Maybe it was finally quitting my frenetic life of globetrotting, or the early fruition of 30’s promised metabolic slowdown. Maybe it was plain old winter, the Santa Fe chill covering me over and turning my bed into an icebox.
Maybe it was — okay, part of it definitely was — eating Trader Joe’s almond butter straight out of the jar.
Either way, it’s inarguable: I’ve gained some weight. And it’s fat, not muscle.
The photographs above represent a backwards before-and-after: the left-hand side is February 2019 in Santa Fe; the right-hand side is June of 2018 in Montana.
I want to tell you about these photographs. I want to tell you how I’ve agonized over them — and the dozens I’ve taken like them, most of which probably look damn-near identical to the untrained eye. I want to tell you how fraught these images are, how ragged I ran myself in becoming the woman inside them.
I want to tell you about the paroxysms of anxiety caused by a proposed dinner date — about how I’d try to tactfully suggest we do something, anything, else. I want to tell you about driving down the highway eating broccoli florets raw from the steamable bag; about skipping, in my travels, every restaurant recommendation in favor of eating giant salads out of the 16-quart mixing bowl I brought along specifically for that purpose. I want to tell you about how I avoided even heating my vegetables because — seriously — the cooking process makes carbohydrates more available.
I want to tell you about flipping through my books and finding endless scrawled sets of seven four-digit numbers in the margins: calorie counts for each day of the week, so I could calm myself with an average instead of the bipolar day-to-day. (Monday’s 6,540 might be followed by Tuesday’s 400.) I want to tell you about spending a literal hour on the elliptical every. single. day, about following that kind of cardio with an hour of lifting iron. I want to tell you about my now-diagnosed bulimia — about how, because I’ve never been really thin, never moved myself to vomiting, I feel like I’m bad even at having an eating disorder.
I want to tell you about the gut-punch fear of a bad photograph, the shadow of a double chin in the mirror, the suggestion that I take some time off from the gym in response to one of my (many) resultant injuries.
I want to tell you even more than this, but I am honestly so fucking sick of thinking about it — food, movement, my body — that the project sounds like more than I can bear. And in spite of all of it, the animal that is my body is winning the battle. It wants to live. It wants to eat. And increasingly, I’ve let it.
For all that sturm und drang, looking at those photos, it’s pretty plain to see: there’s not actually all that much difference. My tummy is a little rounder and my abs have sunken away from the skin, and I’ve probably gained an inch on each thigh. My face is a fuller, which probably most disturbs me — though I have a stubborn sag of double chin even when I’m all but starving. Many of the “smalls” I’d been squeezing myself into have finally become too uncomfortable to compensate for the weird rush of triumph that label feels like, and so I’ve purchased a few new pairs of pants (8; medium).
But my overall shape is pretty much the same. And despite the smallness of this change, I can’t lie: in my current iteration, I feel approximately house-sized. (This despite the fact that, five years ago, a size 10 felt like an impossible victory.)
Before-and-after photos usually work the other way: fleshy girl, left, gives way to right-hand side’s more angular figure. But I’m trying to see this inverse transformation for the good it is and means: security, warmth, abundance. Growing older.
And also.
I’ve never been thin, and never will be. The girl on the right still weighed 140 pounds, and her thighs still rubbed in walking. And what’s more, I’ve never been happy with my body, not really.
I remember nearly crying in Montana, waking up hungry, walking out into the Bozeman night to scoop handfuls of almonds into my hoodie pockets. (I’d kept the nuts in my car so as make it harder to eat them.) The girl on the right was sure she was just on the threshold of regaining everything — as she’s been since the very first day she woke up and found herself, somehow, passably thin. That girl nearly had a panic attack when she got on the bathroom scale in the sublet she lived in when she first landed in Santa Fe — and the number she saw there surprised her, thrilled her so much, it spiraled her existing eating disorder into even further disarray. That number: 141, just about five pounds less than the last time she’d allowed herself on a scale before leaving Florida. This seemingly-small loss felt like a war won, even though it hadn’t been intentional, wrought instead of endless uphill hikes and a body acclimating to altitude.
And so.
I’m trying to think of this not as a temporary setback — or even as a “transformation,” as the tired before-and-after format forces. Bodies don’t work that way; they exist on a spectrum. And it’s unfair to expect them to respect some kind of arbitrary, hunched stasis.
It’s difficult, of course — especially when your weight loss has become part of your identity, both a seat of self-worth and a thing people frequently ask you about. But I know I’ve been wearing my body like a badge, holding it out in front of me like a weapon, all of my dignity wrapped up in: look at how small I have become. Look at how I can make less of me.
I’ve felt like an imposter in my own skin, felt too big for myself no matter the size printed in my waistband. Maybe I always will — and if so, Jesus Christ, I don’t want to go through life hungry.
So for now, I’m focused on being gentle with myself. I’m eating when I’m hungry, saying yes to the restaurant invite, drinking the goddamn hot chocolate. And I’m trying — and this is so, so difficult — not to feel, each time, like a failure. I’m finding people who will accept me as I am, right now; I’m letting myself be shocked at, before accepting, their acceptance.
I am, perhaps, becoming more (of) myself.