Part 4 - The wilder years

2006

For a long while, I blamed my brother's ex; and it was only until I learned her version that taught me every story had two sides. She was so glad to be free of the scrutiny and being cheated on that we did not reconcile by the gap in our perceptions of the truth, that when enough time had passed, too much time had passed for us to be anything more than acquaintances.

It bled my spirit to know that she was out there, my most ardent friend, and on the other side was my family, swelling and scattered, in print media and larger than life.

Of all the girls who had put themselves forward, my younger brother decided to properly date one who he had went to high school with.

I knew her because I had gone to that same high school; found out she had spent the Viva la Bam years banned by her boyfriend from seeing my brother, and now they were together.

When I was reintroduced to her as only our mutual acquaintances could bring us within proximity, I saw in her all that I wanted to be. An easy confidence, a peerless smile, dark hair and a skinny body and a model's gait. Already, I envied and hated her.

She did not need to, given my relative isolation from my family, but she pursued a friendship with me as ardently as surely she had pursued my brother. To all ends she involved me with her friends, to her yoga, to shopping trips at Mall of Prussia.

I envied her aloofness and the attention she could bring by entering a room. We had our first fight when I asked her why she hung out with me when her other friends were more sociable.

"I've been through it before," said she, lighting a cigarette, "I have a bit of an eating disorder."

I doubted very much that she ever had problems with her weight.

It did not take long for my younger brother to propose, and there began a new idea for a show, while he was in the midst of filming a sequel to his first movie.

I kept my distance, even though my younger brother's fiancee always tried to include me. Not withstanding my work schedule, volunteering, exercising whenever possible, gritting my teeth to feel the burn that would keep me from reaching in the knife drawer, there was too much happening in my brother's world that made me sick by all the gossip and from what I knew first hand.

My brother's fiancee had merely replaced his ex, and she was learning the ropes, and guilt curled into my gut when I thought that she was alone in this, when other girls still swarmed towards him, and she had to wear that smile as his ex had, and slowly lose her grasp on him.

The castle had never been busier, and I stayed away.

When I thought of my brother's ex, living with her mom or getting to grips with reality, I thought of my brother's fiancee preparing for a show, a wedding, in some ways a harder job for her ahead for she had been thrust into it, whereas for my brother's ex, it had been gradual. And more people stayed away.

With all the money being spent on the wedding, I was nervous still to receive an invite. There would be any manner of celebrities and guests and stunts in the episodes leading up to the altar.

To the day, I noted on my calendar that it had been a decade since I begun my weight loss journey. Some days I felt crippled. Some days I felt old indeed, and knew the uphill journey was only beginning when I cut an middle-aged lady's hair, who said: "Once you hit thirty, you'll only have to look at a chocolate muffin and you'll balloon."