Fat Girl ✔️

The Hurting Begins... And it Never Stops

John Ryan Sparks.

Husband.

Father.

Someone I'll never get back.

I stared down at his headstone, my arms wrapped around my cold body. What was I doing here?

I'd just started driving, and the next thing I knew I found myself looking for Dad. Thoughts were swirling in my head. Thoughts of Blake and Julian, of Bella and Sydney and a friendship that would never be fully mended, the video of me at the party replaying over and over again inside my head. It was like a broken record player. Everything was ruined. Everything was ruined, and the one things I needed, the one person that could help me, died two and a half years ago.

I needed him. More than anything. The things I would give to see him again... I would take off five years of my own life just to give them to him. Just to see him smile, to hear him console me. A younger me took him for granted. He was always there when I needed advice. When I needed a shoulder to cry on. When I got into a fight with Mom.

He was always there... until he wasn't.

I remembered when I realized it was him and me against the world. I was young then, and so naive to the cruel nature of the world. I didn't realize people could hold hate in their hearts, hate so heavy it made them want to lash out against others. I saw the best in everyone, and Dad encouraged that in me. He told me to believe in myself and the power of kindness. He told me anything was possible.

Clearly one thing wasn't.

I always thought of Dad as mine. My person. I forgot that Jackie missed him too, and I forgot how much Mom loved him. I forgot how happy she was with him, how everything was brighter with him around. Our relationship was easier with him to remind us that we loved each other. But when he was gone, things got cold. Colder than they had ever been. His death brought out the worst in the both of us, until Mom was escaping on 'work trips' every weekend in order to avoid her daughters. Specifically me.

"Dad," I whispered, softly, so soft the wind picked up my words and carried them away until they were nothing. "Dad, I need you. I miss you so much."

No reply.

"I don't know what to do. I thought things were getting better. I thought I  was getting better. I thought... I thought I could change the way people looked at me. I thought someone could love me in a real way. I was wrong."

I crouched down in front of his headstone, resting my hands in the grass.

"Please just tell me what to do. I'm so lost. I can't take it anymore. I just... I'm so sick of being the fat girl."

I looked back up at the words written in stone. Husband. Father. Tears formed in my eyes, and before I knew it, they were running down my cheeks.

"It's not fair. None of it is. It isn't fair, Dad."

No reply.

I knew what he would say, though, if he were here. He would laugh out loud.

"The fat girl?" He would ask, holding his laugh in his belly, "There is no fat or skinny. Old or young. None of it matters. We're all just little brains floating around on a tiny rock in the infinite universe. Don't worry about what other people think, Ell-Bells. All you need to worry about," He would say, pressing his finger into my chest, pointing towards my heart, "Is what's in here."

I tried to hear his voice in the wind. I tried to imagine his laugh, picture his face in my head. But it had been so long. Too long. It was hard to conjure up the image.

So I stood up, and wiped my jeans with my hands. I took one last look at his headstone. At those words, written in stone. Then I turned and walked away.

He wasn't here.