I was always the “fat girlfriend.”
Not cute-curvy. Not trendy-thick. Just… big.
The one relatives whispered to about sugar intake. The one strangers felt entitled to tell, “You’d be so pretty if you just lost a little weight.”
So I learned to be easy to love instead.
Funny. Dependable. The friend who shows up early, stays late, remembers everyone’s coffee order. If I couldn’t be the prettiest, I’d be the most useful.
That’s who Sayer met at trivia night.
He joked that I “carried the table,” I teased his over-groomed beard, and by the end of the night he had my number. He texted first.
“You’re refreshing,” he wrote. “You’re real.”
I melted.
I shouldn’t have.
We dated almost three years. Shared routines. Weekend trips. Talked about moving in “someday.”
My best friend Maren was part of that life. Tiny, blonde, effortlessly thin. The girl who held my hand at my dad’s funeral and told me, “You deserve someone who never makes you feel like a backup.”
Six months ago, I found out she was sleeping with my boyfriend.
I wasn’t snooping. A shared photo notification popped up on my iPad while I was at work.
My bedroom.
My bed.
My comforter.
Sayer and Maren, laughing. Shirtless. Comfortable.
When I confronted them, Sayer didn’t deny it. He sighed—like I’d inconvenienced him.
“She’s just more my type,” he said. “She’s thin. It matters.”
Then the sentence that burned itself into my memory:
“You’re great, Larkin. You just didn’t take care of yourself. I deserve someone who matches me.”
Matches me.
Like I was the wrong accessory.
I gave him a trash bag. Told her to leave my key. Then I sat on my kitchen floor and let everything collapse.
They moved fast.
Engaged in three months.
Wedding announced shortly after.
I muted half my contacts and turned all the anger inward.
If I’d just been smaller…
So I changed what I could control.
The gym. Painful starts. Quiet tears in bathroom stalls. Learning how to cook. Learning how to stop apologizing for taking up space.
Six months later, my body changed.
The world changed with it.
More smiles. More compliments. More doors held open.
It felt good. And awful.
Then came their wedding day.
I planned to stay home. Phone off. Takeout. Trash TV.
At 10:17 a.m., my phone rang.
“Sayer’s mother,” the voice said. “You need to come. Now.”
When I arrived, the country club was chaos.
The wedding was off.
Maren had been seeing someone else the entire time—bragging about how easy Sayer was, how she’d “enjoy the ring and see how long it lasted.”
She left in her wedding dress.
And then Sayer’s mother looked at me and said something I’ll never forget:
“You always loved him. And look at you now—you finally match him. You could still marry him today.”
That’s when it clicked.
I wasn’t a person to them.
I was a backup plan.
I said no and walked out.
That night, Sayer showed up at my door—messy, desperate, embarrassed.
“You look incredible,” he said. “We can fix this. You’ve changed. Now it makes sense.”
And for the first time, my stomach didn’t drop.
“Six months ago, I might’ve said yes,” I told him. “I thought if I got smaller, I’d finally be enough.”
He started to argue.
I didn’t let him.
“I didn’t become worthy because I lost weight,” I said calmly. “I became clear.”
Then I closed the door.
Locked it.
Because the biggest thing I lost wasn’t pounds.
It was the belief that I had to earn basic respect.
And that?
I’m never taking back.
