Henry and I were indeed going somewhere. Once the cat, a figurative one of course, was out of the bag, Henry stopped worrying about being seen with me. Trish and Sue, who had turned out to be pretty good friends to me, never pushing too hard but also never giving up on me, started to believe that Henry und I were actually an item.

"You're our best friend. BFFs tell each other everything. So, spill the beans. What is going on with you and Wentworth Miller IV?"

"He's my friend. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. I swear."

"You spend a hell of a lot of time with your 'friend'? We're your friends, too. Do you spend that much time with us? No! So, either there is more going on on the Miller front or we're not your friends. Which one is it?"

I laughed, but I must admit that they made me think. I spent nearly all my spare time with Henry. We clicked on every level except the physical. We touched a lot, even held hands, but it never went any further. Somehow, there was no chemistry. Whatever that meant. I had never really felt 'chemistry' between me and another human being, but my trusted friends had assured me it felt like butterflies in your stomach and a nearly uncontrollable ache to feel physical contact. Well, while I didn't mind the handholding and touching, I most definitely didn't feel any uncontrollable aches. And butterflies? Nope, not really. But what about Henry? Did he want more? Would I be able to give him what a woman is supposed to give a man? Would this destroy our friendship?

These thoughts really frightened me because Henry was my lifeline. Maybe that was unfair on him, and I would never have put that kind of pressure on him by telling him, but his presence in my life gave me the strength to get up in the morning and force myself to go through another day. When I was with Henry, I felt more connected, more in touch with myself and with reality. The fog would lift and things all of a sudden seemed to be much lighter. I didn't want to lose that. The thought that some sort of sexual tension in our relationship could possibly lead to its demise terrified me.

Other thoughts started to flood my brain then, too. What if Henry found a girlfriend? Someone other than me? It made me realise that this bond that we had, which felt strong and indestructible, was, in fact, fragile and easily torn in two.

I started to obsess over this whenever I was alone, especially in bed in the evenings. Insomnia, which had been haunting me just a little less in the last few weeks, returned with a vengeance.

Relentlessly, my thoughts would circle around the disappointment that I was, especially to my mother. I couldn't understand myself, no matter how hard I tried. All I needed to do to put things right was to lose some weight. Why in God's name was that so difficult? Surely, knowing that my mother's love, that general happiness was waiting for me if I managed to exercise just a little self-control was enough of an incentive to simply stop eating. A few lost kilos later and my mother would feel the same affection for me that she felt for Emma. It was that simple. I was absolutely sure of that.

Then I remembered Henry and my parents' attitude towards him. Did I even want to cease to be a disappointment to people whose moral code I deeply questioned? Whose naivety I found ridiculous? Neither my woman-of-the-world mother nor my lawyer father had for one second doubted that I had actually 'finished' with Henry. Instead they lapped up all the lies and cover stories I fed them like a bunch of starving street dogs.

But the heaviest thought would invariably be Henry with another girl. Where would that leave me? He was really all I had. Trish and Sue were nice and all that, but I didn't feel the same connection to them that I felt I had with Henry. A connection which pulled me back from the brink every day, connection to another soul that filled me with hope and sometimes even with joy. I could not lose that.

Even my stomach aches, which I had been able to shake off most of the time, returned to keep me company through the night.

* * * * *

For now, Henry and I were going places, though. We went to the cinema, we went to the park, we went to town together. At times, even Henry's or my friends tagged along so that over the course of the next few weeks a nice little clique formed. I had never had a circle of friends. Hell, I think that up till then I had never had more than one friend at a time. And even then, it was kind of a stretch to call them friends. I was standoffish and kept people at arm's length. It was a necessary survival technique for me. I wasn't mean or unfriendly. On the contrary, I always went out of my way to come across as polite and considerate. But at the same time, I - consciously and unconsciously – made sure that I never shared myself, that I kept a firewall – if you will – between me and everyone else. I couldn't give anyone, and that was the crucial point, the power to judge me, the real me, private Katherine with all her flaws and quirks, like my mother did every day.

Even with my newfound friends, I couldn't shake this character trait. I knew that the others noticed it, too, but I had no tools in my tool box to tear down the metal wall I had erected over the years. The only person who somehow magically found a way to penetrate the iron curtain was Henry. To this day, I have no idea how he managed to pull this off, but he did. When he was around, I felt safe and connected. When he wasn't around, I felt insecure and disconnected. That was the simple truth.

