Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life (15 page)

For a few days, I waited for her response. I suppose I thought there would be another talk on the porch, her carefully chosen words offering just the balm I needed. But it never happened. It was my bomb to drop, and me who had rendered her stunned. Why on earth had I expected anything but fallout?

Often, I remind myself of that caveat I gave her: It
was
just a handful of times. It was
just
grabby hands and staring and almost-kisses, which I’d
always
managed to duck out of. Having practiced since the age of eight, I was good at stopping an “incident” while it was still minor. That way it could always stay ambiguous in my mind. That way, I could sit across from him at the Christmas dinner or birthday party, and forgive myself for fighting the urge to get up and run and run until I catapulted right off the earth. Because one of us had to behave themselves or this semblance of normalcy would collapse. If I didn’t act polite and unbothered, William would sulk and people would ask questions, and, oh God, everyone would know. They would have to look directly at what they’d looked away from, over and over again.

I didn’t want to be looked at. As I grew into and then out of adolescence, I still daydreamed of being beautiful, flat-tummied and B-cupped. Theoretically, I wanted to be noticed, but not yet—not until I was thin. It would all have to wait until I was thin, because this body was damaged and repugnant. It was disloyal and obnoxious, this body that had made me into a woman before the age of ten.

Each time I tried on a fitted blouse, I’d remember my mother’s side eye that time I came out of my room dressed for school in a V-neck:

“Sorry, babe, you’re just a little too busty for that one,” she said, and stuck out her chest, aping a cartoonish sexy walk I wasn’t doing. “Oh, I’m kidding! I’m sorry, jeez Louise!” she called after me, when I hurried off to change.

Even worse, I’d remember the humiliation that happened if she didn’t catch me, but William did: the summer I was twelve and he cracked a joke about my “porn-star-cheerleader look”—a pink plaid Delia*s skirt and matching sweater that I’d picked out for a party at the country club. He put a just-kidding arm around my shoulders and laughed too hard at his own joke, until the others laughed along with him. If he’d had one less bourbon, maybe he wouldn’t have said it. Or, maybe if my top wasn’t so bright.

This is the sickness of abuse—the infection he gave me when he took that first handful of my childish flesh.

Motherfucker. You made a liar out of me.

Even here, in my own pages, I cannot tell the whole truth, burying his name in anonymity. I tell myself that to expose him would hurt innocent others, and so hiding him is a generous act. But that’s only part of the reason. Mostly, it’s because I am afraid, still. Every time I tell someone, a wretched voice comes shrieking from the corner of my mind:
Are you making too much of this? Are you just looking for attention, little girl? Why must you rock this boat? Can’t you see it’s hard enough for everyone without you opening your big, fat mouth about a few over-the-clothes touches?

That’s the voice that keeps me quiet, and for that I am ashamed. I want to be braver. What happened to me was nowhere near as bad as what happened to so many other women who
have
named names, and I feel like a coward in their company.

Because, even after all these years of processing and self-helping myself out of the hole, I still sometimes wonder if my blouse was too bright. I still see my mother’s face seize up on the porch that day, and wish, for a searing second, that I could un-tell her.

It is still a thing I rarely name. It’s always been “the William stuff,” when I mention it to friends or therapists, or the guy who didn’t understand why I suddenly went cold, why I couldn’t just relax and he wouldn’t put his hand there again, no pressure, he promised. Nameless or not, I have to tell, because this is a thread inside the messy, knotted fabric of my story with food. It’s one of the things I buried in cold lumps of mashed potato, eaten in sneaky fingerfuls by the light of the refrigerator. It was the undertaste in every numbing bite, barely there but undeniable and caustic to the tongue. It’s the shame I covered in extra pounds, the features of my face obscured as I sank deeper into my flesh.

In that attempt to hide inside myself, though, it seemed both me and my secret became all the more visible. My parents never managed to see the hands on my body, but they stared in horror as that body grew before their eyes. Friends must have heard it in my weepy voice, so desperate for their validation. And, surely, every guy I ever liked could see it written all over my nervous, moony face. The secret was as obvious and present as the belly I tried to cover with tightly folded hands. Hiding was a futile struggle. The only remedy was to tell.

A
ll that said, I
totally
wanted a boyfriend.

My measly romantic history didn’t start until my middle to late-ish twenties. The only exception was Jacob Rensch in ninth grade. He’d been my boyfriend in name only, for ten days, and he went to another school. He was real. But everything else about the relationship was pretty much imaginary. We hung out in person twice before our e-mail breakup, which I recall as the greatest relief of my life. I got to soak wistfully in the bathtub and write three-chord songs on my acoustic guitar, just feeling as hard as I could. At that point, all I really wanted out of a relationship was the excuse to wallow when it ended.

