Pig: A Subconscious Chokehold
A reflection on the power of a word.
“I can’t be friends with you. You’re a pig.”
That seemingly innocuous sentence left the lips of a girl I considered one of my best friends in second grade.
In a wing of seven-year-olds clamoring and congregating before class started, it was typically deafening and difficult to concentrate.
And yet, I heard her. She had a megaphone blasting, broadcasting my misery to the world. She just didn’t realize, nor did she care.
I stood, completely frozen; my words struggling to claw through a prickly throat and never surfacing. Instead, I tried to blink through tears forming in the corners of my vision.
She scanned me up and down, an eyebrow cocked above an expression of pure superiority. It snarled back at me as if to say, “Well, you can’t say anything, right? Because you know it’s true.”
She merely pushed past me to go to her desk; her time far too precious to entertain a potential retort that would never come.
And there I remained, like a stupefied statue guarding the doorway. Fellow students pushed past me to race to their seats in time. But if they were saying something, it never reached me. I only heard “pig” and “can’t be friends” reverberating in my head, over and over again.
Now everyone was in their seat. The raucous sounds around me died down. Class was about to start. Why aren’t you in your seat?
“Hey, sweetie, are you okay?”
I roused out of my trance to find my teacher tapping my shoulder, bemused at my awkward stance in the doorframe.
Am I okay?
Well, let’s see. Let’s run through the criteria. I am seven years old and I am confused. I know I am that, at least.
Yes, everything’s fine. I’m okay.
But I couldn’t reply; my throat too scratchy to produce any sound. I just nodded, shuffling to my seat with my eyes on my feet, avoiding all eye potential contact. Because now there were forty pairs of eyes looking at me, right? Because they all heard what she said, right? Because — because I’m a pig, right?
For the next fifteen minutes, I attempted to focus while my teacher rattled off addition and subtraction. But intrusive thoughts plagued my mind.
Pig? What does she mean by that? I’m a pig? Like the animal? What else could be a “pig”?
I returned to my workbook, tracing numbers to occupy my mind from doing anything other than repeating her words. “Pig” was becoming more enunciated and vitriolic and loud, drowning out my teacher’s voice. Like venom coursing through my body, tainting every pore.
Pig. Pig. Pig.
You’re a pig.
I traced another number, now focusing on my stubby fingers. The numbers blurred from concentrating on one spot for too long, so I blinked through indiscernible tears. Keeping my head down, I shifted my vision to my stomach and thighs.
Hm.
I tilted my head to peer at the girl sitting to my side, obviously unaware of what had transpired. She leaned over her desk, scribbling numbers with rapt attention.
I never noticed the space between the edge of the desk and her stomach. I’m sure she didn’t, either.
I looked to my stomach, knuckles brushing the edge. Almost touching. I inhaled deeply, steadying myself and watching it rise and fall. Closer and closer. I looked at my thighs, spilling over the seat. And in my peripheral vision, my boxy shoulders filled the vicinity.
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
Why are you looking at me like that?
Please stop looking at me.
Somehow, my wobbly legs reached the bathroom. Since everyone was in class, the hallways were barren. But that didn’t stop her voice shrieking in my ears, echoing off the walls.
Pig. Pig. Pig. Pig. Pig. Pig.
You are a pig.
Heaving and disoriented, I hurled myself over the sink, squeezing the cold porcelain in a staunch effort to ground myself. The feeling felt odd surging through my clammy palms.
Out of the corner of my eye, the one full-length mirror hung beside me, tracking the rows of dingy stalls. I gathered every ounce of blind strength I could to move towards it.
I quickly scanned the area, confirming the bathroom was indeed deserted. And now I faced my reflection, the image of what the world sees. I’ve seen that reflection countless times.
I didn’t think much of it before.
I took a deep breath, inhaling all the courage I could to face myself. I squished my face, tugging on my cheeks, letting them turn a flushed crimson.
Puffy and round.
I squeezed my stomach, the one dangerously closing in on my desk.
Puffy and round. Jiggly and big.
I turned to the side, observing my thicker thighs.
Puffy and round.
Just like a pig’s.
Oh.
In the moment of understanding, I understood absolutely nothing.
She didn’t want to be my friend because I was “fat”. So fat I was a pig. Inhuman.
But it wasn’t as though I tattled on her, or lost her trust by spilling a secret. I was a nice person, right? Why did being a bit bigger than the other girls matter? And why did it matter now? No one cared about anyone’s physical differences before. We all just wanted to be friends, no matter the circumstance. What caused such a pivotal, transcendental epiphany that I could no longer be her friend because of how I looked?
“Well, it doesn’t matter what she thinks,” my mother said that night. “You know you are beautiful the way you are. Don’t listen to her.”
As I heaved into the crook of her shoulder, unable to process this information, I let my mind wander.
Well, isn’t the way I “am” fat? Isn’t that the problem?
Is it?