Of course, I knew that this situation wasn't healthy. I was smart enough to realise this. After all, it didn't take a rocket scientist to understand that things between Henry and me could change any time. Still, I latched onto him like a parasite. At least, that's what I felt like at times.Despite my problems at home and my obvious mental instability, I can say without the shadow of a doubt that those few weeks spent with people who seemed to accept me the way I presented myself to them - which most of the time wasn't the real me, but a me I would have liked to be - was the best time I had had in my life up till then.

And I did have fun. There was indeed a lot of laughter. I buried my anxiety and my concerns and my insecurities as deep as my soul shovel would let me. Only at night would those anxieties, concerns and insecurities rise like ephemeral ghosts to haunt me and steal my sleep. My mother contributed her bit every day to make sure that my path from adolescence to adulthood was as rocky as possible. I know that sounds mean, and I also know now that my mother's intentions were good. At least that's what I choose to believe now. My mother and I have never talked about it, have never sat down to clear the air. But, again, this choice is a necessary one to ensure my survival, even today – so many years later.

And I do have to admit, unfortunately, that my behaviour towards her – and at times also towards my father – was not conducive to relax tensions between us. In fact, my attitude spiralled out of control, including my own. Even well- intentioned, friendly enquiries about my life or well-being aggravated me so much that I couldn't help myself but provoke her. 

A typical example? Here you go:

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

"When will you be back?"

"When I am back."

"With whom are you going?"

"Other people."

I was 18 years old and sounded like a petulant 14-year-old. The sad thing was that I had sounded like that roughly since I was 14 years old, only now – since the Henry fiasco – the level of aggression and animosity in our 'conversations' had tripled.

So, observances like "You are about as charming as a tin can!" or "Ugly, friendless and going nowhere fast!" were not entirely unwarranted. Looking back, I think I was subconsciously provoking my mother to say the most hurtful things to me. Again, I believe that that was a survival technique that my body employed to keep me going. It might sound confusing but the hatred I felt towards my mother had become a sort of survival-ensuring emotion, and the myriad of vicious arguments we had, in which I often annihilated my mother, gave me a sense of power over the very thing which normally made me feel powerless. I'm not proud of the way I behaved or of the things I said to my own mother, but I also do not regret any of it. I will also not apologise for having been a child in desperate need of motherly affection. I just did what I had to do.

* * * * *

There was this one particularly nasty fight with my mother which had started out about my weight, then went on to cover my lack of social graces and impending doom to culminate in my repartee that summarised my mother's character as hypocritical and deceitful and ended with me shouting, "You are an alcohol-addicted, anorexic cow who is trying to force her fucking stupid and superficial way of life onto me. I hate you!" Well, to be perfectly honest, it had actually ended in my mother's five fingers imprinted on my right cheek for the next two hours and me rushing off to my bench where, I have to admit, I sat down wallowing in self-pity and imagining a million different ways I could make my mother regret her behaviour towards me, most of those phantasies ending in my accidental or self-inflicted death.

I was sitting on the bench, fiddling with a bottle of red wine from my mother's collection and the bag of pills I had taken with me for the first time, when my phone buzzed. At first, I was tempted to ignore it, thinking it was most likely my mother with further messages about my failures as a human being. But when I glanced at the display, I noticed it was actually my sister on the other end of the line. Suddenly, my self-pity evaporated and anger boiled over.

"Is Mum sending you after me now? Can't even fight her own battles anymore, eh?" I growled into the phone.

"Well, hello to you too, sunshine!" My sister sounded artificially chipper, but that might have been my imagination. Maybe she was actually chipper. I mean she was Perfect Peter to my Horrid Henry.

"What do you want? Me to go home, apologise and play happy families? You know what, Emma the Great, you can fuck right off. And tell our mother if she wants to talk to me, she has my number, too."

"Jesus, Katherine, please calm down. I'm not the enemy here. I have no idea what happened between you and Mum. But Mum is worried about you." I snorted at that. "I just want to make sure that you're alright."

"Yeah, I'm just peachy, Emma. You can give Mum your sit rep now. See you."

I hung up. Ten seconds later, my phone started ringing again. Then the text messages came flooding in, but I ignored all attempts at communication from my sister. I am genuinely sorry for that. The situation wasn't easy for Emma, either. She left home when I was still practically a baby, so she never really experienced how my mother treated me, never knew how my mother would always dangle her image in front of me as the perfect daughter. I held this against her for a long time, and that was unfair. So, hanging up on her there in the woods and feeling doubly betrayed by both female members of my immediate family was not only deeply unhelpful in this particular situation – I had already started to sample the wine – but also totally unjustified.

