>Moving On

>In September, it will have been seven years since I lost the baby. Since then, we have had a beautiful, mouthy, smart little girl, who keeps me on my toes, and can usually make me smile (sometimes when I’m trying to put her in time out and be mean. It takes all the wind out of your sails when you’re laughing as you set her in time out). I’m not going to lie, there was a lot of fear and anxiety when that second line showed up on that test, but things went well up until the last day. It pretty much went to shit when it came time to deliver, but that’s a story for another day and another blog.

She sometimes says to me, “Mama, do you want to be skinny?” What can I say to that? If I say no she asks why, if I say yes, she recites the line from the Relacore ad “You can lose belly fat!” There’s only one way to win. Go to the gym, work out, and get skinny. Ok, maybe that’s technically three, but the over all goal is singular: Don’t be fat.

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>No Longer Valid

>I lost the baby. He was about 12 weeks when it happened. We went in for an ultrasound for dating purposes. The tech was very quiet, and wouldn’t answer any of our questions. When she was done, we were shown to an exam room where the doctor came in, announced, “Your pregnancy is no longer valid,” and walked out of the room. Just like that. Bam. No longer valid. Like your password expired, or you put in the wrong PIN at the ATM.

Well, shit. There it was again. My old friend failure. We had been reacquainted nicely a few months ago, and it seemed he wasn’t quite ready to leave yet. I failed at being a good wife; I failed at being a mother at all. I could feel the fat bubble getting thicker in hopes of better protecting me from the rest of the world. After a while, it started to work.

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>Fat Wife

>So, during the course of that week long fight where we came very close to divorce, I was let in on a little secret that my husband had been keeping all these many years. He didn’t find me attractive anymore because I was fat. At this point, I was a size 16 or 18. Bigger than when we first met, but the same as the day he asked me to marry him. I was confused, and not a little hurt and upset by this revelation. I mean, why would you ask some one you’re not attracted to physically to marry you and spend the rest of their life with you? When I posed this exact question, his answer made even less sense, and just seemed to further illustrate the differences between men and women. He told me he still loved me, and that he would love me at 140 or 440, but that he just wasn’t attracted to me. He then went on to apologize for being so shallow, “but that’s just the way I am.” Huh?

It’s been six years since that fight. It is a rare day that goes by where I don’t think about it. That was a bad summer. We each revealed a major secret to the other, and with it came the loss of bliss by way of ignorance. Then, near the end of summer, we had another loss. About two months after that fight, I got pregnant. I know, he doesn’t find me attractive, but he can bring himself to make a baby with me. I don’t understand either. Didn’t then, and still don’t now, nor do I want to, I have a feeling it would hurt too much, and I am still feeling the sting from the last time I was educated. That was a hard time for me. I had felt like a failure for so long after that fight. Here all along I thought I had found a great guy. Kind of like the guy in the Rikki Lake movie “Baby Cakes”, but no. The baby gave me hope that maybe things would work out after all. That maybe we could get past it all and focus on a new life.

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>Fat Bubble

>Being fat your whole life kind of puts you in a bubble. It hides you from the world in a way. Sure, there are the people who stare, the ones who make comments to their friends as if just because you’re fat you can’t hear them, or it doesn’t matter if you hear because fat people don’t have feelings. But, there are also the people out there who just look right through you as if you don’t even exist. That pretty much sums up my experience with males. Oh sure, they would acknowledge my presence enough to work with me, and in high school and college I had some guy friends, but as the saying goes: “Like seeks like”. In other words, they were fat and lonely too. But man, go from a size 20 to a size 12, and it’s like someone turned on the light inside the room with the one way mirror. I had guys talking to me outside of work, and they weren’t asking for my crème brulee recipe.

I finally agreed to a date with a guy I knew from work. I figured it was safe enough. The guy who always bought me my booze was worried I would end up dead if I went out on a date with a stranger. I think his exact words were “Tits up under a truck.” It must be an Iowa thing, because that was the one and only time I ever heard that phrase. So, at the tender age of 20, I had my first date. I’ll spare you the details, and cut to the chase. He thought buying me a drink earned him certain privileges, and had apparently never heard the phrase “No means no”. I didn’t date again for a long time, but man did I hit the bottle. Chris used to get me stuff about once every other week. Now I was up to a bottle every two days. He was concerned, and said as much, but at that point, I didn’t care. I had stopped eating all together, and was taking so many diet pills that even with the alcohol I was still up half the night. Eventually, I met someone I felt I could trust (mostly because he never even tried to hold my hand with out permission). He understood what I meant when I said I was waiting for marriage. It wasn’t until our first major fight (ironically about my weight) in the third year of our marriage that I even told him what happened. To this day, there are only three people, including myself, who know the truth about that night.

