. the jelly on my forearms and the chin beneath my chin. I was disgusted. I saw the same things Aaliyah saw in that pinch of fat between her index finger and thumb. I  guess what I really needed to know wasn't wether Ridha could love all this or not. Or wether my family loved me because they had to or because they wanted to. I didn't need to know whether my friends chose me based on how many fat I had. What I really needed to know is whether I could love all this or not, wether I could choose me right now, wether I could love me because I genuinely wanted to.

I called Aaliyah late in the afternoon. The phone rang and she didn't pick up. I hadn't spoken to her for three years, since the day we got our matric results. I phoned again and the phone rang and rang and just as it was about to sound the dial tone she picked up.
"Firdous?" she says confused.
"Yeah." I say just as confused.
Why did I phone her?
"Oh my word, how are you!" She's shrieking down the phone.
"I'm getting married" I say.
"No-Freaking-Way!"