That day I came close to ending it all. And despite the fight, despite the insults my mother and I traded like shares at the stock exchange and despite the unresolved conflict between my parents' open liberalism and hidden racism, it would not really have been their fault if I had gone through with it. It would have been my decision, my decision to deal with a particular set of circumstances in a particular fashion. I don't believe in throwing blame around. It doesn't help anyone, not even me. A thousand other people in similar circumstances would have tackled the situation in a different way. Contemplating the ultimate out was my way of dealing with it. But I chose not to go through with it that day.

And no, there was no noble reason (What about Henry? How can you do that to him?) nor was there a supernatural (some sort of epiphany) or very human (some sort of text message from Henry or from my favourite singer inviting me to a meet-and-greet) intervention which stopped me. I think it was my inner Rumpelstiltskin, which insisted that I wasn't going to give 'them' (and at that time, I used the term 'them' loosely) the satisfaction of pissing off for good. It is hard to believe but the consumption of a considerable amount of wine had also helped to intensify the anger I felt, and anger was a good emotion – because, unlike the self-pity and sense of worthlessness, the anger kicked my arse right off that blasted bench back into my shitty little life with my fists up.

* * * * *

Somehow my body kept that anger going for a long time after that. Nice, meek and considerate Katherine turned into a sullen, obstinate and argumentative version of herself, a personality which she had already honed at home, but had been careful not to show the rest of the world. Even Henry had to suffer the full force of my wrath at times. I was done feeling sorry for myself. I was done being judged by other people. I was done with the body shaming and I was done with caring what other people thought of me. So, when Henry finally addressed the elephant (yes, great pun, I know) still waiting in the shadows whenever we met up, I didn't take kindly to it.

Henry and I were sitting on a bench in town. The sun was shining, and Henry was enjoying an ice cream. I had declined his offer to buy me an ice cream as well. Eating in public and all that. My mother had pointed out to me more than once, when people had looked at me in disgust while I was eating something, that they were not thinking charitable thoughts about me. 'Isn't she fat enough? Does she need to eat sweets now? Really?' It was written all over their faces.

I was feeling relaxed. Henry was there. I had had a pretty good day at school, not only academically-speaking. First thing in the morning, when I was waiting for Trish and Sue to get there, some other girls who had never before even noticed that I existed had come to me, to me, to talk about what had happened the day before in English lessons. Our English teacher, Mrs Griff, was pretty old school. She was extremely strict, but she was also fair. Most of us respected her for that, although we did find her values somewhat antiquated. A small group of rebelling boys, however, did not feel any of that respect and showed this by continuously torpedoing her lessons. They were smart kids, though. They didn't simply disrupt her lessons by being loud and inattentive – I have the feeling Mrs Griff might have preferred that at times. They paid very close attention to every word she said, every gesture she made. And every time they smelled a possible point of attack, they would go for it.

In the last lesson, for example, we had been trying to interpret a poem by an unknown author. Our teacher would always present us with rather obscure work in order to "level the playing field because even your teacher parents, if you have any of those, won't have anything on what I have just given you."

The poem was called "Sinking" and went as follows:

Always on the edge,

always only just holding on.

Always looking the other way,

always crying alone.

Nothing left between us,

only indifference.

The waters are closing in.

We are sinking,

but not far away

is the anchor for me.

The place I have always belonged.

I cannot save you this time.

You have disappeared from my view.

For the first time I am free.

When we were asked to voice a theory, an opinion what this poem might be about, we all agreed it had something to do with a broken relationship. But then our teenage rebels intervened. "Water? Anchor? Disappear from view? It clearly has something to do with sailors." Mrs Griff tried to get them back on track by pointing out that those were images, not to be taken literally, but the boys would have none of that. The argument got out of hand. As usual, Mrs Griff tried to drag me into the mix because she knew that I had understood the poem, that I was able to explain the images employed by the speaker to convey emotion and message – I was her best and her most submissive student after all. If Henry hadn't liked me so much, he might have called me "obsequious".

"Katherine, could you explain to the boys what the 'anchor' refers to here?"

"Well, I suppose I could, Mrs Griff, but I am of the opinion that that is your job. After all, you are the one getting paid for it," I had answered.

At first, there had been a deadly silence. Then a few of my classmates had started snickering. Mrs Griff's jaw had dropped.

"Katherine, I'd like a word with you at the end of the lesson," she had replied in her sternest voice.

"Mrs Griff, you can save your breath. I know exactly what you are going to say, and frankly I don't give a shit."