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>Food Is Where I Belong

>The same bullies followed me to high school, naturally, and had the same lunch period as me, naturally. So after about a month, I discovered that bullies didn’t really read much, and there for I was safe in the library. The year passed, and when I discovered that gym class was co-ed in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade as well, I did what any clumsy, over weight, uncoordinated, non-athletic, self-conscious teen does: I panicked. After the black faded back to the edges of my vision, and my breathing slowed from hyperventilation to normal again, I came up with a plan. If I went to the tech school, then I wouldn’t have to take gym. Unfortunately, that meant that I got no other electives either, but that was a trade I was willing to make. What class did I take at the tech school you ask, why cooking of course! What other class would a fatty take? Health care or nursing? Would you listen to a fat nurse who told you that you needed to loose weight? Child Care? Fatties can’t keep up with active little kids. Auto shop of any kind? Uh, no. Not because I was fat, just because I don’t like to be dirty. I went through all the options, and decided that food and I were destined to be together. Besides, I figured I could eat everything I made, and I might learn how to make something better than those ice cream candy bars. Psh, like that was possible…

Commercial Foods (no fancy names like “Culinary Arts” at Erie Co. VoTech) lead to a job at a local restaurant where my family ate at least once a week. Which then lead to a college level Culinary Arts program at a state school. I was still fat, but here I was among friends. I mean really, would you trust a skinny chef? Didn’t think so. How can you be sure their cooking is any good? It must not be if they won’t even eat it.

I did lose some weight in college, but only maybe 20 pounds or so. My first (and only) big weight loss came about three months after I moved away from home to start my life as a successful chef. I was very lonely, and depressed, but for once, I didn’t reach for food. I did something better. I got drunk. A lot. Every night. I spent all my money on diet pills, flavored water, and booze. I was still under age, so one of the guys I worked with would buy it for me. During the day I would drink zero-calorie flavored water, take six or sometimes eight diet pills, and while I was prepping salads for dinner service, I would allow myself four cucumber slices. I lost somewhere between 60 and 80 pounds in less than four months. This had some negative repercussions.

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>Co-Ed Swimming

>I was sad on the last day of middle school. I knew the high school I was going to was too far away to ride my bike, and that meant the bus. Luckily, the routes were different, and I found safety with other fatties and assorted nerds and freaks at the front of the bus. My relief was short lived however, when I found out that the rumors of gym class being a co-ed swimming class were not rumors, but in fact, the horrifying truth. Yeah, no joke there. As if freshman year wasn’t bad enough what with being 13, awkward, and embarrassed about everything, but put all 180 pounds of me in a swim suit and force me to stand in line with skinny girls and boys who never really showed interest before, but were guaranteed to never show it now, and you get: the Worst. Year. EVER.

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>In The Beginning….

>In the beginning, there was me, and I was fat, but it was OK, because I was a baby. Then I got older….

I was skinny as a kid. I didn’t start to chunk out till puberty, but when the hormones kicked in, whoo buddy…I got big. Not just kind of pudgy big, no we’re talkin’ had to shop at Layne Bryant at 14 big. I came by it naturally, my Mum is big (she’s fought it all her life), my Dad is moderately big, both sets of grandparents were big (though Mum’s Mum really is just kind of soft, you know the way a grandma is supposed to be). One aunt is big, but the other is skinny (both are on Mum’s side, but Darla was always a little strange, so I’m not truly convinced that she really belongs to us….).

When I was younger, I did all the diets with Mum, Weight Watchers, low-fat this, no sugar that, and cheated the whole time. I was constantly sneaking the things she would buy for the boys. Ice cream, two bowls a day; fudgecicles or pudding pops, four at a time; any time I was given money (birthdays, Christmas, random trip to Grandma’s house) I would buy chocolate bars, Milky Way and Three Musketeers were my usual, but then I discovered the ultimate…ice cream candy bars. Vanilla ice cream where the nougat was in a regular candy bar. I still remember the first time I saw one….

I was riding my bike to school, because I couldn’t stand the torment that went along with riding the bus, and every morning I would stop at the Country Fair on the corner for a soda (yeah, a soda at 6:30 in the morning, it’s no wonder I was fat). One morning there was a new cooler by the register, so I looked inside. Ice cream Snickers and Milky Way. The picture on the package had caramel softly oozing between the peanuts and over the ice cream. Of course, I bought one. It was soooo good. The next day and every day after that I bought two. Some days I bought three, but only if it was cold. They would melt too fast if it was warm.

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