ESSAY: The Pancake

The adage of “your high school years are your best years” has always made me wonder: if that’s the case, then your life is likely to suck. Still, I wouldn’t argue about their importance. They are formative years filled with heartbreak, sensations, excitement, love, freedom, and whatnot. Your body transforms, your social identity is created—until it is reshaped later. In this miniature world, you start making sense of things in your own way.

I was fat. I felt like a loser, so I tried to counterbalance it by developing my speaking skills. I talked back, pretending to be a debater—my reasoning was often right, and eventually people stopped picking on me. Being fat was a prison, really. A prison of fat that kept romance outside. Girls obviously wouldn’t want to hang out with me that way. I learned that quite soon, after plenty of heartbreaks.

I kept lying to myself: “I am fat, but at least I am happy.” Bullshit. I was so sad. I ate my way into hiding this sadness in calories.

But then, in our senior year, someone arrived who would change everything—someone whose story still haunts me decades later.