I think it was the use of "shit" more than the content of my utterance which had netted me a lovely little interview with the headmaster, who was "flabbergasted" or "dumbfounded", I forget which, because I was the last person he would have expected such behaviour from. Short lecture over, he became rather paternal.

"What made you lash out in such an inacceptable fashion, Katherine? Is everything okay at home? Boyfriend troubles?"

"It's called growing up, Mr Capote. Learning how to say no, learning how to set boundaries. If the way I communicated this is frowned upon in this polite society here, then I apologise. I can only say that I am obviously still learning, but I assure you that I will never, and I can only repeat this, I will never use the word 'shit' in front of a teacher ever again. The word 'shit' has been erased from my active vocabulary. The word 'shit' will not leave my lips again."

While Mr Capote's face became brighter and bigger and reminded me of medical awareness campaigns in which signs of impending heart attacks were visually depicted, my inner smile became brighter and bigger, too. I just about managed to keep it in and present a perfectly earnest face to the huffing and puffing head of my school, but inside me a little gnome-like man was shouting "Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah" while dancing like a demented Rumpelstiltskin around the fire. Monty Python's Life of Brian, a timeless classic. Who says TV is no educational medium?

One guy from my grade who had also been sent to the master of our daytime universe had overheard my contrite apology, Mr Capote's subsequent three-minute tirade about human decency, socially acceptable behaviour and my lack thereof yada yada dada and that he would have to call my parents and my leaving words, "You might be surprised to find that you won't be telling them anything new. But if it makes you happy, have at it. You can commiserate together then. Apparently, that eases the pain, I have heard."

The sad truth is that the boy who witnessed this little exchange was impressed by my behaviour. My entire school career I had been a good girl, had done what was expected of me and had actually done exceptionally well at least where my academic achievements were concerned. My behaviour might have been odd at times, and I had been an outcast for the longest time. But with the exception of Mrs Keating, no one had bothered to actually see me, no one had bothered to help me. One step out of line and the entire school apparatus came crashing down hard on me, while almost the entire student community had started to celebrate my behaviour like some sort of Davidic victory – instead of condemning it for what it really was: the behaviour of an obnoxious and rude schoolgirl.

Anyway, I was feeling quite content, sitting there on that bench with Henry. We had squabbled a bit about my public display of anger at school. Henry found what I had said amusing, but at the same time he found it difficult to reconcile the Cat that he knew with the Cat I had shown to the world there. My answers to his gentle probing were all vague and evasive. I didn't feel like ruining the mood.

"It isn't you, though, Cat. It might sound funny to the others at school, but... I don't know... I'm worried, I guess. You seem to be so angry lately. You called yourself 'the fat fugly Cinderella' the other week and described us as a 'reverse Beauty and the Beast' just the other day. Why do you say things like that?"

I felt my inner Rumpelstiltskin stir.

"Things like what?" My voice was calm and quiet.

"Horrible things that put you down. Horrible things that refer to your looks."

"Oh, the truth, you mean."

"Jesus Christ, Cat, there is nothing remotely truthful in any of that crap. You are not fat. You are perfect the way you are. Don't you have any mirrors at home? Why do you think there is something wrong with the way you look?"

Rumpelstiltskin decided an intervention was necessary at this point. I was practically lifted off the bench by some unseen force.

"I don't need to listen to your meaningless shit. I know what I am, and I don't appreciate your condescending tone and attitude. I might not have the looks, but I do have the brains and the eyes, sunshine. They tell me: short, fat, ugly – in short fugly. Even my own mother agrees with that assessment, so don't you think you can tell me any different. And as for the angry... I fucking told you about my picture-perfect family, a bunch of narcissistic hypocrites who can't cope with an ugly kid because it interferes with their picture-perfectedness and ruins their carefully constructed reputation of over-achieving on all levels, up to and including reproducing."

I stopped for a moment, but the word-flow wasn't to be contained anymore. "And it all went so well for them the first time with Emma the Great. I bet they are still biting their own arses that they decided to have me. Given the fact that there are nearly ten years between me and Little Miss Sunshine, I am tempted to believe that I might have been an accident."

I took another deep breath. "But considering my parents' white middle-class worldview which is obviously largely based on the Holy Fucking Scripture, an abortion would have been unthinkable. How ironic that God blessed them with a female Hunchback of Notre Dame for all their efforts. I am so tired of all this bullshit. I am so tired of being trapped in this fucking dark space all the time. I hate them, I hate them all. At the same time, I still crave their love. How fucking stupid is that? How pathetic? And I have had it with being pathetic. I have had it with trying to live up to other people's expectations that I can't ever live up to, no matter how hard I try. So, now I choose not to try anymore." My voice rose to alarming levels towards the end of my rant.

