It Was Me All Along: A Memoir (11 page)

“I’m thrilled to announce that this year’s junior prom queen is …” Our principal pulled a thick card from the envelope. Eric Clapton strummed the first few chords of “Wonderful Tonight,” and I heard it.

“Andrea Mitchell.”

Ahem … Excuse me?

I looked around at the others, clapping and cheering, looking straight back at me.
I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Who?

Clapton crooned, his voice dragging, sultry, across sweet lyrics. “
I say my darlin
’ …”

As the principal crowned me, my face stained beet red. Mike took my hand and pulled me toward him. He rested his hands at my waist, and I brought my arms to his shoulders, intertwining my fingers at the nape of his neck. My cheek brushed his. “You look beautiful,” he whispered into my ear. I felt my blood coursing through all the veins that led to my heart as it swelled. Pressed together, we swayed to the music. I squinted from the spotlight directed at us and saw the hundreds of faces that encircled us—each adorned with a smile. It was a scene cut from a movie.

And I—for the four minutes of that song, that sweet slow dance—was not just the fat girl.

I was beautiful. I was prom queen. I was accepted. I was weightless.

The song softly faded into the next, and the clapping resumed once more. My friends rushed over to hug me. People I’d never spoken to came up to congratulate me. The outpouring of kindness was dizzying.

My high lasted for five hours of dancing and laughing. Five hours of feeling as if I were floating. Five hours of pure, boundless euphoria. Five hours until my rational mind brought me back to reality.

At our all-night after-prom party, many people stuck close to their dates, but Mike and I floated around the crowd separately. I saw him from across the room talking to another girl—a strikingly beautiful girl. I noticed the way he smiled as he talked to her, as he flirted with her. And I realized that none of those smiles were ones he used with me. I saw that none of his actions—the way he stood, the way he brushed arms with her—was anything like how he was with me. I did my best to shrug off the realization and moved into the adjoining room to chat with friends. Over the next few hours, I had so much fun playing drinking games that I’d all but forgotten about Mike and the girl. He had come over to me a few times to see how I was doing, and, with an arm wrapped around my shoulders, he’d asked if I was enjoying the party. I’d light up at his touch, at his sweet concern. I couldn’t help but adore him. “Yes, I’m having the best time!” I’d enthusiastically reassure him. He’d smile, relieved at my contentment, and then he’d leave me. Each time he walked away, my heart grew heavier. Knowing that there was another girl in the next room pained me. I’d look down into my beer cup, watching embarrassment float to the top, as unwanted as
foam.
Did I think he liked me? Did I really allow myself to think that Mike Oppel had any romantic feelings for the fattest girl in our grade? How had I deluded myself into thinking he invited me to prom for any reason other than wanting to be generous, kind, even?

I left the room and found my way to the bathroom. There, in quiet solitude, I felt silly. I was a good deed done by Mike Oppel. An ironic prom queen. I wondered if my win was meant to read as
Let’s do something nice as a grade and vote for this big girl. Let’s give her this one
. I felt as if my whole class had secretly nominated me for a makeover and cheered as I came onstage transformed and oddly confident. Charity, for which I should have been grateful.

And I was. The boost in self-esteem, the elation—they were crowned upon me. Even if they came with their own sad interpretations, I was just glad to have them at all. The choice to view the night in a positive or negative light was up to me.

When I was finally able to leave the bathroom, it was because I couldn’t bear the thought of reducing my happiness to tears. I walked outside to refill my drink. Seated on the grass surrounding the beer cooler was a big group of people. I found an open spot and sat down beside my friend JJ, our class president and also the guy I’d had a crush on since the fifth grade. He turned his body to face me. “Hey!” His massive grin could make me forget that I’d been upset mere minutes earlier.

“Hi!” I returned, equally as enthusiastic.

“Congrats on prom queen. That’s really great.”

“Thanks! Yeah. It’s—it’s strange. I don’t know how that happened.” I laughed.

“I do. I counted the votes, and it was pretty much unanimous. Everyone wanted you to win.” Hearing him say that made me feel good. I smiled.

For the remainder of the night and well into the morning, the two of us sat in those grassy seats and talked. Our only pauses were the minute-long laughs we shared, reminiscing about all the years we’d gone to school together. It was intimate, the kind of lengthy and meaningful conversation I’d had with Kate. I didn’t fear saying the wrong things; I didn’t waste precious mental energy worrying whether he was silently wishing he was talking to someone else; I didn’t spend time wondering how disheveled I looked in the morning light. Candid and a little irreverent, I was myself.

By eight a.m., it was clear we should head out. I placed my palms flat on the ground at either side of me, preparing to stand up.

“You know, I’ve thought about telling you—,” he started. I stayed seated, looking him in the eye. “I had wanted to ask you to prom.” He looked serious, vulnerable, and my pulse quickened.

Blushing, I cast my eyes downward. “Oh.” I paused, shifting nervously in the grass. “Well … thank you. That’s really nice.”

He released a small laugh. “No, nothing to thank me for. It’s just—you’re great, and it would have been fun.”

A rush of exhilaration surged through me. “The good news is that we kind of spent the whole party together.” We both laughed.

“You’re right.” He nodded. “And it
was
fun. We should do it again sometime.”

I grinned, revealing how happy what he’d said had made me.

The next day, he called to invite me to the movies. The day after, we spent the better part of an evening driving around aimlessly in his car, talking in the same way we had a few nights earlier. Our friendship grew fast, my liking of him building quickly and intensely.

