Prodigal

~8~

I slept in the next day and decided that I wasn’t going to eat anything all day. If I would only eat every other day. That’s what I decided.

I didn’t always eat breakfast, and sleeping late, I was able to side step breakfast without a lot of attention being drawn to the anorexia I was displaying.

At lunch, I simply said that I wasn’t hungry. Dad asked me if I was feeling okay, and I said that I was, and that I just wasn’t hungry. Dad thought it was a little strange but moved past it until I said I wasn’t hungry at dinner.

It was nearly six pm when my level of hunger was higher than I had ever felt it in my life. I was downing glasses of water after glasses of water trying to fill myself up. All it did is make me pee what seemed like pure water.

“Are you feeling sick?” Dad asked me.

“No.” I responded.

“Then why don’t you want to eat anything today?” Dad asked. Dinner was almost ready and I had refused to eat anything again.

“Because I’m simply not hungry.” Right as I said that, the smell of dinner hit my nose and my stomach growled embarrassingly loud.

“That’s a lie.” Dad said, catching me. “Now tell me, why don’t you want to eat anything?”

I didn’t say anything. Dad suddenly had a “eureka” moment and realized why. He stomped into my makeshift bedroom and found the magazine under my bed.

Dad was angry, but the anger passed after a moment. “This is why I didn’t want you to read this magazine.” Dad said.

I suddenly felt queasy at the thought of how many millions of people saw that. Or I was feeling queasy because I had never gone this long without eating anything before. I don’t’ know, one or the other.

Dad sat me down on the bed. “You’re fourteen, you’re pubescent, you’re hungry all the time because you’re growing, and like Grandma said, you’ll start growing a lot very soon. You’re putting on a little bit of weight because your body is preparing to grow. You’re about to get a lot taller and when you do you won’t have any extra weight on you. If you were as tall as me weighing what you did then you would be dead you’d be so skinny. That’s why your body is trying to put on weight. This is natural. Screw what these bastards think about you. Ignore them. Eat if you’re hungry because if you don’t you won’t grow properly.”

I didn’t say anything, I simply let Dad’s words sink in. I was very easily persuaded at this time. Luckily, though, he was able to persuade me and I agreed with everything he said. He made me comfortable enough to eat again. This is one of the many reasons I felt like I had the greatest Dad in the world.

I also made a choice at that moment, and that choice would be to stop reading tabloids because they make money by tearing me down. And buying magazines was supporting that concept.

Notes

I'm starting to feel like this story isn't very appealing to the target audience here.