The painter's girlfriend

I notice in his paintings the power of a woman's body, as I had seen it being used to attract the attention of an unlistening crowd. With a few centimetres of my flesh I can make him the creator of beautiful things. His art is his way of praising my existence, and I try

to be grateful to him, perfecting as much as possible the subject that he loves to portray so much. If in the beginning it was a selfish act to disappear into myself, now I use it to enter his frame. What cruel sweetness lies beneath being a model for artistic purposes. I hate when my body asks me to live, but fortitude is built by not listening, first of all, to one's conscience. Knowledge of my oxymoronic excessive state is common. They know that I always feel cold, that I compare my legs to those of every girl I cross. They know that I like to eat healthy, that I know the percentages of each food and that it's a fixed thought, even while I'm sleeping, or the first I wake up with. They know I'm tired all the time, that I'm bruised all the time, that I've lied to them so many times I've lost count. They know that I promise myself every morning that I will skip lunch, that I will never accept what they offer me, that when I allow myself a bite I can't stop because then I will deprive myself of it. They know that then I regret it and that my body keeps it inside for days, that when they misjudge my appearance, I get hungry, and that I'm ashamed of it. What they don't know is that I like it. When they ask me if I've been eating, into my head their admission of knowledge becomes a beauty pageant trophy. But sometimes I don't find a similarity between the ideal figure in the painting and the one I see in front of the mirror. She is bigger than I feel. More cumbersome. A discrepancy I hate and for which I need constant reassurance. And therefore, abstinence is worth it, because in his paintings I find the validation I need. Nothing can taste as good.