Stiff as a Board/Light as a Feather

Sensitive Content Warning: This story involves characters who use fatphobic language and engage in fatphobic mindsets. The fatphobia in this story is there to bring attention to the issue, not to endorse these attitudes. This story also contains details of severe mental illness, as well as references to suicide.

I am Stiff as a Board: The World in Gray

July 3th, 2024

My favorite superhero movie is Spiderman: Across The Spider-Verse. I am fascinated by the idea of parallel universes, that certain events in our lives are canon, and that maybe somewhere out there, there is a version of me that wants to be alive. I’ve seen that movie seventeen times, and I’ve never reached the end without going through a box of tissues.

When I get into the office this morning, A.J. is already at his desk. He holds out a Starbucks cold brew.

“Happy Wednesday!” he says.

“Thanks.” I place the coffee on my desk and let my backpack slide off my shoulders, and it thunks on the floor.

A.J. laughs. “That backpack is bigger than the one I had when I went backpacking through Southeast Asia.” He says this at least once a week.

I always have the same response: “I know, I’m going to get back problems. I’ll clean it out this weekend.”

The three-note hum of my laptop starting up always brings a pit into my stomach. Or rather, feeds the pit that is already lodged there above my colon. I hate the fluorescent lighting in this room. I hate how the dirty blinds make a pattern in the weak sunlight that shines past the highway outside.

“What time is it?” I ask, though I already know the answer. I kind of want to remind A.J. that we are supposed to be working. I get anxious when I take too many chat breaks.

A.J. doesn’t get the hint. “Only eight more hours to go until 4th of July weekend! Do you have any plans?”

“I have plans to take some cough syrup and go to bed at 6 PM tonight, and then when I wake up, it’s Tuesday morning again.”

A.J. looks like he can’t tell whether I’m joking. I’m not.

A.J. leans in conspiratorially. “You know, I heard that Shay is leaving the agency next week.” If A.J. was stuck in the forest, he would probably try to gossip with a deer. And I have no doubt the deer would trust him implicitly. He has that vibe.

My silence doesn’t discourage A.J. “Yeah, I heard that she’s pregnant. And the crazy thing is, the father might be Derrick.” Derrick is our boss. I know I’m supposed to express shock at this point. But Derrick is a scumbag. He tried to kiss me at an office party three years ago and then denied it ever happened when I filed a report. I guess the downside of working in the HR department is that you can’t rely on HR to save your hide. Whistleblower protection, my ass. This whole agency runs on favoritism.

“If it is Derrick, I hope he takes paternity leave and then gets run over by a truck.” I take a sip of the coffee.

A.J. slaps the desk. “Honestly, same.”

I open up Outlook and have an impulse to shut my computer and leave right now. There are three new emails from the chick who always thinks there are “mistakes” in her payroll. No, Ashley, you didn’t clock into work until noon every day last pay period.

There’s also another reasonable accommodation request from Robin. She wants a special chair for her back issues. Well, maybe you wouldn’t have back issues if you lost some weight, Robin.

“No breakfast today?” asks A.J. Must we do this song and dance every day?

“I don’t really feel hungry in the mornings.” The sharp taste of the coffee mixes with the faded-out pineapple flavor of my chewing gum. My belly feels hollow, like the inside of a Jack-O-Lantern. My personal trainer, Mary Ann, is always telling me I need to eat more protein to stay fuller for longer. I am already looking forward to my lunch, an undressed salad with spinach, melon, strawberries, and cucumbers. I also brought a protein shake, but I know I won’t drink it. It will get flushed down the toilet after I eat my sad salad in the bathroom. I don’t think I can stand another comment from A.J. I think he is genuinely curious about how I am still alive.

I can just picture him speculating about me in the office kitchen: “She belongs in rehab,” he would say. “She looks like she weighs less than my two-year-old. I don’t think she’s functional anymore, at all.”

Well, I have news for you A.J. My eighty-pound grandmother did not die until she was a hundred and two. She was on feeding tubes longer than I was alive. Every Sunday, my mom would pack us into the old blue sedan and drive us one hour to the hospital, where my grandmother would bark at us from the bed, her voice barely strong enough to carry across the room:

“What are you feeding those kids, Linda? They are so enormous! Especially Sadie!”

I would have rather gone to church and accepted Jesus as my lord and savior a hundred times, even though I have always been an atheist.

Speaking of saviors: I feel a warm glow in my chest when I see an email from Tashelle. It’s a link to a Pinterest picture of a girl with dyed red curls in a wolf cut. The email is titled “This hair color is everything. Get it.” Tashelle is such a weirdo. Sometimes when I’m alone in my apartment at night, I picture Tashelle beside me, feeding me candy and making snarky comments about whatever movie we’re watching. I picture myself preparing all her favorite foods: vegan pad thai, chocolate cake with simple American frosting, cheesy empanadas. My stomach grumbles.

I know random facts about Tashelle that even A.J. doesn’t know. Like that her favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption, and she used to hate SpongeBob but then started liking it after being stuck with a hospital roommate who watched SpongeBob day and night. I know that every time she goes to the hospital for cancer treatments, she brings an empty Trader Joe’s bag with her and packs it with gloves and alcohol swabs and little pudding cups and whatever else she can fit, because “you don’t send me a two-thousand-dollar bill without me getting anything out of it.”

