“It’s easier said than done” didn’t occur to her when she had listed a couple of things she’d like to achieve before the year would end. Racheal would wake up in the morning each day of her life-switching characters. It was only because she let herself drown in her imagination. A session’s break, Racheal felt it in her she had to be a lot. I would know five languages, I’d be a programmer too and create a spell bee game and oh! oh! I’ll be a gymnast, oh no it’s too late I’m 16, then I’ll just be a flexible dancer. All these she had swimming in her head.
Another day came, she had written all these things to note and made plans on how she’ll achieve them. She started immediately, waking every morning to exercises that would make her flexible enough to be a contemporary dancer. The first training was fun, the renaissance of when she was younger and aspirer to be a gymnast. She felt fulfilled The day kept riding, she went to her study was she sat and thought. It would be easier for her to start with French since she had a background.
The urge to learn fast French and move on to Russian, Hindi, Swahili, and Japanese was at its peak. So she cluttered her plans with French studies so she could start a journey with another. The holiday seemed to be getting shorter for Rachel each day, days will pass by and she would be as exhausted as someone who had an assembly line job. She knew she was getting somewhere. All the tasks that Rachel was facing were invisible to her father. Rachel did want it that way, her father would ask her what she wanted to occupy her the holiday. She was glad to the heart whenever he asked, so she always said programming, computer programming. Her father agreed. A week before she had herself to program, she was touched and felt the need to include reading novels into her daily routine. So she did. The week came to start her programming lessons, ever since she’d wake up in the morning sober because of the days to come.
A day was spent from bed to painful stretching, to house chores, learning French for at least an hour, reading a novel, sorting homework from lessons, going out to lessons, and coming back to sort problems she couldn’t handle during lessons. A month and a half had gone, she still wasn’t close to being picturesquely flexible. As per her dancing, she knew she just couldn’t. Why? She failed in a dance routine she felt was Margarita Mamun worthy. She had told her brother a few weeks back to cover the dance routine, when she watched it she felt irritated and saddened about the fact that her moves were cheap, too poor to match dancers who failed on TV. She imagined herself performing so beautifully but it dawned on her that however she tried, she couldn’t. She wasn’t willing to give up so easily, so she sought for a photoshoot of some moves instead of a video.
This time she thought it will be Sofie Dossie worthy. The ones her brother shot demured, she didn’t like them. She saw how ugly she looked, and how taut she was in the photo as compared to many others who made flawlessly effortless moves and shot them. She cried. Her daily routine still went on the same, she was tired of the lessons. She couldn’t create her own code to solve a problem, all she did was memorize already created codes to solve them. A month was left for the holiday she realized she couldn’t. She felt it was inane, she wasted her father’s money and her time all because of her greediness for dreams. She gave up on the programming. It was time for French in her routine, she felt progress though one can call her learning progressively slow. After an hour she leaned on the couch to break, she hadn’t watched TV in some time. She scrolled through channels, then she saw one which all they displayed were models on runways with flashy weird looking clothes.
The clothes didn’t intrigue her all that did was their bony eminences. She envied their frames immediately, that’s were her obsession submerged. She developed an anorexic habit. Three weeks before school, she decided to shoot by herself some moves. She edited them and felt pleased though it was bland. She thought so because they weren’t as rare. Everyone has seen someone split, it’s almost like all slim people can do it. But she was proud because in the future she could tell someone what she was able to do. After the shoot she removed the exercises from her routine, she felt relieved. Rachel sat in the study as it was another frustrating lesson, she had been sitting for hours trying to get a code. Brief suggestions of how to start making money caressed her thoughts.
So she stopped her work for a while and thought of award money from excellent academic work. Money from there wasn’t certain, so she thought of being a writer. Days later she discovered screenwriting and started with a script ‘Do as I Died’. Her progress with the novels was evident, she was reading her third novel. Though she knew she didn’t read them anymore for fun but all to achieve reading three novels during the holiday. She was happy but it wasn’t fun for her anymore.
Her goals weren’t fun anymore only stressful. Her love for a model’s body grew as well as for screenwriting though she had a blurry vision of how her first script would turn out. The screenwriting was moving on as she loved, she was glad and grateful to have a new passion. The discovery of a screenwriting competition made her jitter. She was optimistic about it, she wanted to meet deadlines too.
She thought the entry was free. The holiday was over, back to school she was. Two months passed and she was almost done with the script, she finished two days before due time. She was happy and eager to submit. She went to the site to do so, only to discover the entry was not free. She had the money, but she would starve if she used it. It saddened her that if her script was worthy enough she would have starved herself, but she knew it wasn’t, it was her first. The editing wasn’t even to standard, she rushed to conclude the story. What pained her most was she knew the bragability of being a screenwriter so she flaunted what she hadn’t been.
She decided to start all over, learn more. She wasn’t willing to let it go that’s when she realized how passionate she was about it. She was regaining herself, but she had not the idea of how she was losing her skinniness. When she left school for home, she knew. It didn’t mind her, body frames didn’t mind her. All she wanted to achieve at home now was to read because she hadn’t written her exams yet. Social media came to play in her life, minute influences from school too.
On Instagram, she would see pretty skinned ladies with curvy bodies. All that came to her mind then was curves, curves, and curves. She desired a curvy body, every woman’s dream, she tried. A week of no progress discouraged her, she went back to skinny desires. When she resumed for school the following year, she made herself manage her body. She really loved to eat, she was watchful enough to maintain her weight but she couldn’t lose it. The outbreak of a virus made her return home before due time. Rachel became more obsessed with skinny. She promised herself the holiday to be skinny, not only that but to learn French, read as much as she could. It was no doubt her obsession with skinny was more. Her weight goal was forty-four kg, she reduced her meals.
Exercises were added to her daily routine, her envy for skinny girls grew more. Whenever she ate she felt guilty, she avoided something she loved most, food. Rachel stalked models on Instagram and would envy their skinny bodies. She was so determined to be skinny but it was killing her. Sometimes she overate and her weight would be back to original. Whenever she starved she would feel so proud. All she now desired was skinny. One day she stepped on her scale, disappointment was all over her atmosphere. So she made her self a challenge, she gave herself seven days to be on forty four kg.
She was ready to starve. On the first day of the challenge she fasted, when it was time to eat, she overate. Then it came to her that she wouldn’t lose weight. Everything was vanity piled with futility. Days came and went, days when she cried her self to sleep, days when she starved and her stomach would grumble in pain. Tears that streaked her face as she cried weren’t because she didn’t see change, but she hadn’t herself one achievement. So many dreams but not one came by to visit in reality.
The seven-day challenge she tasked herself was over. She was too sad to realize she’d been starving. Every time she ate the food she congruently ate guilt. Guilt that she would gain weight. Her obsession was prime. She gave up. The challenge was over and she didn’t feel different. The body she saw in the mirror was a mirage, what she thought was what she saw. Rachel had got lean over the seven days, the bone skinny she was obsessed with was her but she had not known.
Rachel’s body was now a sequitur of how she felt. One morning she mounted her scale, she was forty-three kg, at first she felt her eyes weren’t frank with her. She called her brother, he confirmed what she saw. She became idyllic, for once she felt she owned the world. Ever since then, she watched models without envy but it’s typical Rachel to develop obsessions. Only time would tell. One can say that a tiny bit of urges created for Rachel an unconscienced success story.
Lesson learned:
To have a success story means to have dreams, dreams are abstract. It’s up to one to realise them.
About the Writer:
Sola M.W. is a young Nigerian and an aspiring screenwriter.
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