Ever feel like one minute you’re a fully functioning human being and the next you’re fat? Like it happens overnight or something. When, just the other day, you were able to fit into “dem jeans.” That’s how it was for Mariana Levelois, whose father was a geologist that named her after the Mariana Trench. Her own body, these days, felt like it was expanding with the same rapidity as tectonic plates spreading at the ridges, becoming larger as new magma piled onto the edges of the plates. She wished she felt like the version of tectonic plates that got smaller as they subducted into the mantle and melted away. Alas, that just wasn’t the case for Marina at present. And, even though she was no longer in high school, it still seemed as though she was in terms of how other women treated her because of her appearance. Even her own so-called friends. 

In truth, the “offhand” comment one of her friends made was what forced her to realize she was no longer being perceived as “skinny enough.” It happened as she was getting on a cramped European elevator with Larissa and Erin. The three had decided to take a trip over winter break to see Paris, Berlin and Rome. A fairly generic and straightforward smattering of cities in terms of getting “a slice” of European life in a short two-week span. Mariana was already wishing she had possessed the courage to simply take the trip alone from the moment they touched down in Paris and Larissa and Erin proceeded to keep acting like the loud, obnoxious Americans they were. Had they always been like this, or was it simply more noticeable now that they were out of their natural environment? Away from their own “kind.”

It was on trips like these that friendships could fall apart at the seams. Trips like these that tested whether or not friendships were as solid as you might have once thought. Mariana already knew that her connection to these two women was tenuous. Yes, they had been friends in high school, but the palpable differences between them had cemented as their college years wore on. This trip felt almost like some kind of last-ditch effort to recapture the magic of their high school dynamic. One that was usually characterized by Larissa being the “leader of the pack.” A role she obviously wanted to step into again as they entered this new realm. A realm that Larissa and Erin hardly treated as being “different,” hence acting like their usual insufferable selves. 

That’s likely why they were shocked and appalled to find that the elevator in their modest Pigalle hotel could barely fit one person in it, let alone three. Plus their suitcases. So it was that Larissa was obliged to make the assessment, “Me and Erin are like one person, so we could probably fit in there together…” The unspoken piece of that statement being that Mariana was a big fat cow who wasn’t nearly small enough—petite enough—to fit in that elevator with another person. And that, maybe, if she wasn’t such an unwieldy balloon, she could take the stairs as an alternative. It would be so much more convenient for all parties involved, and even those who were not. 

As Mariana grappled with Larissa’s comment that said so much without actually saying the thing she had heavily (no pun intended) implied, she began to spiral. To have a real and unmitigated panic attack about how she was being objectively perceived versus how she subjectively felt. In her mind, she was not the fat bag that Larissa and Erin clearly thought she was. But having it so explicitly inferred was enough to send Mariana over the edge she had already been teetering over for the last few months about her weight. Although it is said that women usually gain weight their freshman year of college (hence, “the freshman fifteen”), it appeared as though Mariana’s weight gain had chosen to save itself for the last year of her collegiate experience. She had tried to deny this was happening, even as she felt her clothes shifting positions on her body, and even as she noticed a sense of being less agile and more slow-moving of late. But with one “small” allusion, Larissa had crushed all of her delusions.

Erin, meanwhile, just kind of stood there, snickering. She was a born henchwoman, ready to do or go along with whatever a more alpha female said. Thus, no grand defense was made in Mariana’s honor. Erin couldn’t be counted on for that. In fact, the only thing she could likely be counted on for was having a ready supply of whatever stimulant a girl could hope for: cocaine, Adderall, caffeine pills, diet pills and, if you were really lucky, she might even have amphetamines. Or the closest thing modern existence could get to the more glorious amphetamines of yore. Maybe Mariana ought to ask her for a diet pill now, lose some weight on this trip rather than gaining more, as she inevitably would in Berlin (not, as popularly believed, Rome, where the food was actually high-quality as opposed to Berlin’s dubious, limited selection of options—and limited food options usually signaled weight gain. Just look at America, with its “cuisine” of choice being all processed, all the time). But she said nothing. In fact, she had been gaping there mutely for about a full minute as they waited for the elevator to descend and collect some of them. 

As Larissa noted, she and Erin could fit in there together, but not without leaving behind their bags. Mariana was the one tasked with staying behind to put all their luggage in the elevator after the duo ascended and she could call on the “lift” once more. Funny the Brits should refer to it that way, when Mariana had never felt less lifted as a result of all this talk about elevator dimensions and who could fit into them. After waiting another five minutes (practically nothing in Parisian elevator wait times), the elevator returned, and Mariana fulfilled her duty of loading it up with their sacks full of shit. In truth, she was of the belief that she was probably more of a sack of shit than the ones that were plopped down in front of her. That’s what it was to be viewed as rotund. It could fuck with the entirety of your self-worth and self-esteem. 

When the elevator went back up, Mariana decided she would haul her own ass up the five flights of stairs. That is, until she found herself huffing and puffing in agony by the second flight of the winding staircase. A staircase that had a much crueler interpretation of what constituted a single flight. Seeing that the elevator was about to come back down again, she rushed to the second-floor waiting area and pressed the button with the same force as a teenage boy finger-banging a girl and truly believing it was giving her pleasure. She managed to do so in the nick of time for the “lift” to actually stop and collect her. Of course, she knew it would need to continue its route all the way down to the lobby before bringing her back up again to the fifth floor. An embarrassment she would have no choice but to face when she saw whoever was waiting for it in the lobby…only to find that the fat girl inside wasn’t getting out to make way for the next pair of riders who could fit in there à deux. 

This is precisely why, as the elevator ascended once again on its path toward “the top,” Mariana still had the sensation that she was sinking. Could not recall a time when she had ever been so low. More specifically, a time when she had been walloped with such low self-esteem.