Fat Girl (Romance in Rehoboth, #0.5)

by K.L. Montgomery

I must come to terms with the fact that it is what it is, and there’s nothing I can do now to change it. I think those are the hardest lessons in life: accepting what you cannot change or control.

All I need to do is find my own path to happiness. I have all the ingredients I need: a family, amazing friends, a job I love. The only thing that has been holding me back all this time is me. I haven’t let myself be happy. I didn’t think I was allowed to be happy if I was fat or if my husband left me or if I was alone. But all those people who say that happiness is a choice are One Hundred Percent Correct. I’ve just been choosing against it.

I think my actual problem is not that I want to please others or exceed their expectations, but that I am ridiculously hard on myself. Maybe it did originate because I never felt I was good enough for my parents, but the simple fact is this: I have a strong internal drive to be perfect.

I’ve been conditioned—as we’ve all been conditioned—to believe that being fat is wrong. It’s a deficit, a handicap, a lesser state of being, if that makes sense. Fat is sub-optimal. And we are told, time and time again, that it’s a choice to be fat, that being fat is something we control. So I guess I just want to be a good enough person to have it under control. Because I haven’t yet convinced myself it isn’t wrong. Or at least wrong for me. Maybe someday I’ll get there, but today is not that day.

Can you accept

yourself, and be okay with being fat, but still want to lose weight? Is that disingenuous? Can you want to do it for the right reasons, like being healthy and feeling good, and not because you feel undue pressure from society?

the tide rushes over the tops of my feet and the still-frigid water electrifies every nerve in my body.

"While it’s true that lying isn’t a good thing, it's also none of your business why he doesn't want to have a relationship with you. He doesn't owe you an explanation, whether it's a real one or fabricated. And it doesn't matter if he thinks you're the ugliest, fattest chick on the planet. He is under no obligation to disclose any of his feelings to you."

There’s a very fine line between self-loving and self-loathing. We’ve talked a lot about your food and exercise issues, and you know as well as I do that they’re closer to the self-loathing end of the spectrum.”

point. The point is being healthy, happy, and above all, yourself. Not making yourself crazy trying to be someone else’s idealized version of yourself,” I clarify.

I will no longer feel devalued because society has an obsession with thinness. I will no longer feel like I am less of a person because I weigh more.