It hits you at the top of stairs, sandwich in hand, your t-shirt cresting tight over your chest. Worn out already. You smile. Your dorm room is down the way. Before your next step, you need another big, succulent bite. Before that bite, you need to get your breath back. And before you calm your lungs, you need to get some weight off your feet. Rest, just a little while…
You fill your beaming face with bread and butter, leant up against the wall, munching and swallowing. It’s delicious. You stir on your sweat-misted side, spread out in the corridor, licking your lips. Memories of rolling cases trickle in, boxes and bags, the urge to unpack, the flurries of freedom that greeted your first day in student halls. The parties – the pandemonium…
The pandemic. You remembered when everything shorted out, shunted to a stop in that winding week in March. No lectures. No meetups. No more nights out. The sudden phone calls, the stark silence of having to fold your laptop, gather up your things and go. Home was where you settled, to wait out the storm, sitting and sleeping, slumping through the Zoom calls, walls caving in on you, your social circle swiftly closing round the kitchen cupboards. At least they were never closed. Doldrum days, where the brightest light you saw was at the back of the fridge, where happiness was to order in, buoying your spirits by snacking and sampling until at last, the restrictions came away. Free again. Free to –
– go back. To the way things used to be. You glare down the lonely corridor. No-one there. You’re the first to return. Nothing’s changed. The pots are still piled in the kitchen you’re sharing, the dishwasher full, last year’s calendar crinkled on the fridge. You slip the last of your sandwich past your lips, making the mental note to get fresh food in. The bag aches your shoulder. You ditch it. You twist, rustling for the keys in your pocket.
You brace yourself. Then, you open the door to your room.
A rounded face blinks at you from the mounted mirror. Two chubbed-up cheeks. A plumper pout, crossing your complexion as you totter closer, and closer. The softness. You’ve seen it half a hundred times before already. But here, you double chin looks different. Thicker. It all feels different – your whole body, every extra inch, everything weighed down by your big belly, preceding your waistband, stuffed from another long lunch, muscle memory drawing your palm into soothing its bulging swell. Your fingers bridge the gap between your button and your shirt, stroking your overhang, your dip into the world of morning lie-ins and midnight feasts.
Gosh – you’ve gotten fat.
Curiosity carries you further in. Your legs swish, black shorts brandishing a slow burning heat between your thighs. You can feel the hole forming already. Above, your figure fills the edges of the frame. Poised into pudginess. Measured into massiveness. You furrow your brow. Chocolate ice cream, fudge frosting, sourdough and soda. The difference between then and now. It’s wild.
You don’t have a picture of the person who lived in this room last.
But you still have their clothes.
You kick off your shoes, and peel off your shorts, smirk forming at the sight of the red marks plastered round your hips. Three weeks fresh off the rack, and they’re already getting tighter and tighter on you. Shirking them from your feet, you reach into your wardrobe, piled thick with the outfits you hadn’t had the chance to take with you. You seize the pair of designer jeans you donned in first term. Party time.
Smiling, you drop them by your feet, step in and heave the creaking beltloops past your knees, over your ham-hock thighs, heart drumming up a rising tempo, pulsing and tugging with drawn-out breaths, feeling the pressure. Reaching around, your shirt rides up as you stick out your chest, yanking from behind you, easing the jeans over your blubbery butt. Calves tight, you begin to jump up and down, perturbing the floorboards, the groaning wood barracked by weight, heavy on your heels while you lean and thrust. Success lies in you bringing the buttons toward your widened waistline. You shove in your love handles, one after the other, and squeeze…
You shimmy. You squeeze some more. Curves turn to creases. Curses. There’s not a sober hope of you hooking them together. But you’re drunk on what you’ve done to yourself. High on how much you’ve grown. In spirit. In body. You topple onto your mattress, revelling in the rush of air, the squeal of springs, the jiggles round your middle, your lustrous sighs. You scooch up your thighs, suck in and wrench at the buttonhole, coaxing your muscles in their casings of flab, huffing, puffing, stretching and straining…
Outgrown. Utterly useless. You relent, and cast a fluttering eye to your wardrobe, daydreaming over what else you’ve got try on. In a while of course. After a break. And a snack or two.
Maybe a nap. You’re in bed after all. No work until tomorrow. You pry off the jeans, breathing deep, plotting the afternoon, the evening, the night, the morning by your future mealtimes, snacktimes – the time your pizza’s due in thirty minutes.
Better find something to wear when it arrives.
Best years of your life, you wonder with a grin.
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