The scent of industrial-strength bleach and stale sandwiches is a sensory trigger I haven’t been able to shake for twenty years. To most people, a bathroom stall is a place of utility or a brief moment of privacy. For me, from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, it was my dining room, my fortress, and my cage. I would wait until the bell rang for lunch, slip past the crowded cafeteria doors where the roar of social hierarchy was deafening, and lock myself in the farthest cubicle of the second-floor girl’s restroom. I would sit on the lid of the toilet, pull my feet up so no one could see my sneakers from the hallway, and eat my ham and cheese sandwich in a silence broken only by the occasional dripping faucet.
I was hiding from Rebecca.
Rebecca was the kind of girl who didn’t just walk through the halls; she owned the air everyone else breathed. She was beautiful in that sharp, jagged way that made you feel flawed just by standing in her periphery. My flaws, however, were easy targets. After my parents died in a horrific car accident during my freshman year, my grief didn’t manifest in tears or rebellion. It manifested in a metabolic shutdown. I gained weight rapidly, my body ballooning as if trying to create a physical buffer between my heart and the world.
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