The Meal Plan

Chapter 5

Hi guys :) 

Thank you so much for reading this book. It means a lot to me :)

This chapter is dedicated to Emi0Love for commenting on this book.

Please vote and comment. Each like is an award for me.

Also, please forgive my grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. English is not my first language and this book is a draft. It's not edited yet. Thank you :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rest of the day was uneventful. No one bothered me. After class, I had to walk home alone as Trina had to stay back at school for her tutor club and Louis had detention for beating up Sean. I smiled at the memory of Sean’s black eye. I had no sympathy for him anymore. I should have taken a leaf out of Louis and kicked the hell out of Mia. It would have been self satisfying. How could she do something like that to me? I considered her as my family.

“Family?” I groaned at that thought.

My uncle, his wife, his daughter, his daughter's arm candy and her best friend were coming over for dinner that night. My uncle married a former Playboy model with fake boobs and bleached blonde hair. My cousin was a carbon copy of my aunt and aspired to be the next Julia Roberts. They were fabulous and I hated both of them. My hatred didn’t stem because I was jealous or insecure. I hated them because of the way they treated my mom.

"Maggie, what are you feeding that child? She's turning into a sumo wrestler", "Maggie, you should make her exercise", "Come on, Maggie, You should take some responsibility for turning her into a whale" These were the things my aunt kept telling mom. The last one was really painful for my ears. The fact that Aunt Jenna blamed my mom for my weight-gain made me hate her more than anything else in the world. I realized that my mom wondered, painfully,   whether she contributed to my weight gain. Mom was not aware of my food addiction. At least, she pretended that way.

I hated my cousin for a different reason. She offered too many back handed compliments. They were more like " Neveah, babe, you have such a pretty face. I wish you had a body to go with it", "Nice dress, It would have been even   better in black color. Black is really slimming!", "Check out that hot guy, I would have encouraged you to talk to him, Neve, but you see, if you approach him, he would have a good laugh with his friends and hurt your feelings. I don't want to see you get hurt. I love you, baby doll xoxo" Amanda also had an annoyingly high pitched voice which made her even more irritating than she was.

I hated family reunions because my weight was always a topic of conversation. At the end of the day, they made me feel like shit. I was not proud of my eating habits but I couldn't stop binging even if I wanted to. Food became such an emotional crutch for me that it was impossible to survive without the cushioning of those extra calories.

I never enjoyed the food I ate. I didn’t care how the food looked, tasted or smelled. I just sat in a corner and tried to eat as much as I could. I was unable to pin point what I felt during those binges. Initially, it was a swirling mix of anxiety and rage and confusion and control and excitement and sadness and fear and … all these feelings together. When I ate to the point of bursting my stomach, I felt numb. I felt nothing.

I was so immersed in thoughts that I was surprised when I reached home. My legs carried me home themselves. I felt sick when I saw Amanda’s silver Volvo and Uncle John’s SUV parked in front of our house.

“Could this day get any worse?”I wondered

“HEY, BABYGIRL…I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!” Amanda shouted as I entered the living room.