I’m hungry for touch or maybe for actual food; I can’t tell the difference at this point.

I once told some other co-workers about my crush on Tashelle.

Paul just stared blankly and said, “Why?”

Then A.J. said, “I get it, you like the aggressiveness. You just want to be pushed up against a wall, don’t you? Inside, you’re the wildest one of all of us.”

I’m pretty sure that Tashelle is straight anyway.

I get up to go to the bathroom and bump into Robin in the hallway. She is wearing a flowery white dress and crimson lipstick.

“Sadie!” she says. “I was actually going to look for you this morning. I have an extra ticket for the MUNA concert in two weeks.” Her ocean-colored eyes crinkle when she smiles. I wonder how much she weighs. A feeling of terror passes through my chest like a rolling fog. I’ve been having a lot of chest pains lately. I know I should go to the doctor, but they would just tell me I need to eat.

“No thanks,” I say. “I’m not really into MUNA.”

I am Light as a Feather: The World in Yellow

July 4th, 2024

My favorite move is Coherence. I’ve written a review about it on Letterboxd, one thousand words long. The film is about this group of friends at a dinner party who eventually make contact with themselves in parallel universes. I’ve seen it seventeen times. What fascinates me most is the idea that certain events happen no matter which world you are in.

I think that in every single parallel universe, I am married to Robin. Maybe the details of how we met are different, but at the end of the day, it is Robin I am sharing mozzarella sticks with at the movies, Robin I am watching cartoons with at 6 AM on Saturday mornings, Robin I am deep-cleaning the bathroom with in the wee hours of the morning when we both can’t sleep.

Robin and I go to the big local park every weekend. My bulldog, Maude, loves to chase after our faded tennis ball and roll around in the grass. Robin’s dog, Mr. Noodle, is a tripod. He lost one leg in a car accident as a puppy, but that doesn’t stop him from being a total pervert and trying to hump every single other dog he sees. I’m surprised we haven’t been banned from the park.

On the Thursday before 4th of July weekend, we pack up a picnic in a cute vintage basket and head to the park with Maude and Mr. Noodle. I love my new boho dress. It’s navy blue with giant flowers that look vaguely like breasts. It has a slit up the left leg. Robin has a matching one in white. We spread out a blanket under a tree and put on our sunglasses. I throw a tennis ball across the grass for Maude while Mr. Noodle looks around for dogs to terrorize. It’s 9 AM, and my soul feels like a butterfly at one with the sun and the friendly breeze. I relax while Robin unpacks our breakfast: grapes, fancy cheese, chocolate-covered strawberries, and assorted tiny sandwiches.

Through my closed eyes, my vision turns from orange to black. Someone is standing over me. I look up and see a woman in purple Lululemon pants. Her flat belly is pierced, and she has thick blond hair in a high ponytail. I immediately dislike her for some intangible reason.

“Hey, ladies,” she says. “I’m Mary Anne.”

I look around for her dog, but I don’t see one. Why is this woman approaching us?

Robin smiles, her lips wavering. “Robin,” she says. “This is my wife, Sadie. Do you need help with something?”

“Actually, I was hoping I could help you,” says Mary Anne. “I’m a personal trainer, and I’m starting a beginner Pilates class this summer.” She holds out a business card, and her thin wrist hands limply in the air when neither Robin nor I reach for the card.

“Thanks for the offer,” I say, “But we’re not really into Pilates.”

“A lot of my clients who haven’t been active in a while say that in the beginning, but once you get moving, you see how much of an impact it has on your mood and energy levels.” Her smile reveals animal-like teeth, strong and white and perfectly shaped like a textbook diagram of a carnivore’s mouth.

“What makes you think we’re not active?” says Robin.

“Well, I, ugh…” Mary Anne gestures vaguely in our direction, blushing.

“Is it because we’re fat?” I say.

Mary Anne looks like she is constipated. Her face is puce and her hands are clenched. “I appreciate all body types,” she says. “I’m body positive.”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” says Robin, “but we both walk on the beach with our dogs for two hours a day, and I teach hip-hop.”

Mary Anne scampers away, muttering under her breath. I hear the words, “obese losers,” and my heart rate shoots up.

Robin’s hand touches mine. “That idiot is not worth another ounce of your energy.”

She’s right. F*** Mary Anne.

If I’m honest with myself, I know that in many parallel universes, I am not actually married to Robin. The reason being that in those universes, I am dead. Maybe in some of them I had a heart attack while running on the treadmill at the local gym. In others, I finally gave in to the voices in my head and took the two bottles of medication I had been hoarding, my chest heaving with sobs as I lay in a cold bath. Statistically speaking, I doubt I make it past my early thirties in nine out of ten cases. Which is why I secretly hope parallel universes don’t exist.

But I know they do. Because when I close my eyes at night, I see a skeletal woman hunched over a desk in a generic office somewhere. She eats the same salad for lunch every day, trapped in a bathroom stall that smells like someone else’s farts. She reeks of death. She never intended for it to get to this point. It started with a daily workout from an early 2000s YouTuber, with a clean-food diet, with pinching the fat on her thighs and resolving to lose twenty pounds, then twenty more. And now she is in a hole that is rapidly swallowing her, living through fantasies of a parasocial relationship with a random co-worker. I feel her reaching out to me through the void. But when I try to dig her out of the grave, she only climbs farther in.