Big Girl by Danielle Steel

Author:Danielle Steel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780440339526
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Victoria still felt shattered over the disappointment with Jack Bailey when she left for L.A. for Thanksgiving. It was good to see Gracie, and share the holiday with her family, but she was feeling terrible about herself. Gracie could see it, and was sad for her. She could tell how upset she was by what she was eating. All her parents noticed was that she had gained weight, and Victoria went back to New York on Saturday. She couldn’t take it any longer.

She called Dr. Watson on Monday morning after Thanksgiving and went in to see her. They had been talking about Jack for the past several weeks. No matter how Victoria turned it around, she still felt somehow to blame, and that if she were truly lovable and worthy of being loved, Jack would have behaved differently.

“It’s not about who you are,” her psychiatrist said kindly, again, “it’s about who he is. His lack of integrity, his dishonesty. This wasn’t your failure, it was his.” Victoria knew it intellectually, but she couldn’t get it emotionally. For her, it always went back to whether she was lovable or not. And if her parents hadn’t loved her, who would? And the same principles applied to them. Their failure to love her as she was spoke volumes about who they were, but it still made her feel terrible about herself. And she tried to fill the void with gallons of ice cream when she went home to L.A. over Christmas. She was still depressed and couldn’t seem to turn it around. Her parents knew nothing about the relationship with Jack.

She had never shared it with them, and she knew that if she had, they would only have found a way to blame her when it failed. Of course he couldn’t love her if she was too fat, and the other woman in his life was probably thin. And in some part of her psyche, Victoria believed that too. She had never had the courage to ask John what the other woman looked like. She believed her parents’ subliminal and overt messages. Men only loved girls who looked like Gracie. And no man wanted an intelligent woman. She didn’t look like Gracie, and she was a bright girl. So who would want her? She was still seriously depressed when she went back to New York on New Year’s Eve. She spent midnight on the plane and when the captain announced Happy New Year at midnight, Victoria pulled a blanket over her head and cried.

It had been agony seeing Jack at school between Thanksgiving and Christmas. She never ate lunch in the teachers’ lounge anymore. She stayed in her classroom, or went for walks outside, along the East River. It was a serious reminder of why it wasn’t smart to get romantically involved with someone at work. Picking up the pieces later was a mess. And there were whispers among teachers and students that they had been dating and she had gotten dumped. It was humiliating beyond belief.

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