My midtwenties self had plenty of good reasons to excuse and explain away the fact that I didn’t date. High school and college were supposed to be the relationship training ground. But the male population of my small boarding school had been almost entirely gay. So, by college, I had no experience in flirtatious socializing with males of any kind, let alone the loud and typically beer-soaked males of a large university. Anyway, I was far too occupied with internships, dieting, and hiding in my room to go out there and try to wow ’em with my dazzling knowledge of early Sondheim and
My So-Called Life
trivia. I’d skipped the dating practice and decided I’d figure it out later, in the real world. Then, I took one look around New York City—my chosen corner of the real world—and thought I’d just keep lying low for a while. It wasn’t really “hiding in your room” when you had a whole apartment, right?

The truth is, I never dated because it seemed absolutely terrifying and awful (and, it kind of is). I told myself I was focused on my job and my friendships and all that. I was, but also I was just plain scared—of rejection, of attachment, of all the singular humiliation that comes with putting yourself out there and saying,
I like you. Do you like me?
Oh yeah, and when I was a kid, someone I trusted messed with me in a sexual way. There, am I off the hook?

When I’m ready
, I thought.
When I’m thin.
After
The Secret
came out and the entire world became briefly obsessed with vision boards and manifesting, I wrote a thousand-word letter to the universe describing the perfect life I would have and the perfect guy I would meet. He would understand my history and my lack of experience, and adore me anyway. He would just
get
me, and his love and acceptance would be a panacea that cured all my anxiety, emotional eating, and body shame—oh, but I would already be thin when I met him, obviously. The universe had to make me thin
first
, but that was a whole other manifestation letter. That one read something like:
SKINNY PLEASE NOW. Love, Kelsey.

I don’t know if it was the letter or the fact that I finally signed up for an OkCupid account, but somewhere around my twenty-fifth birthday I dipped a tentative toe into the dating pool. Even if I had manifested the guy of my dreams, he probably didn’t have my address, and anyway, my buzzer didn’t work. So, fine,
fine
. I’d try leaving the house.

The great thing about dating is that nobody is good at it and everyone hates it. If nothing else, that’s one thing you always have in common with the person across the table from you. I was relieved to discover that starting so late in the game only made me slightly more terrible at dating than everyone else. That said, if your heart’s not in it, Internet dating can feel like a miserable temp job where the only highlight is online Sudoku breaks. But I kept at it. I didn’t need to find The One, but I needed to have dated
some
one. I needed to be able to say, “this guy I went out with,” and then tell a funny story about a futon. I couldn’t go to another party with friends and not be able to join the conversation about whether you should call or text the next day. And, seriously, I needed to have had sex. My lack of physical experience was rapidly becoming another big, bad secret I sat on. It felt okay being a virgin in college. It felt okay-not-great being one at twenty-two. By twenty-six, it felt like a national emergency. OkCupid wasn’t cutting it; I needed to get FEMA on this.

I’d had a few groping experiences toward the end of college, thanks to the miracle of alcohol. And there were a few more during my online-dating phases, which ebbed and flowed for a few years, like a tide controlled entirely by my dieting cycle. When I was off the wagon, I barely browsed the websites and ignored any incoming messages. When I was in the diet zone, I seized the skinny day. Even if my body was only slightly less fat, it was on its way to thin, and therefore I was allowed to let someone else see it. Or, parts of it. Though only if I had full creative authority over all wardrobe and lighting and set direction. I was a maniacal auteur when it came to naked time.

Yes, everyone is bad at dating, but it’s particularly clunky when you’re a twenty-seven-year-old virgin who hates her body and will only leave the house if she has enough Points left for the day. I went on plenty of first dates, and a handful of second ones, but whenever things got remotely intimate, I immediately lost any modicum of cool. If the guy looked into my eyes too long or reached for my hand, I went on autopilot. I simply couldn’t tolerate the tension of are-we-gonna-kiss-or-aren’t-we, so more often than not, I just went for it myself. Even if the guy initiated kissing, I almost always let it escalate to street-makeout to cab-makeout to couch-makeout to topless. It had nothing much to do with desire. I couldn’t bear the closeness of his eyes looking into mine, but I could take my shirt off, no problem. I was just doing what everyone else did, but faster.

“You know you don’t have to make out with everyone, like, immediately. Right?” Debbie asked me one night, as we smashed up avocadoes for one of our traditional guacamole-and-embarrassing-movie nights. Whenever I was out on a date, I would wish I could just be home, eating snacks with Debbie and watching
How the West Was Fun,
starring the Olsen twins.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t even have to kiss them or anything.”

“Of course, I know that.” And, of course, I did. When I had this conversation with any of my friends, they all seemed to think I was succumbing to pressure. I was, but not the kind they were thinking. None of the guys I dated ever forced me into so much as hand holding. The pressure that pushed me was all in my own head. I
had
to catch up. I had to hit some milestones so I could just chill out and quit panicking about everyone else moving in together, breaking up, considering if and when they should have kids. Kids?! When I’d never even purchased condoms?! Yeah, sorry friends. I’ll make out with everyone, everywhere.

