Читать книгу Almost 5'4" - Isobella Jade - Страница 10

My mother and I screamed when we opened the acceptance letter from the New York Institute of Technology. I jumped on the couch and almost broke it. Then we both cried because we couldn’t believe it.

I was going to college. I was going to see something new, get the hell out of Syracuse and, just for sugar on top, I had a scholarship to run at a Division II school. I felt very important as we packed the car with tons of college supplies and goodies from Wal-Mart. It was like Christmas three months early. We drove down to Long Island a few days before my birthday, and five hours later I was free and on my own. An advertising major and a collegiate athlete.

But after just one semester I quit running.

Just getting into college was the biggest achievement of my life. Once I arrived the running didn’t seem to matter anymore. My father wasn’t there to see me run. There wasn’t anyone to win for. Running no longer felt special.

A piece of my heart caved in as I sat down at my iMac computer in my single dorm room to email my coach. I typed in the words, ‘I quit.’

Despite the hurt involved in making the decision, I immediately felt lighter and excited about the unknown future to come. That four-letter word – QUIT – was a new kind of freedom, one I had never felt before. Overnight, my scholarship was gone, but I did stay at NYIT. I stayed out of loyalty. The school gave me a chance.

Running had served me well and now, without it, I didn’t know who I was or what I stood for. Since seventh grade, running was my religion; there wasn’t anything to believe in anymore. I badly needed something to live for or at least to make me feel strong again. I needed to make myself over. I had just abandoned the one thing that had kept me safe. Now, I needed to create a new goal.

I joined a sorority and did the usual college campus drinking and partying till 4 A.M. It was great not to have to sneak around in case my coach or someone from the team caught me. Over time, not running felt normal and I could just be myself. I made it through my first year without gaining the typical freshman fifteen pounds from beer and cheese doodles. I still looked like my skinny, old runner self.

One day, I invited my friend Audrey to my dorm. I gave her my mini photo album from high school to look at, while I flipped through TV channels.

‘You know you could model,’ she said, looking up at me.

‘You think?’

‘You look like an Abercrombie model.’

Was she serious? She looked more like a model than me. She had long curly hair, and she was lean, with perfect proportions. At twenty-two, she was so much more mature. Most of all, she was tall. For the next ten minutes, I looked over the photos with her and she pointed to the ones she liked best.

Flicking through the pictures it dawned on me that I had always been posing, always making a face, a little sneaky show-off face, no matter who was in the shot: someone’s sick cat, a childhood friend, or a boy I was taking to the prom. Every photo was of me modeling before I knew what modeling was. I loved to pose, to be seen, to show off, and it started when I had a hunger to feel affection from a male, when I had a hunger to be seen, desired, wanted. When my father chose alcohol over his family.