In An Ideal World

The following story is fictional.  Any resemblance to any individual is unintended.

-I have lived in this mobile home for most of my life.  I wasn't an awkward child, the one made fun of by other kids.  I was the kid nobody cared about because the reputation of my neighborhood involves transients, unemployables, and losers.  That neighborhood was filled with good, hardworking people, the minority filled the reputation.

I was smart enough, getting good grades in my elementary years when it wasn't so important to wear certain clothes, have certain electronics, and have a certain style of hair.  I even excelled at certain sports, and played with some of the rich kids when they didn't care where I lived.  My trophy case is not empty.  I have some spoils of early success.

About the time I hit junior high, something changed.  I take the hit for living on my talent and not working hard enough.  Sports success started to dwindle, and it changed how some people perceived me.  Suddenly, I was the wrong kid in the wrong place.  What was outside was more important than what was inside.  I didn't have the right clothes and the right gadgets.  People I had been buddies with in elementary school made me feel like a lower form of life.  Suddenly, the fellowship I had earned was gone.  I was back to being the kid nobody cared about.

In high school, because my parents were hard working, and taught me to work hard, I took a job and saved some money.  I bought my own video game system, helped with my own phone.  I found the online world accepted me because they could only see what I do on the screen.  They didn't see how handsome I was or was not.  I was a blip on a screen, a voice on Skype.  I applied myself and threw just enough of myself into schooling to get through.  I started staying up all the time.

Eventually, I left the school of my youth, and applied myself to gaming.  I was exceptional.  I started to eat at all hours and without discretion.  I rarely left my room in my mobile home.  I didn't have to leave it to feel like I was successful and good at something.  Even seeing those old friends was just a reminder of what I could have done with their support.  They decided I wasn't worth it.  The online world had more acceptance of me.  I could be comfortable with me.

Eventually, I kept working my job, but gaming was my life.  I had the talent to design and work in video games, but not enough support.  Seems the trailer park was on the wrong side of the tracks, and I did enough education to get through, not excel.  Colleges want your credit rating to be just so, too.  I couldn't enter their world because I wouldn't leave the trailer park.  I wasn't comfortable dealing with people, even though I was good at it.

I kept eating like a teenager in my early 20's and wouldn't leave my room often.  My weight ballooned, but I wouldn't change.  My family's medical history was poor: Cardiac disease killed all four of my grandparents, my great grandparents died of cancer, and my parents fought heart, weight and diabetic issues.  I ignored their pleas, and kept eating.  I needed the recognition of the gaming world, and the job gave me just enough money to stay on the wrong side of the tracks.  I bought a mobile home in the same neighborhood they knew me.

My room was my world.  I made enough to keep a roof over my head and eat lousy food.  I eventually switched to all McDonalds, Wendy's, Dairy Queen.  I didn't have the strength to cook my own food, even though, at 450 pounds, I had the size to do more.  A friend moved in, and they started removing the waste from my room and home.  I lost my job because my size was such I couldn't leave my room.  I could not leave the acceptance of my online world.  Disability gave me enough to keep it going.  I could not leave my room.

Finally, it happened.  On a cold and snowy February night, I felt the pain in my chest.  I had stayed in my room so long, I couldn't get out.  The door was not wide enough.  911 took my call, but I couldn't let the firemen in my home.  They had to cut the end off my home to get me out.  I couldn't fit in an ambulance, so a neighbor with a flatbed truck offered to drive me with the firemen to the emergency room.  It was 10 degrees out, snowing lightly.  It was my only hope.

On arrival, they rolled me off the end of the flatbed, and tried to place me in a bariatric wheelchair.  It snapped under my weight.  They rolled a bariatric bed out to truck and wheeled me into the E.R. that way.  Two normal sized people could not touch hands above my girth.  By the time they could diagnose my heart attack, six hours had passed.  My heart could not be restarted.

I passed away at age 27.  Official cause of death is Myocardial Infarction.  It was actually suicide.  I committed it one bite at a time.  What would my life have been in an ideal world where the only thing that counts is what is inside?