Skinny Boy ✔

Chapter 1: snapshots

There are some moments in your life that aren't necessarily impacting in and of themselves, but are the start of many more moments to come that have irreversible outcomes and consequences. Some may say that our lives are made up of moments, and that's where our own little worlds meet up in reality to create something bigger. If it's true that life is made up of moments, then that would mean that the person we are at the end of our lives was made up by only a few life-changing moments. Our character is made up of the particular moments in our lives that have molded us.

Sometimes these life-changing snapshots in our lives begin with just that--snapshots.

For me, this life-changing snapshot came in a literal sense. A photograph taken by a friend. A moment caught off guard, capturing how I look to others, and forcing me to accept it as another piece of reality. But I didn't want it to be.

I didn't have some sort of epiphany at that moment. No sudden goal set to change how I looked, but it was still part of it all. It's what I would call the beginning, or at least one of the moments and snapshots leading up to it. Hundreds of dollars spent on supplements and quick fixes, dozens of hours used up looking at myself begrudgingly in the mirror, countless amount of mental and physical work poured out, drained into something that all started with one little moment.

Photography class was a place I enjoyed that gave root to an obsession I would hate.

"Hello?" Erica's hand finally snapped my eyes away from the photo she took. I blinked at her expectant face. "I said, are you gonna take mine now?"

"Oh," I looked from her to the camera, hesitantly picking it up in my hands. "Yeah. Say cheese!"

As far as I know, that photo was just another meaningless snapshot, another fleeting moment in her life.

I never got a redo photo because I never asked for it. But I didn't need it. I would soon become a living, breathing, walking, talking redo. Someone who looked better on camera and in real life.

Later that same sunny, spring day, after getting home from school, I shut myself in my room, pulled my shirt off of my head, and stood in front of the full length mirror on my closet door. I carefully examined myself, moving my fingers along the soft curves of flesh that should have been rigid muscles, and running my finger tips along the bones that protruded in some areas, and extra skin and fat that made itself known in others.

I hated it.

It was time for a change. And a change I set out for.

~

Another snapshot, though much smaller this time, came later that day when I was sitting down at dinner with my family.

"Are the potatoes gone?" my brother hollered from the stove side.

"Well do you see any, Jamie?" I called back to him.

"No."

"Well there's your answer," I said, triumphantly stabbing another fork-full of scalloped potatoes. My feeling of triumph only increased as I shoveled the food into my mouth right in front of my brother's annoyed face.

He fell into his chair with a dumb scowl. "You know you can answer me without being an a-hole, right?"

"Language," my dad reprimanded.

"What? I didn't say the actual word!"

"But it's meaning the same thing," my mom explained, backing up my dad's argument. She glanced over at my smug expression, adding, "But you don't have to be a pain in the butt to him all the time."