24 Quotes by Sarai Walker

Sometimes they would pose the question to me, not seeing or caring that when they said “Do I look fat?” they were really saying “Do I look like you?” It was assumed that no one wanted to look like me, not even me.

I looked at my body, the body that had kept me alive for nearly 30 years, without any serious health problems, the body that had taken me where I needed to go and protected me. I had never appreciated or loved the body that had done so much for me. I had thought of it as my enemy, as nothing more than a shell that enclosed my real self, but it wasn’t a shell. The body was me.

That required living in Dietland, which meant control, constriction – paralysis, even – but above all it meant obedience. I was tired of being obedient.

In Verena’s house there was never any mention of calories, there was no I shouldn’t eat this, I shouldn’t eat that. Plates were scraped clean, ooohs and ahhhs were abundant, women asked for more. No prayers were offered up to the diet gods: I’ll go to the gym later; I didn’t eat dinner last night. There was pleasure that didn’t have to be bargained for.

This is your real life. You’re already living it.

People had always insulted me by calling me fat, but they couldn’t hurt me that way, not anymore. I was fat, and if I no longer saw it as a bad thing, then the weapon they had used against me lost its power.