It Was Me All Along: A Memoir (18 page)

During the week, I attended classes and film viewings,
acquainting myself with the work of Visconti, Fellini, and Zeffirelli. Weekends I’d travel by myself or with friends who were willing to pay thirty dollars for a turbulent Ryanair flight and an unsavory hostel stay in a new city: Dublin, Paris, Valencia, Barcelona, Amsterdam, London, eleven romantic cities in Italy. The more places I visited, the more my wanderlust grew. I was starting to feel free.

Near the end of my stay in Rome, my food budget had dwindled. It made sense, given all the restaurants I’d sampled and the small fortune I spent on calling cards to call Daniel. Melissa and I decided to make more of our meals at home. The open-air markets—the fruit and vegetable stands lining Campo—became daily stops on my way home from classes. In our little kitchen, I began cooking. I sautéed a mass of vegetables; I dressed arugula in floral olive oil and a drizzle of sweet balsamic vinegar as thick and ebony as molasses; I tore nubs off a softball of freshly pulled mozzarella and ate it with bright, fragrant leaves of basil; I boiled strands of angel hair pasta al dente and, upon draining it, quickly stirred in a scoop of mascarpone cheese and a fresh egg while the pasta was piping hot, the heat barely cooking the runny egg. After plating, I’d shred bits of smoked salmon on top, adding a welcome salty contrast to the creamy pasta. It was my own version of carbonara. And late at night, when Melissa and I watched episode after episode of
Grey’s Anatomy
on her laptop, we’d munch popcorn we had made on the stove top: a thin coating of olive oil at the bottom of a large pot followed by a handful of popcorn kernels. We shook salt, garlic powder, and Parmesan cheese into the hot pot and shook the corn around until each kernel was lightly coated in the sharp garlic-and-cheese mixture. It felt fun, like the old days of digging into Fritos
bags while watching
Dawson’s Creek
with Sabrina. I could still have the illusion of snacking, volume- and flavorwise, while keeping my intake within the point range I’d learned at Weight Watchers, using my own wonky estimation system without any formal calculator.

I left Rome in mid-May with a heavy heart.

But I stepped off the plane a new girl.

There, in baggage claim, was Mom, with tears just streaming down her milky-white Irish cheeks. She snatched me toward her and held me as though I might fly away again if not somehow anchored to her. She tucked her nose into my neck and breathed my hair. “My baby. I missed you,” she said.

Pulling back to look at her, I smiled, “Me too, Mumma.”

Our love spell broke with Mom practically shouting about my changed body, each word spoken in staccato for greater effect. She held me out in front of her at arm’s length, as if assessing wall art. “Oh, my God! Look at you!” Again with the tears.

Leaving the airport, I saw my reflection in the clear glass panel of windows.
Whose body is this?
was the only thought racing through my mind. Tall and slender and … 
normal
.

I grinned at my reflection, as broadly as ever, near giddy at what I’d accomplished. I met eyes with a woman walking out beside us. She stared at my crazy-eyed smile. Amused, she asked in a slightly patronizing tone, “Happy?!”

I looked at her, embarrassed by my odd behavior.

“Very.” I smiled brightly at her as I turned away.

I could barely contain the joy. I knew it even before I stepped on the scale and saw that I had lost 55 pounds. I felt proud, alive. I was twenty-one now and, for the first time, appropriately weighed
in for my height at 155 pounds. My jeans hung low on my hips, still the size fourteens Mom had mailed me midway through my trip when I told her that the sixteens and eighteens I had brought with me were too big. The one thin belt I’d packed did its best to keep them up, but it created a large gap at my waist, the pants folding in on themselves and falling below the belt’s line.
I wonder what size I should be wearing now?
I asked myself.

I went to UMass to visit Daniel during his last week of the semester. He knew how much weight I’d lost, and I knew how hard he’d struggled to do the same despite all our old temptations. It had been nearly six months since we’d seen each other last. I waited outside his dorm, hoping someone would exit the locked building so that I could slip in before the door swung shut. I did manage to sneak in—I wanted to knock on the door to his room, to reveal myself as he opened it. It seemed more personal than meeting outside. As he opened the door, a look of utter surprise enveloped his face. It was clear that he’d lost weight—perhaps another thirty pounds. He looked healthier. His face was thinner; his clothes hung looser. Reaching out, he pulled me into him, not saying a word for the first moments that he held me. I remembered the strength and familiarity of him. Our bodies were closer in that embrace than I could remember them being before. Without my belly as a barrier, his arms wrapped fully around me. “You’re so small!” It felt good to hear him say that, since he knew how much I’d struggled to reach that size. Raising his hands to hold the sides of my face, he kissed me.

There were days during the first weeks of being home when I just wanted to be out and about. I wanted to do all the things I hadn’t done before with any measure of grace. I crossed my legs casually,
coolly; I walked even more. I bought new clothing in sizes like eight and, unbelievably, six. I discovered how much cheaper it was to be thin—the way clearance racks practically shout your name, since they’re loaded with smaller sizes. I found pacing the mall insanely fun. Browsing, trying on clothes just because; it was exhilarating to pick an outfit—any outfit—and know that, at the very least, it would look okay. Not necessarily perfect for me, but decent. I began emerging from behind the curtains and walking barefoot to the tri-fold mirror at the center of the dressing rooms, an act I had detested before. Now I fit better into everything. Shirts, pants, dresses, life.

