Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson
PROLOGUE
I’ve always wanted to be a somebody.
And not just anybody. I wanted to be the somebody that everybody wanted to be. And before you judge me, let me tell you why being a somebody is so important to me.
The year is 1995. I’m four years old, and I have high hopes. I have the highest hopes in the world because each year Mom and I enter the Little Miss Daisy pageant. The biggest pageant in town, and each year we win. It’s our thing. The one mother–daughter bonding moment that we have. And those are very, very rare.
But then, in 1996, everything changed. Because that’s when Jess was born, and my mom was just too exhausted and overwhelmed to even remember the pageant. Not to mention too exhausted and overwhelmed to remember me. I went from existing one day to not existing. Buried under a pile of diapers and bottles and sleepless nights and crying and jars of baby food and extra night shifts and shifts on weekends to make ends meet. It was around that time, somewhere in the “lonely time,” as I’ve come to call it, that I first turned to food for comfort.
I remember it clearly, the transformative moment when I realized that my gran’s hot-baked apple pie could push so many bad feelings down; the magical ability of those mouthfuls of tasty, fatty, sugary treats to wash negative emotions away and make me feel like the lonely time was just a little less lonely. I’d had no idea that a huge mouthful of pie could have such an effect.
So when 1997 rolled around and my mom wasn’t too exhausted and overwhelmed to do Little Miss Daisy, I was the happiest I’d been in a long time. And I was filled with hope again. High, high hopes. That is, until she took me to the dressmaker. I’ll never forget the look on the dressmaker’s face. That look and the hushed whispers that followed as she held up the measuring tape. And of course, I’ll never forget the look that washed over my mother’s face either. Total disappointment.
We didn’t do the pageant in 1998, either. And I quickly discovered that all sorts of other foods, besides baked apple pie, were good for pushing emotions down. This time it wasn’t just the loneliness I wanted to push away—it was also the memory of my mother’s face, and the shame I felt.
And then 2000 came along and it was the first time my mom entered Jess in the Little Miss Daisy pageant. And she won the crown that I so badly wanted. She carried on winning the crown, over and over and over again. Year after year after year. And with each year that passed, Jess got prettier and I got fatter and my mom looked more and more disappointed and I had more shame, and jealousy and anger to push down.
Things changed again in 2010, and it wasn’t just because we went into a new decade, it was because Jess won Little Miss Natal, the biggest pageant in the entire province. By then, I had spent so many years sitting on the sidelines watching Mom and Jess do the one thing that was meant to be my thing. Only it wasn’t any more, because by then I weighed sixteen stone. A sweet sixteen of a different kind, my mom used to say as she pushed a plate of celery my way.
It was also around this time that I truly felt like a nobody. Sure, with each passing year I was being chipped away at. Each time my sister won, and my mom cried tears of joy and I sat on the sidelines and thought about that measuring tape, I felt a bit more of myself being ripped away. But it wasn’t really until I overheard some pageant moms talking that all my sense of self was finally flushed down the drain.
“I know,” they said in conspiratorial tones. “And Jess is so perfect and beautiful, and the other one, what’s her name . . .? Frankie? Well, she’s just so fat!” They giggled. “God, it must be so hard on her mother, to have a daughter like that.” They nodded. “I think they have different fathers though,” the other one whispered. “Genetics! That explains it!” They all laughed.
Until that moment, I had no idea my stepdad wasn’t my real father, that my real dad had abandoned me shortly after I was born. I had no idea Jess wasn’t my full biological