Why does everything bad happen only to me?
I weighed myself yesterday.
I’m gaining, not losing, weight.
I’m depressed.
My body’s a mess.
I need to change.

Hana told me that the scale’s broken.
But I was still overweight when I weighed myself at mama’s.
I could go on a “chemical diet” and lose weight quickly.
Sara’s coming over today.
I’m gonna make her weigh herself at home,
Then at my place.
I need to know if the scale’s really broken.

“So, what are you going to do?
Why is the light still on?
Did you study? You need to get good grades, okay?
Why do you look so depressed like we’re torturing you or something?”

Baba’s place is like a prison.
He wants me to study every waking minute.
If I move to the couch for a second, he thinks I’m falling asleep.
I feel like I’m turning into a robot.
The sound of his key turning in the lock fills me with fear.
I quickly whip out a book.

All we ever talk about is studying and food.
Whenever I eat too much in front of him,
He calls me fat,
And says I need to lose weight.
I felt like I was dying in that prison.

I spent the weekends at mama.
I’m happy there.
And I get to sit on the couch all I want.
I don’t need to sit all prim and proper like at baba’s.
There’s a couch, a TV…
Baba only has one TV, locked up in his room.
And when he’s around, he only turns on the news.

At mama’s I get to eat chips and chocolate.
Mama, too, keeps imploring me to lose weight,
But at baba’s I’m forced to eat boiled chicken and vegetables and rice,
Like I’m a patient at a hospital.
I hate him and hate her.

I’m always procrastinating from studying because of them.
I feel like a fat failure.
And I have dreams no one understands.
I want to die or be hospitalized so they’d feel guilty.
I took 20 pills from the medicine cabinet, a little bit of everything.
All it did was make me sleep for 20 hours,
And I woke up with acne on my face.
The next day I woke up at mama’s,
And I had to pack my things for a new week at baba’s.

Then I found a new way out.
I’d visit the very kind school nurse and fake being sick.
They’d send me back to mama’s.

Then I made things even easier by dressing in my uniform,
Then going straight from baba’s to mama’s.
He’d think I was at school.
I’d get back home at 7 and fall asleep again.

I once freaked out that he’d find out I was playing hooky.
I went to bed and dreamt of the jangling of baba’s keys,
as he opened the door.
I woke up terrified and soaked.
I’m 15 years old and I wet myself.