What Holding Up the Universe Means to Me

by Lilly Herondale-Calore (aka @thenycfangirl on Insta)

I want to talk to you about Holding Up the Universe! I’ve been reading most of the day and am up to page 125 and I just forced myself to stop so I can tell you what I was feeling.

I have a confession to make, something I’ve never told anyone. I have always felt self-conscious about my weight.

It wasn’t until I got to around the fifth grade that I realized I was “fat.” I always thought myself the same as everyone else, until one day at lunch my friends and I were talking about the beach. We were arguing over bathing suits and I made a comment about how they were uncomfortable, and a girl said to me something I’ll never forget: “Well no one would ever want to see you in a bikini anyway!”

I was soooo confused about this, and that’s when I started to look at people differently.

Was this girl fat?

Was that boy fat?

How do you know you’re fat?

And what does it matter?

When junior high started, I felt weird. I was a social butterfly with plenty of friends, but when 7th grade hit everything changed. My chest exploded and my hips formed so now my body was not only chubby but overdeveloped and underdeveloped in all the wrong places.

I didn’t understand why all the boys liked a girl that was mean over me. Why, because she’s thinner? Doesn’t anyone care that I’m super smart and funny? And that I mend boo boos and will talk on the phone for hours if you need me?

Why was everyone concerned with what I looked like rather than what kind of a person I was?

Why was I good enough to be a friend but not a girl to have a crush on? Just because I was chubbier?

I felt like I had to change my appearance. I was confident and thought myself pretty, but the media and the people around me made me feel like I had to think otherwise. I felt like I had to change my body or change the way I dressed so that I could be wanted by other people.

And in the eighth grade was when I really understood: I was fat. But not like my friend Andrea. She didn’t fit in our desks. I could see that, but I never wanted to say it or hurt her feelings.

We were getting ready for our senior trip and just to test the waters I asked the boys—who they were most and least excited to see in the pools? They said they were excited to see Kristen, a thin girl with a nice body, but she was mean. They said they were least excited for Andrea.

And this got me so angry because it didn’t matter that Andrea was kind and no one in the world could draw like her. Didn’t any of that stuff matter to people?

As I entered high school, I noticed this trend. I felt like no one would think I was beautiful the way I wanted to be beautiful. Because I wasn’t skinny enough. I hate going outside some days because I feel like everyone is staring at me and my body.

So as I read Holding Up the Universe, I noticed that Libby’s thoughts were also my thoughts. I felt the same way as her. So many bad things were happening in the last few years. My father sent my mom to court, she lost her job, we lost our apartment, I transferred schools, I had no money for tuition. And the weight piled on drastically. I felt so depressed. Some days I didn’t want to live or even wake up. I felt so trapped in a body I loved, but felt like I had to change for others.

And I just wanted you to know how important this book is to me and how much I am crying reading it. I didn’t go to school all last week because of an emotional breakdown over my grades. I reread All the Bright Places to make me feel better. And then I met you Saturday and you made my world brighter than a million suns that day. And then I started reading this book.

UPDATE: I have, and I mean literally, JUST read the last page of Holding Up the Universe, and I am disappointed in myself for reading it so fast because I didn’t do my best to savor it, and now it’s over.

I have never read anything more raw, more real, and more beautiful than this. You have me so beyond words. This book is now at the center of MY universe, and I can’t put into words how lucky I feel to have read it. I can’t say more than this because wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

Just wow.