Henry gaped at me, his eyes wide open.

"Do I also have expectations of you?"

It was his gentle and calm manner more than anything that popped my ball of anger and hatred. I practically felt how my emotions deflated.

"No, you don't. But you are the only one, Henry, the only person who knows me, the real me. Not some twisted version of me."

"What about our friends?" He was still very quiet.

"They only know Twisted Cat. The big irony is that Twisted Cat, the fake Cat, is the nicer version of me. The real me is often unlikable, spiteful and petty. I just about took your head off just for trying to be a friend. I don't know how often I have had to apologise to you, but here is another one. I'm sorry, genuinely sorry. I hope you can accept my apology again – and probably a thousand times more. Because I am bound to fuck up a thousand times more. Because I am actually not that nice."

"Don't worry about that, Cat. I like all versions of you, even the Cat with the claws out. As long as you are honest, everything is good between us. It's just lies that I don't do so well with. So, no worries there. I even like you when you are down, when your self-perception is all out of whack. Your self-consciousness can be quite cute and endearing, trust me. But your self-doubt is eating you up. And that hurts me. I can see what it does to you – what you are doing to yourself. And all of it is unnecessary. You are perfect. You are perfect in my eyes. I don't care about BMIs and exacting mothers and their exaggerated opinions and attitudes."

"A BMI doesn't lie," I countered.

"Yes, it does. Did you know that at the end of the century the overweight threshold was lowered from 27.8, I think, to 25. Just like that. And just like that, millions of people who had been perfectly fine one second were suddenly put into the overweight category without a gram of weight gain on their part. Why did this happen? Conspiracy theorists might point to the billion-dollar diet products and services industry rather than scientific progress which identified some irrefutable health risk factors for people in the 25 to 27.8 group."

I snorted, unconvinced but secretly flattered that Henry seemed to have done some research on my behalf.

"Well, I am a gentleman, so I won't ask what your BMI is, although I am pretty sure that, contrary to me, you know it exactly. I know that it is not much over 25 because I am looking at you. Just let me ask you some questions. Do you have any physical health problems that are related to your weight? Achy joints? Diabetes? That sort of thing?"

I shook my head.

"Any other physical health issues, even if unrelated to your weight?"

I thought of the stomach aches I sometimes experienced at night. Were they even a health issue? Many people suffered tummy aches. And I didn't really like discussing tummies. I shook my head again.

"Does your weight limit your movements somehow? Any shortness of breath?"

"Only when I see your pretty face," I countered trying to make light of these questions. I didn't even care that Henry might misunderstand my joke as a come-on. But rather than joy or embarrassment I saw a fleeting emotion of anger sweep over his face before he schooled his expression into neutral again. This confused me – and made me angry all over again.

"What's wrong? I must be fugly then if this compliment makes you feel like that."

Henry didn't even pretend not to understand what I was referring to.

"I just don't like being called pretty. Sorry about that. Anyway, now imagine living somewhere where weight and looks are a non-issue. That is really important now. Nobody cares one iota what anybody looks like. Fat, thin, tall, small, heart-shaped face, oval, whatever, nobody gives a flying fuck. Okay?"

I nodded. Henry's swearing made me believe that he was trying to drive home an important point.

"What would you want to change about yourself in a place like that? Would you go on a diet to lose a few pounds or would you indulge in chocolate and ice cream as long as it didn't make you ill?" He held up the tiny remains of his ex-ice cream.

I didn't answer straight away. I gave this some real thought. Then I slowly shook my head.

"I guess I wouldn't change anything about myself. But that doesn't help me because we don't live in that sort of paradise."

"That's true. But you live your life and your life alone. And you just admitted that the only reason you want to lose weight is to fulfil other people's wishes – perceived or real. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes rather than your mother's. Then you could start to believe that your mother's eyes are only one pair of eyes in a billion. Yes, there might be some who think you are fat, some who prefer Kim Kardashian's face to yours, some who think two-metre long legs would look better on you. But many people who you will meet along the way will think that you are you and that you are beautiful because you are you. Give those the time of day and ignore the others."

I felt tears welling up behind my eyes. Nobody had ever said anything so lovely and so profound at the same time to me. I had never been so touched by anyone.

So I plopped down onto the bench again and replied, "You sound like a fucking Facebook post, Henry!"