“And,” she continued, “more importantly, she is not a real friend. Real friends don’t say things like that. Real friends see you for who you are.”
I suppose that’s fair. Maybe she never was a real friend. Maybe she strung me along to an abject reality on purpose, for her own amusement. It wouldn’t be the first or last time so-called friends used and discarded me like trash. Isn’t it simply hilarious to witness such delicious destruction at your hands?
Even if that was the case — that she had been using me for whatever reason — all I could think about was that moment. That word. That putrid, filthy word. And the subsequent grotesque feeling in the pit of my equally grotesque stomach.
I parsed through potential scenarios in which I responded, able to stand my ground and relay confidently to her, “I don’t need you and I’m not a pig.” Or where I’d slap her across the cheek for being so unabashedly mean.
And there was one where I just started life over, simply happy and not having issues with food and my body and friends.
When I went to school the next day, I played it as cool as I could, operating on the pretext that no one can see how fat I am. Smiling like I didn’t want to just unzip from this body and jump into another one. Avoiding her at all costs, wiping her from memory. Trying to stifle my mind from projecting and wondering if people thought the same way she did.
But I am only seven.
I want to be like everyone else.
And I am not.
My mother often told me stories about how I used to tug and pull her to greet people — strangers even — when I was in the preschool years. I wanted to say hello, play with them, just to interact for the sake of interacting. I fed off of others’ positive energies, she would say. “A sociable, precocious child.”
But that innate extraversion quickly dissipated.
Before I trusted others without a hitch. Now I wondered what they were always thinking about me as a reason to leave me. I’d knock on their mind’s door and ask, “What do you think of me?”, even though I’d already come up with the answer.
You think I’m fat. You hate me. You think I’m a pig, don’t you? You think I’m a failure, right?
If I had some awareness of my body before, it was magnified tenfold. I walked the halls with pig seared into my skin in bright letters, as though my body was on display to gawk at. I cowered alone at lunch, afraid of prying eyes leering at my food choices — even if it was just a PB & J. I telepathically barraged my teachers to never call on me, no longer seeking a spotlight.
I became encased inside a mirrored shell, puncturing me with jagged glass shards, staring endlessly at my disgraced reflection. Let no one in, I promised myself.
Yet how I wished I could search for an alternate reality behind those very mirrors. Maybe I’d find a happier, healthier version of the pig staring back.
I couldn’t just accept that it was a singular word that didn’t hold meaning if I didn’t want it to.
And while this moment turned out to be a small wrinkle in my overall battle against myself, it’s part of a complex web of events that all add up to an overwhelmingly self-destructive relationship with food.
See, food didn’t judge me like everyone else did. I convinced myself so. Despite being the source of the problem, I didn’t care. The few minutes I had stuffing my face with the remedy of choice was euphoric, forgoing all the imminent regret that would come after. For a long time, I’d rather eat the pain away than face it. My brain didn’t register that it was wrong to place all those tangled emotions in some Goldfish crackers. It was only when the guilt set in that I’d realize I’d made a mistake — though it wouldn’t be long until I did it again.
I wished I could have not let such a simple word affect me. But my subconscious sponge of a brain operated on its own agenda. And being seven years old, you tend to rely heavily on the perceptions of your peers. Social acceptance meant everything. In a sense, it still does. You can absolutely live blind to the words of others — but it takes a lot of certainty in yourself to do so.
As time went on, the visceral reliving of the incident faded, though it remained tucked in a corner of my mind to sprinkle doubts here and there. And unfortunately, this was one of many. When similar events took place — where friends and strangers ridiculed, betrayed, and shamed me — I made mental notes, placing a tick on the timeline for every contribution to my destruction.
Some might be empowered to change; to construct a massive middle finger to those who wronged them. Part of me wanted to, and the other part of me craved comfort — which came in the form of food.
Self-sabotaging became a ritualistic endeavor — a mental mantra of ruin. I believed that I deserved to be unhappy. I deserved to be in this fat body. I deserved to have no friends and to be humiliated. For any question, the answer was my fault.
But of course, the reality is quite different.
If a genie could grant me one wish, I would have answered with no hesitation: to be thin and happy like everyone else. In turn, that change would solve all my problems.
Well, would it?
As I approach a quarter of a century of life lived, I am not so sure. Being thin is not proportionate to being happy, and neither is being overweight. Happiness and health wear many colors. They are often tied together, but are not synonymous of each other.
Instead of answering such a question with that preposterous wish, I’d give anything to be my younger self’s guide. To spark confidence and quell her disquieted mind. To hold her hand when she’s too afraid to take the next step. To tell her you don’t have to rely on food or anyone but yourself. To tell her to use her voice and not worry about pushback. To show her she can be happy.
That child full of wonder and life exists concurrently with the child who is scared and wants to hide. While she is hidden under heaps of malicious words and self-doubt, she’ll make it to the surface. I know she’s in there, despite the world and herself telling her she’s not.
So I’m fighting to make that wish come true.
