So many times in the past she has constantly reminded me how she picked up the pieces when I fell out with my previous best friend SW(Slimming World). How she helped me through the bad times, the tears and the tantrums with her endless supply of carrot sticks, cucumber chunks and apple slices. I should be grateful for her attentive nature, but unfortunately I am not. It is almost a relief to my waistline to see the back of her.
I would like to say that our friendship has been a smooth one, but I would be lying. She has never understood my desperate need for the bad things in life. An evening in front of the television just doesn’t feel right without a bottle of wine and a bar of Dairy Milk. She would often do spot checks at my house late in the evening, stealing away any unmentionables and replacing them with inedibles such as muesli bars and fat free yoghurts instead.
She would never let me choose the restaurants we went to. It was always her choice, as she dragged me past McDonalds, where the smell alone could add a couple of pounds and push me into Subways for a healthy low calorie alternative.
She would hide my possessions on purpose. She knew it would be the only way to get my butt off the chair so took great enjoyment in regularly hiding my asthma spray - an important necessity when in the middle of an asthma attack!
Her idea of a girl’s night in would result in a TV marathon of the Biggest Loser whilst sweating away furiously on an exercise bike! Nightclubs and bars have become a thing of the past, since she has discovered Zumba; her idea of a girl’s night out.
She could be pleasant occasionally. She liked to pass me inspirational magazines every week, pointing out new recipes to try or other exercise regimes to help annihilate my wobbly bits.
She liked to buy me presents too. For Christmas she bought me a Wii exercise game. I was so excited I tried it straight away then hobbled around like a bow legged donkey for a week with each footstep resulting in a whimper.
Intent on finding the perfect gift for me, she bought me a pedometer for my birthday. This resulted in warning posters appearing around the village warning everyone of the unhinged woman who will stop and fiddle with herself in public. They didn’t understand when I tried to explain I was trying to work out the distance I had walked.
I know she isn’t missing me as she has lots of other friends. She shows off by hiring a hall to meet them once a week, gloating as she claims she can’t possibly fit so many people in her house. I am no longer invited to the inner circle and stand outside, my face pressed up against the window. But her other friends have been told to ignore me. They are fiercely loyal to her; when one of us falls from grace, they know to treat them like lepers.
She has become a bit of a supplier on the side, selling sweets and low fat bars as acceptable substitutes for everyone’s sins. Personally I prefer the real baddies, but her cooking must be tasty as she has managed to convince the local supermarkets to sell boxes of the stuff with her name plastered all over it. She is quickly climbing up the ladder to world domination one low fat cracker at a time.
So for now, I will stand back and watch her ruin everybody else’s life. But she knows and I know that eventually I will have to talk to her again. As my jeans get too tight to pull up over my thighs and the buttons on my shirt struggle to contain my ever growing chest, I know my days without her are numbered. I will sigh, pick up the phone and beg her forgiveness, in order to start the cycle all over again and begin the endless repetitive journey to a smaller waistline.