But then I’d leave. Because, as soon as a guy touched me, my body floated away. It was that same, familiar feeling I got when William first grabbed me: a deadened, automatic separation from myself. I went through all the motions, but it felt like an unconscious habit; like washing a sinkful of dishes, while my mind went on to the next chore, just wanting to get it all done. Eventually, I learned about “dissociation,” and how it’s not an uncommon experience during sexual contact for people like me.

It always ended the same way.

“I haven’t had sex with anyone,” I’d blurt out of the blue.

“Oh. Okay.”

End of date. Whether or not sex even came up, I routinely dropped this lead balloon on our evening—sometimes even throwing in a casual reference to childhood sexual trauma, just to be sure I killed all remaining boners. Then, I put on my shoes and went home to shower and watch
My Girl 2
in bed with a bag of cookies. All of it—the cab home, the hot shower, the cookies, the sweatpants—composed my ritual of simultaneous punishment and reward. I was embarrassed, certainly. But mostly I was relieved that my embarrassment was so great and so justified that I could forget the whole night ever happened, and never have to worry about hearing from the guy ever again. In the big picture, these dates only made my anxiety about never having had a relationship even more extreme. In the short term, I just had to run.

It took a couple years and a billion more hours of hashing out the William stuff in therapy, but eventually I let go of the Makeout-Flee system and started dating like a slightly less crazy person. And, one week after my twenty-eighth birthday, I finally had sex. Turns out, the only real problem with losing your virginity at twenty-eight is that when you text your friends at 3 a.m. to tell them, they’re all already asleep.

Like all the guys I went out with, I met Jared online. He was a really nice guy with a crazy schedule and a recent ex-girlfriend and no hesitation in telling me he wasn’t ready for anything serious. While some women might have considered this a deal breaker, it sounded just about perfect to me. The timing was right, too. Thanks to another round with Weight Watchers, I was at my lowest weight in years, right at the peak of the New Diet Buzz. Fearing that I’d turn fat again at any moment, I moved fast. He had no problem with that.

When I gave Jared the whole I-haven’t-had-sex-and-here’s-why spiel, he didn’t panic. He asked a few questions. Yes, I had done “other stuff”—the kind of stuff that would make a lot of people consider me not exactly virginal. But the whole intercourse thing still felt like the big box I hadn’t checked. Again, he clarified where we stood in terms of casual dating, and again I asked myself:
Is this okay?
And it really was. I wanted a real boyfriend sometime, definitely. But at that moment I wasn’t ready for a relationship, either. I needed something simple and flexible in order to get ready for the real deal. I’d missed out on all that careless sex in high school and college, and now it loomed too large in my mind. I had to have sex without it being meaningful sex, in order to realize that sex wasn’t the most meaningful thing.

Jared and I hung out every couple weeks, seeing movies or grabbing dinner, then going back to his place. After each time, I left with a low-level nervousness about whether or not it would be the last. But we’d been so up-front with each other and we were so loosely attached that it felt like the first half of all those movies where the couple tries to just sleep together without entanglement—minus the second half where everyone ends up crying and/or married. People refer to “fuck buddies,” as if that scenario is every commitment-phobic man’s fantasy. Guess what? Women can be scared and horny, too.

Truly, I don’t know if that’s the right term for what Jared was to me. In my heart, he is the one who eased me into the world of real dating and eventually taught me that what I wanted was something real—good, bad, and complicated.

Then I met Harry, and things got real, fast.

The story of how we met is partially magical coincidence and partially a product of the cold, calculating hand of social media. One winter morning, just weeks after I started seeing Jared, I got an OkCupid message from a cute guy with glasses and a neatly shaved head. I recognized the picture from somewhere, and five minutes of Facebook research revealed his name was Harry and he was an old colleague of my friend Jon’s. (Jon’s verdict: “Good guy! Kinda quiet.” This was all he could give me after they’d worked together for three years. Dudes are the worst at this.)

It was a pretty perfect message as far as online dating goes: brief, dry, not generic and not icky. Seventy-five percent of the time, I got messages from dudes saying things like, “Hi, I like Kiéslowski, too. By the way, do you have huge calves?”

But, nice as this guy’s message might have been, I just wasn’t looking to jump back into the online-dating hustle at that moment. I already had Jared to
kind of
date, and more important, I had work to do. For months, I’d been trying to break out of assistant limbo and into a writing career. All of a sudden, I was busy with new freelance writing gigs and applying for every Internet-writer position I could find. By the time I was hired at Refinery29 that spring, I’d let the message slip my mind entirely. I barely had time to
kind of
date, let alone juggle.

A few months later, though, I found myself chatting with a dry, not-generic, and not-icky guy at Jon’s birthday party.