𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 ❪ 𝘣𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘦 ❫

16

I return from my two-hour workout, hoping that my stomach has gotten flatter over the last month or two. 

The wall-length mirror stuck to the door of my wardrobe beckons me to come closer and have a look at my body. I obey, lifting up the hem of sports shirt, a desperate smile crossing my face at the sight of a flat stomach. 

I made a promise to myself at the start of October that I wouldn't look in the mirror at my stomach until at least the twentieth of November, and now it is the twenty-seventh. I'm content with the results, but I haven't eaten for so long apart from drinking herbal tea and water, that I start to crave all the food I have missed out on. 

Pizza, crisps, biscuits, chocolate, cupcakes... 

But no. 

I can't fall into the same trap. 

That's the reason I've got into this mess.

My smile slowly fades as I reach my thighs. Since I've been exercising every day for mostly three hours a day for the last two months, my thighs have grown. They have become a little thicker. 

Anyone can mistake that muscle for fat. 

I grab my flask of herbal tea sipping it as I decide what I am going to do. Exercise and no food has seemed to work for my stomach and arms, but for my legs, it has had the opposite effect. 

Maybe if I take exercise out of the equation, my whole body will become slim and perfect — just how I want it to be. 

I grin at my new-found solution and grab some clean clothes from my wardrobe, heading to the shower. I knock first, and there is no answer so I step in. 

I don't expect anyone to be in the bathroom anyway, since Kori is out with Richard, and Victor has gone to meet Karen, as Jeanette suggested to him a few weeks ago apparently. The only person home is Garfield and he's been cooped up in his room for the past few hours. I heard his voice a couple of times, so I had guessed he was calling someone. 

The water pours down, dripping over my body, calming my mind from my thoughts. The warm water envelops my body in steam, curing my mind of all the things I honestly don't care about at all, but somehow still worry about.  I feel like I'm standing underneath a waterfall, and I don't want to turn the water off but I know that beautiful feelings and things like this don't last. 

It's only the painful feelings and things that do.

Like the fresh pain from my mother's death, still there, still in my mind despite how much I've tried to divert my thoughts from it. 

Apparently, time is a great healer, but it definitely isn't working for me. Time only seems to intensify the pain, the memories — everything. 

Once I've lathered my hair and body, and sent the shampoo down the drain, I turn off the flow of water, grabbing my towel hanging just outside the shower, wrapping it around my body. I look in the mirror, noting that the roots of my hair have turned back to my original hair colour: a dark brown.