Infinity.1

I hate how it’s never enough anymore. I know I’m using a vague pronoun (who says I haven’t paid attention in English?), but I hate explaining ‘it’. It’s like asking someone who are ‘they’ when you give out a statistic-“They said you should eat three meals a day…They say standing on your head for twenty minutes a day prevents cancer…etc.” No one cares who ‘they’ are, no one’s paying attention to the details. The same goes for ‘it’. I don’t have to explain it because everyone knows what ‘it’ is. It’s those four hour study sessions before a Physics exam and getting a C. It’s spending weeks in rehab only to fall again. It’s knowing that you’re not enough, a harsh reality that I’m beginning to believe comes with adulthood, regardless of my optimistic, liberal schooling.

I might be crazy, but from where I stand, nothing’s ‘enough’ anymore. It’s not enough to simply be towards the top of your class, when you’re competing against juniors who get into MIT and sophomores taking Linear Algebra. It’s not enough to be top seat (if not captain) of the wrestling team, you have to star in the school musical as well. I’m not bitter, not against these people, I’m not mad at them in any way, shape or form, but I am frustrated that they perpetuate the belief that simply overachieving isn’t enough.

Maybe it’s just the area I live in. Washington, DC is a mecca of education, politics (obviously) and people stressed out of their minds. It might not be as lively as New York (but I haven’t been to the big apple in the longest time), but it’s certainly as stressful to everyone in the inside. By ‘inside’ I don’t mean the brother-in-law of the President or girlfriend to some senator’s son, I mean everyone who remotely interacts with these sorts of people, or, in my case, children of people who interact with these sort of people. I understand I’m talking about a very specific circle-upper middle class to flat-out upper class for the most part, but the thing about DC (or America in general, I’d like to say) is that anyone can move their way up, with enough hard work. Personally, I find the thought optimistic, but for the most part true if you work hard enough…even if my liberal-minded classmates think no one should have to work that hard.

I’ve grown up watching my mother work from seven am to ten pm, not constantly, but certainly not a rare occurrence. I’ve watched her go into the office on a weekend to get her work done. I’m not angry with her-I’m proud of her, and I’m not naïve enough to think she loves me any less or some other juvenile thought of the same brand. But I know it wasn’t only because she worked hard, it wasn’t only because she was determined (although I will bet that was a lot of it). She’s a very smart woman, with a kind heart, out to do the best job she can and help people who deserve it-not something that always happened in her line at work. At school, we’re told it never happens. There’s one thing she’s recently, meaning in the past year or so, openly admitted that was never said before: she was helped along the way because she was thin and pretty.

And now it starts again. Never being enough. So even if you’re heading the Crew team and acing AP bio while being the lead dancer in the school play, if you’re not pretty and/or thin…you’re still at a disadvantage. It’s the ugly truth both my parents have instilled in me, because, frankly, I’m not thin, and I don’t think I’m all that pretty.

“Being fat will close a lot of doors for you,” my mother tells me. “I just want you to have every possible door open, not closed because you can’t stop eating everything in sight!”

Maybe not an exact quote, but it’s pretty darn close. So I begin the Endless Quest again of Being Thin, Pretty and Happy. Oh yes, she mentions being happy-apparently, when you’re perfectly thin, you’re by default happy and everything falls into place, or so she claims…with the high-stress, overworked, overbooked lifestyle of DC, can you blame me for being skeptical?

Clearly, the kids aren’t exempted from the lifestyle, either. School take up eight hours, homework can take up to four, take out an hour for ‘commuting’ (a very rough estimation, considering most people don’t live in DC), two hours for sports, an hour for other extracurriculars, an hour for taking a break and not killing the nearest thing in reach-that’s a sixteen hour day. Now, listing it out, it seems simple, but these are the basics of DC private school-meaning, if you are the slowest person in the school, taking the bare minimum, this is your schedule. For the average overachiever…it gets ridiculous. There is no sleep, Monday through Friday. You live on coffee, junk food and anything else with caffeine. You’re cranky and tired and hungry…or at least I am. I never got hooked on caffeine (I’ll save that trick for college), instead on food, thinking eating extra would boost my mind, instead of my waist.

So yesterday went like this (and I started out the day trying to do good, no less): Nine peanut butter chunk cookies. One bag of artificial cheese and artificial crackers. A salad, because, somehow, eating a salad always fixes things. I’m fantastic at this, aren’t I? And this wasn’t even my first try into this attempt of dieting, I’m going on my second week! It wasn’t a final meal, either, nothing close, or some ‘final sweet’ for the week. I never had a final meal-not this time, because I can’t imagine ‘never’ eating certain things again. I’m seventeen, I still have the urge to type ‘sixteen’, I’m too young for that. I should be able to eat whatever the hell I want and enjoy playing sports to work it off. Instead, I’m thirty pounds heavier than I should be, the weight creeping up from when I was in elementary school, and only now, at least six years later, have I gotten serious.

The cookies came from Megara (note: I’m not gonna use real names. Sorry). We have open campus at school, and less than a two minute walk across the street is a Safeway. We went, and she brought up the idea of cookies and I agreed before setting in any resolve. We got back and…well, story short, I ate. Then I got hungry, so I ate some more. And some more. And more. Going to the point of the ‘healthy choice’ section of the vending machine (there’s a silly little strip of green tape indicating the healthy items…right) and getting the cheese-things. Then I got home and did something halfway decent with the salad before manipulating my dad to take me to the gym at 7:45pm. He’s been nagging about my weight (even though he’s no slender fellow, at least my mother isn’t a hypocrite) so I simply told him to be productive and help me get to the gym rather than just nag about it, and voila, it worked!

So now that you’ve seen I’m a self-obsessed, overweight, stressed, manipulate teenage girl, I think this sort of ‘introduction’ is done, since it’s nearly 6:30am and I should’ve left the house earlier anyhow.

Stheno