Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), occasionally still called dysmorphophobia, is a mental disorder characterized by the obsessive idea that some aspect of one's own body part or appearance is severely flawed and therefore warrants exceptional measures to hide or fix one's dysmorphic part on one's figure.

Warnings: doctors, body dysphoria, insecurity, excessive overeating

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This chapter was written by:

Ponder_Of_Something

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Duni woke up at five. She usually got up at 6:30, spent about thirty minutes getting ready, and barely caught her bus at 7:05. On this day, however, she had a doctor appointment.

Doctor appointments never went well. Correction: her parents and doctor thought they went well, but they didn't really. She was a picture of perfect health in the eyes of her doctor and parents. Duni, on the other hand, knew that she was horrendously underweight.

Despite the fact that it would all be removed in the doctor's office, Duni still made sure to pile on a padded bra, baggy shirt, loose jeans, and oversized hoodie because she would still have to attend school after the doctor had her fill of poking and prodding.

At the cold, white facility, Duni was told to remove her shoes and hoodie so that she could be measured. "Four feet ten inches, 79.8 pounds," the woman measuring her announced happily. "Awesome! You've grown so much since last year!" In her mind, Duni scolded the woman for talking to her like a toddler. But, who was she to correct? "This puts your BMI at 16.7, which is in the nineteenth percentile," her doctor later reported. "That's very good."

Pathetic, Duni told herself on the drive to school. She was, at the very least, three inches below the average height, as well as roughly fifteen to twenty pounds under the average weight. To top it off—or rather to not—she weighed in at a cup size of merely 30A, far smaller than the average B cup. But, what value was an average to Duni when she had all the information she needed right in front of her, waiting for her in each of her classes? She was the smallest of all of her friends and always had been. The top of her head barely reached her friends' mouths. She knew only two or three people her age who were skinnier than her. Her friends wore bras with enough room to hold her head while she wore bras that barely dented a tight shirt.

In gym class, Duni's class was given fifteen minutes of free roaming around the football field, which her friends chose to occupy with piggyback rides. She would've loved to be the one carrying someone else, but she was far too weak and small to carry any one of her friends, who were all nearly twenty pounds heavier. Instead, she found herself on the shoulders of each of her friends, one after the other passing her off with ease and exclaiming with great shock and awe, "She's so light! I didn't even feel her there!"

That night at dinner, Duni's father set on the table for her a full plate of food. She convinced herself that this was his way of telling her she needed to eat more, and she gladly accepted the challenge. While her parents and brothers ate normally, she cleared her plate quickly and went back for seconds, despite her tongue gagging at the thought of more of the bland food and her stomach begging not to be filled any more. These, she told herself, the stomachache and the gagging, are nothing more than motivation to continue. Duni's dessert came soon after, a large slice of her leftover birthday cake, which did not settle well within her.

"That's a lot of food, Duni," her seventeen-year-old brother remarked with a laugh as she sat down with her cake. "You've eaten more in an hour than I could eat in a day." Duni glared at him and took note of his size. Despite being four years older, he was only a few inches taller. They come from a short family, she was always told.

"So what?" she snapped, shoving bite after bite into her mouth.

"Aren't you stuffed?"

Her stomach cried out that she was, but she ignored it and replied with a full mouth, "Nope, I'm still hungry."

Before bed, she pulled out her scale from under her bathroom sink and weighed herself. 80.1 pounds. You would think, she angrily mused in her head, after all these years, after all I've done, that I'd get a little more variation than this. Her search history filled once more as she lay in bed. Is overeating okay, how to gain weight, how long does it take to gain weight. Of course, the results provided the same answers as always: overeating can be fine if it's done in moderation, eating specific foods can help you gain weight, the rate of weight gain depends on multiple factors. As usual, she carefully read through the results of the latter two queries and hardly scanned the first.

The following morning went normally, along with the next and the next. The school year ended a month later, as did the intensity Duni's bingeing, for she simply couldn't go on anymore. She knew she'd be much more sedentary in the summer, so she wasn't too worried about working off the little amounts she ate. But, even halfway through her summer of mild overeating and little exercise, she still hadn't grown an inch any way or gained a single pound.

Staring into her mirror, she promised herself every morning, afternoon, and night, "I'll be big one day. I'll be strong and tall, I'll carry people on my back. I'll be bigger than all of my friends, that my parents and my brothers. One day."

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Once again, this was not written by me, but by  Ponder_Of_Something