Solace

While she sat at the safer edge of the window sill, all those suppressed memories came gushing back. The troubled childhood, where the only friends she had were characters from the books she read. Gradually, those characters seemed to reduce to mere caricatures.
The scars on her wrist were testimony to her bearings. She remembered the first time she’d hurt herself, she had worn full-sleeves for the whole week. Before she knew it, she’d stopped caring. Not just about opinions, but about herself too. Her swelling waistline had been the subject of many-a-joke in the school corridors. She’d deduced that her contemporaries were Satan’s kindred spirits. They had shaken her confidence, or whatever little that was left of it. She thrusted closer.
She felt she was surrounded by pretty girls who seemed to have walked out of a Vogue photo shoot. She had come to peace with the fact that she wasn’t going to look anything like that any time soon. Her bare feet were slapping the cold breeze now.
Her mind wandered off to the day she opened her Facebook to see a picture of herself. The kind of picture most girls wouldn’t want to see of themselves on half a dozen social networking sites. This called for a move closer. She was so panic-stricken that she ended up going to school in smeared eye makeup. “She could have at least worn Bobbi Brown” was what Bitchy Betty had to say.
A tear streamed down her chubby cheeks, carrying along with it some of her eyeliner. It still wasn’t Bobbi Brown. She didn’t care. Thighs moving closer to the edge. Now the dangerous end.
Her grades seemed to be moving in an inverse relationship to her waistline. #Throwback to the day she told her mother she wanted to visit a counsellor, that she was tired. She didn’t want to be consumed any more. The bullying had led her to the depths of despair and the inability to discern. “I’m not taking you anywhere, you’ll get over the fad sooner than later”. As curtly as those words were said, they confused her. Perturbed her. Disoriented her.

That final plunge simplified everything.