When June arrived, I rejoined that old YMCA where I’d spent the previous summer with Kate. In no time, we were at it again: taking aerobics classes with the rowdiest of fifty-year-olds, Jazzercising, being debaucherous with exercise balls and an open weight room. And laughing. Laughing so much.

I’d almost call it fun, if the range for experiencing fun were a ladder on which the bottom rung was still kind of adjacent to low-level torture. The whole process of losing weight was easier now, a year in. I was used to the meals I prepared, the way I moved my body to the point of profuse sweating day in and day out. I still faced a sense of dread before some workouts, and, naturally, I still lusted after cake, but at least I was getting there. Envisioning myself at the goal I’d set for myself—140 pounds—was easier. Mere miles from the finish line of my marathon, I broke into a sprint.

I lost another 22 pounds over those next two months. And on the final day of summer, just as I was saying good-bye to Kate and the Y, and heading back to UMass for senior year, I saw a number I didn’t think I’d ever see: 133.

On our first day back, Daniel, Sabrina, Nicole, and I drove to campus from our newly rented apartment and walked to our film class. The stares were unnerving.
Is my fly unzipped?
I looked down to check. My eyes met those of others walking past us. Each seemed more aware of me than I’d known people to be before. With guys and girls alike, I felt more accepted, respected. Not simply thin, but valued. Desirable.

People I’d known since freshman year—who’d come to know me big—were stunned. Mouths hung gaping as they took in such a transformation. I was applauded and admired. And Daniel, who loved me all the way through, looked so proud when guy friends of ours would smile from me to him and whisper, “You are unbelievably lucky, man.” I knew from the way he nodded and looked at me that he’d love me regardless. Daniel himself had lost weight—a total of 75 pounds since the previous fall—and I admired his dedication. He seemed to gain more confidence. Now at 225 pounds, he looked better than ever.

It was thrilling going out in Amherst. Nights at bars, parties, even just walking through campus to class—it was all exhilarating. For the very first time, I was exactly the girl I’d always wanted to be.

Those first few months when I inhabited a new, hard-earned body were a raw, explosive high. A high unlike any other experience I’d had.

But after all highs comes a low.

I LOOKED INTO THE MIRROR AND LOVED WHAT I SAW
so completely that all I wanted was to snap a picture of the girl within the frame. I wanted to replace the default picture I held of myself in my head—that of the fat girl I’d always been—with the new one. Swap out fat for thin. I scanned my body, gave myself the kind of admiring up-and-down eye that few guys had ever given me. I saw a jawline. Collarbones, two pronounced collarbones. And both were mine. A waist.
A waist
. I found my knees and, with them, an understanding why anyone might refer to knees as knobby. Staring at my body, pinching my love handles, I struggled to absorb that these changes were real. I wanted to stay this way.

Without that mirror, without any way of physically seeing my own form in plain sight, I still believed myself to be the fat girl. My mind and eyes were in opposition.

A part of me was disdainful of the newfound attention I was receiving.
You see me now? I’m attractive now?
Receiving the
congratulations, the praises in some small way felt like accepting that what I’d been before—all of my life—was wrong. Even though I’d often felt that way myself, I resented that the size of my body was correlated to my value, my worth as a person. The praise was a confirmation that thinness made me the better version of myself. And since something about it still felt foreign and unnatural to me, the outside praise made my insides cower.
I’m not ready for this
, I’d think.
I’m not better now just because of this body. I don’t even know how to stay here. What if I can’t stay here? If I gain it all back?
In a way, it all felt like a trap. Before, when I was fat, no one spoke aloud about my body. They couldn’t. There’s no decent way to bring up someone’s obesity. And now the thinness was the centerpiece on the table of conversation. It was out there, aired and allowed to be its own entity. Something we could point at and discuss.

With all the compliments I received for my weight loss, I feared returning to fat. An intense anxiety settled into my bones. I felt pressure. This was different from striving to do well in school, wanting to please Mom, wanting to fit in.
They’re watching me now
. Unhelpfully, a friend of the family reminded me, “You know, Andrea, losing weight is the easy part. It’s maintaining it that’s really hard.” This sentiment made me seethe.
How dare anyone minimize that struggle, that agonizing journey of losing weight?
I was shocked that they’d deem losing 135 pounds “easy” and, worse, that they’d want to instill a fear in me about keeping it off. Of course losing weight wasn’t easy. Ten pounds, 20, 50, 100-plus—any amount is challenging. It all requires discipline and an absolute desire to change. Losing necessitates feeling terrible now so that you can feel better later. I thought back to the days when I cried desperately, almost giving up on losing weight altogether. I remembered the
writhing, the feeling of hopelessness and withdrawal of coming down from twenty years of food addiction. Perhaps those people simply wanted to remind me that the journey wasn’t over, that maintenance involved the same vigilance over what I ate as losing did. But I hated to hear the work diminished, relegated to ordinary.
Yes, I get it
, I wanted to tell them.
It looks like I’ve just moved into a new home, a very desirable and thin one, and now you’re reminding me that I have to come up with the mortgage payments. I’m terrified, too. But just so you know, I worked to purchase this house myself, and somehow I’ll figure it out
.

What worried me almost as much as letting myself down if I gained it all back, was letting everyone else down. Being a failure. The pressure, the foreignness of it all caused the welling up of a deep, deep insecurity.

The months that followed—in fact, that whole year—were dark. I was scared all the time. I felt as though the tips of my fingers were moments from losing their death grip on the cliff I clung to. Life wasn’t what I’d thought it would be. This wasn’t the light and free, casual and content life I’d expected to start.