After a month of hanging out daily, we had a conversation that revealed how deeply we liked each other. And on our second “official
date,” I had my first kiss. It was everything I’d imagined it could be. Fireworks and an encore of Dave Matthews Band. An overabundance of perfume and braces. He was wonderful. Sensitive and kind, outgoing and funny enough to make everyone enjoy his company. For six blissful months, including an amazing summer, I was happy. As continuously content as I’d ever been. He wrote me love letters and poems. He made me mixed CDs—the second-surest sure sign of love. He never once made mention of my appearance, save for calling me beautiful.

And the best part? I had someone. Finally, someone. I was validated. I was worthy of love. All 210 pounds of me.

One week before my birthday, in January of my senior year, the two of us went out for a drive. It was just a normal outing until tears began to fall down his face. He turned to me, and I anticipated exactly none of what he said. I was horrified thinking that perhaps someone he loved had died, that he didn’t get into his number one choice of schools. Instead, he broke up with me.

And my love, everything I had handed over to him in moments of intimacy, felt lost. He cried as I did, there in his car, assuring me that he still loved me and that he always had. It was just that he didn’t want to be in a relationship. Stripped of security, I couldn’t hear a word. I knew it was me he didn’t want. It was all a kinder, gentler way for him to say he wanted out.

My heart was broken. I spent three weeks tearing apart our relationship, hoping that there had been a misstep that could be corrected, like fixing a measurement in a faulty recipe. All the conclusions I came to pointed directly at me. I was fat. Maybe it was my size that had outgrown our relationship. Maybe he was getting teased for dating the fat girl. Maybe he’d begun to find me gross.
The more time I spent dwelling on these theories, the more solidified they became. And when graduation came, several months later, I thought of myself as being as unattractive as I’d come to believe he’d found me when we’d broken up in January. I’d gained 10 pounds in those months, bringing me to 220.

Not until late that summer, ten days before we’d each be leaving for colleges on opposite sides of the country, did he and I meet up one last time. Driving together, late one night, I felt the comfort of our old relationship. We talked, familiar and smooth like vanilla ice cream. Just as the sun began to rise, he told me what he hadn’t been able to tell me in January. He told me what he hadn’t told anyone. He told me what he barely wanted to say aloud to himself. He was gay.

I’d never before felt the way I did in that moment. Shock swirled with relief mixed with a quarter cup of heartache. There was a knowledge that it would never work between us, that it simply couldn’t work between us, and with that came sadness. There was an acknowledgment that it wasn’t me who he found unlovable, and with that came relief. And suddenly it all made sense. Why we never quite made it past second base.

And after a moment of recognizing all these mixed emotions, I reached for him. I wrapped my chubby arms around his lean swimmer’s body and tried to make him know that I loved him in that embrace. What I felt wasn’t any longer about me. It was compassion—pure and tender—and admiration. I couldn’t help but respect the bravery that he had mustered to tell me. To tell anyone. I couldn’t help but feel a deeper connection after such honesty, such vulnerability. And for that, I loved him more. Deeply, but in a different, oddly fuller way.

In the fall, I would begin college at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I hadn’t been accepted to University of San Diego after all. When the rejection letter came in the mail, I was crushed. Out of the four schools I applied to, USD was the only one I’d really pined for. It was also the only one outside of New England. Only slowly, as friends decided on schools in Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island, did I begin to come around to the idea of staying close to home. I rationalized that going to UMass, my safety school, would be much cheaper than the others I’d considered, and in the end the lower cost swayed me. When Nicole picked UMass, too, I felt even better about my choice, and the two of us decided to room together.

I had spent much of the summer hoping to lose at least a few pounds, but with the endless graduation parties, farewell dinners, and daylong shopping trips for college necessities, I always found an excuse to eat everything. The night before leaving for college, I packed up the last of my shirts and, eyeing the XL on each, stuffed them into a duffel bag.

Someday
, I promised.

I HAD JUST MOVED THE LAST SUITCASE
into my dorm room on the sixth floor and said a sniveling good-bye to Mom and Paul when I met him. My orientation schedule had made it so that I moved in a day earlier than Nicole, and I missed her when I saw the swarm of freshmen and their parents in the hall. Everyone sported the same anxious and overeager smile that I wore. The campus of University of Massachusetts is massive—so massive that I hesitated at the thought of having to head to the dining commons by myself for dinner, unsure I’d find my way back to my dorm without a map. On the one hand, I wanted to be the outgoing person I’d grown to be and introduce myself to make new friends. But on the other, I wanted to avoid the awkwardness I felt when I could see others surveying me for the first time, when my weight greeted them before my handshake.

I ran into him outside my door, walking the length of Grayson Hall and wearing a fitted Red Sox cap. When we made eye
contact, I panicked momentarily, not knowing whether to stop and say hello or not.
This is how you meet people
was all I could think. “Hey! I’m Andrea. It’s nice to meet you.” He sent back a laugh at my formality, turning his head to the left to dodge a box being carried past him. I eyed him up and down. Five feet eleven inches and strawberry blond, he stood solidly at my door. He was chubby, too, and for that, I felt safer.

By the end of the first week, Nicole and I had made fast friends with two girls on our hall. There was Jenny, the sweet and hilarious one from Cape Cod, who also happened to be the object of affection for seemingly every guy in the dorm. Then there was Sabrina, a small and busty brunette from Jersey with striking dark features, pursed lips, and razor-sharp wit. I took a liking to them instantly. It began with us simply walking to and from the dining commons, where we’d tell hilarious stories about the odd characters we’d met in our dorm and then retreat to one of our rooms to watch old episodes of
Dawson’s Creek
. But in no time at all we were inseparable. We’d rearrange our schedules just to walk one another to classes; we’d take naps together in cramped twin beds; we’d talk constantly throughout the day; we’d get ready together to go out on Friday and Saturday nights; we’d laugh hard and often. There was nothing casual about it; we were obsessed with one another. And I was grateful for them.