It was the end of June 1993 or 1994, I can’t really tell, I was really messed up at that time. Being an overweight person didn’t really help me socialize and meet other people. My health was completely ruined, I couldn’t walk for 5 minutes without stopping. Eating healthy wasn’t helping, and excercise? I’d just wait for the next day. And the day after. Naturally, with all the problems getting me down, I thought about a lot of things. School was the last one on that list. My grades had suffered immensly and no matter what I’ve tried to do, it kept getting worse.

And there I was. A 16-year old socially inadept freak that couldn’t manage to dig out of the sess pool of something that didn’t even remotely resemble a life. Funny thing, how I grew proportionally with the problems. Something bad at school happened? Have a hot chocolate banana fudge sunday. Someone insulted me? There isn’t an insult in the world that 5 poached eggs can’t help you overcome. Most people who have problems will tell you it took them a while to figure it out. For me, it was a bit different. Like every day, I was getting ready for school. I came out of the shower, dried my hair. For the first time in the past few years, I looked up in the mirror. What a sight it was. The ogre standing in front of the mirror, holding the hair drier with his floppy, grandma-like hand wasn’t something you’d like to see first thing in the morning. While I was putting on my extra wide pair of Levi’s, the grotesque image that I saw in the mirror not 5 minutes ago haunted me. Then it finally occured to me: the only way for me to become normal again is to completely lose weight. No more diets. No more failed workout sessions. It was time to bring out the big guns. Every day at school, I had this huge chicken sandwich with extra mayo and with a bit of stale, almost black, “green” salad. For the first time, I decided not to stuff myself with that calory bomb. Instead, I just looked myself at one of the glass walls the caffeteria was made of and remembered what I was trying to do. So I just skipped eating at school that day and went on the next class. As the hours slowly passed by, I felt sick. A strange sickness I hadn’t felt in a long time. Some people would call it hunger, but I call it… abstinence crysis. Who’d guess that not eating for 3 hours could cause such pain? Somehow, I managed to withstand it and get on with my day. I’ll never forget how I felt when I came back from school that day. If I tried to describe it, I’d say that feeling was a combination of the pain you feel when you’re hit by a car which your girlfriends lover was driving while he was coming back from a nice little date with her. If you managed to imagine it, you’d know that it was a feeling of both emotional and physical pain, one caused by the other. My ever so caring mother knew something was wrong as soon as she saw me. I told her to simply leave me alone, and went straight up to my room, skipping dinner and all the delicious deserts that came along with it. The pain lasted through the whole night, or at least it seemed that way. I woke up the next morning (or should I say afternoon being it was 2 PM and I was running late for school), packed my school books and went running to the school. That was another first time thing I’ve done – skipped breakfast. A hot day it was that day, not really the kind you’d like to go out running. But I had no choice. I was a bad student and couldn’t afford to be late on classes. Even though I was wheezing and sweating like a disgusting pig, I managed to get to school somehow. Unfortunately, becouse I was so tired I spent my school day in a half-awoken state, failing to grasp a single piece of information my teachers gave. I came home and dinner was waiting. I ate like a sparrow and went straight to my room. And so the days, weeks went by and 4 months later after starving myself to death I made an astonishing accomplishment. I had lost 60 pounds and was the as thin as I could have possibly imagined. I wish I could say I was in the best shape of my life, but thats far from the truth. Not only that I lost weight, I had lost touch with reality. I had flunked 8 out of 12 classes and there was no choice but to repeat the entire year. Another judgement day had come; I began to realise that my weight wasn’t the core of my problems, but myself. I still had no friends, no school, no future. My health suffered even more becouse of the sudden weight loss. I realised that I couldn’t do it alone, and told my parents what I had been going through the past few months. After I told them my story, they just gazed at me as if they had seen a ghost. In a way, they have seen a ghost. A specter of something what used to be their loving child and has now turned in a true ogre, an ogre from inside. I couldn’t understand, what was going through their mind at the time. As minutes passed I started having flashbacks. Like a situation that happened 2 months ago. As usual, I came back from school, had dinner and rushed upstairs to watch TV. As I was rushing away from the dinner table, my mom told me to go in the living room and wait for them to finish dinner. I went there, sat down, and waited. A few moments later, my parents came in the room and sat across me. As we sat there, my mom asked in a calm voice:”What is happening with you? You are neglecting yourself, your school obligations and us.”. When I heard those words, something came over me. I went in a tantrum, started screaming something about wanting to have my own peace, my own space. I rushed up in my room and as I closed the door, I could hear my parents starting to argue over me. Not only that I was ruining my life, I was ruining their as well. As I was coming back from the flashback, I took a better look at my mother. A tear started going down her worry drained face as she was looking at me with her deep, blue eyes. I told them that I now realise that the true problem lies not in my looks nor behaviour but my attitude. I had to take a more positive attitude towards life otherwise I’d end up swallowing a bottle of pills or jumping in the bathtub with a plugged in toster in my hand. I went upstairs, took a shower, changed my clothes into something remotely nice, put on a smile and went to the nearby club. As I was closing in to the entrance, I could feel the bouncers eyes scanning me and watching every move I made. It was not becouse I seemed dangerous, its becouse nobody under 18 was allowed. I heard some people at the school talk that it is possible, if you had the right attitude, right walk or talk. I came to the entrance and the bouncer asked me what I wanted. I just looked at him under my brow and told him I want in. I was shocked. He opened the door. For him it was just a door to another smelly night club. For me, it was a door to a new world. I went straight to the bar and ordered a Coke. I grabbed my glass and tried to find a spot on the dance floor. As I was walking, some overgrown teen buffboy pushed me aside and spilt my drink all over my lucky shirt. I wanted to tell him to watch it, but the music was so loud I could barely hear my own thoughts. I went home around 10, came in and went straight upstairs. I was unhappy again. No matter what I do, I fail. As I was buried deep in my thoughts, I began to realise that nothing was ever really wrong with me. I may have been fat or big boned or whatever, but you know what? My bad grades weren’t so bad. Who cares if I had mostly C’s? I had no friends at that time? Thats plain rubbish. I had plenty of friends from my neighbourhood, but I always thought they were looking at me mockingly. Turns out, I was wrong. I looked myself in the mirror for one more time and said loud and clearly:”You control your life. Not the way you look, not the way you act but the way you are.”.
I live to this day by those words. I repeated the year with a 4.2 GPA, got in a good colledge and did my best so far to live the life to the fullest. I don’t know whether or not this will help anyone, but if anyone even stops to read this, it will make me happy.

 Truly yours, The Invincible