It Was Me All Along: A Memoir (24 page)

But the truth was that this was more than a beauty fix. After all the arduous work of losing weight, I was still deeply unhappy with my body. The only way I’d be able to be fully comfortable was if I got the excess skin removed. I couldn’t find it in me to justify
keeping it at twenty-three years old. I consulted Mom and Daniel, and both of them supported me. After careful consideration, weighing every pro and con of such a major surgery, I decided to go through with it. Mom withdrew the money from her retirement account to pay for it.

At the end of August, on a muggy Friday morning, I awoke in post-op to Mom’s voice. “Baby, it’s all over. You’re out of surgery.” The room spun. All I could feel was an unbearable heaviness, a weight compressing my whole body.

After one full day of recovery in the hospital, I was allowed to go home. The days that followed were painful. Turning to Mom on the second day at home, I told her, “This is worse than I imagined.”

“Sweetie,” she said gently, “just wait until you have kids.”

I shuddered at the thought. It felt as if a boulder had been placed upon my stomach, and it was trapping me, making movement impossible, crushing me slowly. My breathing was shallow and labored. I was confined to lying horizontally in bed, with my only outings being trips to the bathroom. And those were quite challenging, since the numbness in my core made it nearly impossible to contract the muscles in my abdomen and pelvis. I could feel an extreme tightness, a pulling at the seams where my thighs had been sewn. The painkillers I’d been prescribed helped, but they made me nauseated. And when I’d throw up, my heaving would be so violent that I’d fear my stitches had ripped open. Looking at the drains that were stitched into my skin also made me queasy; they held a disgusting, phlegm-like fluid that emptied out from within me. Twice daily, Mom or Paul had to remove them for cleaning—a gross chore that I felt bad about asking them to do.

After the first few days, the weeks of recovery moved by quickly.
I wore a tight brace around my middle for a full month. It took even longer before I felt comfortable touching my midsection, before I felt any sensation in the area at all. Touching my belly felt faint and distant, as though a barrier stood between the skin my fingers touched outside and the now-hardened inside.

It was still hard to look in the mirror, but for a different reason. I had a deep red scar in the shape of a smile on my belly. My thighs showed a slicing red line where my legs met my pelvis. Somehow, though, despite the visible scars, I felt more comfortable, more accepting of my body. There, in the mirror, was all that I’d worked for.
I did it
, I thought. Blemishes and all, it was earned, and it was mine. Removing the skin brought me closure.

And I respected what remained.

WHEN WINTER CAME AGAIN AND MY BODY HAD HEALED
, I returned to film. Lori called on a Tuesday in February to ask if I’d be interested in working on a movie with her in Philadelphia. I barely let her finish the question before shouting “Yes!”

I heard her smile into the phone. “Great! Can you be there in a week?”

Uh, no
.

“Yes!” was what came out of my mouth. I hung up the phone and immediately dialed Daniel, who was away at a poker tournament in Connecticut. He hadn’t yet said hello when I started. “I talked to Lori. We need to move to Philadelphia. At the end of this week. How’s that sound?”

As he often did, he waited and told me calmly, “Kiddo, first breathe.”

I breathed, thankful for the reminder.

“Okay. Now tell me.”

I told him what few details I knew of the film I’d just committed to. “It’s a James Brooks romantic comedy set to star Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson. Lori needs me to be her right hand in the art department in Philly. I told her I can start this Monday.”

He waited for what seemed like a full minute before replying, “Okay, but …” I feared what rational argument would follow. We had discussed moving in together, but not this soon.

“We have a lot of work to do,” he said.

I loved that his calm could temper my mania without stifling it. I yammered quickly into the phone, pacing around my bedroom assessing what I’d bring. “I’ll get us a U-Haul. I think just the ten-foot one will work, right? Anyway, I can have my stuff packed by tomorrow. I’ll just need to cancel my gym membership, see if Mom can get Friday off from work, and, I mean, I guess that’s it. I really hate to leave Kate. Jesus, I’ll miss her something fierce.”

He cut me off. “Hey hey hey—slow down. I don’t know if I can go that fast. I’ll need to try to get out of my lease first. I might not be able to join you right away.”

I thought for a moment. I breathed deeply and said, gently, “Please.”

I waited for him to say something, anything. I could hear him breathe as he mulled it all over. Finally, he said, “We’ll go,” and “I’ll do everything I can.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!” I gushed.

Before the sun even rose that next Saturday morning, we were en route to Philly, a U-Haul of my belongings towed behind Mom and me in her Corolla. I hadn’t yet secured an apartment. In fact,
I hadn’t planned much of anything. All I knew was that we were headed eight hours south, and I’d be starting a new film job come Monday at eight a.m. Daniel, still tying up the loose ends of his life in Cambridge, was set to come to Philly and join me in our yet-to-be-found apartment in a week’s time.

Somehow in the span of two days, I found an apartment, signed a six-month lease, and bought a bed, a couch, and the contents of the local Target. It was all possible because of Daniel, who had wired me enough money to pay for our lease up front, thereby expediting a process that usually takes longer than a weekend. Not until I could pay him back fully, years later, would there ever be enough ways to thank him.

I loved Philly. It was an adventure, exhilarating and frenzied. Lori and I became even closer, spending twelve hours a day by each other’s side, talking as though we’d never run out of things to say.

After work and on weekends, I cooked. Fiendishly. For the first time, I had my own kitchen, my very own home. I had a chance to make a family or, at the very least, to compensate for the lost years when I felt I didn’t have one—the years I ate cereal alone. I had Daniel, to cook for and eat dinner with nightly. I also knew that my preparing healthy, light meals could help him reach his goal of losing the hundred-plus pounds he wanted to lose. Despite his many weight loss attempts over the years, he struggled with consistency. I could see the way his weight burdened him, how intensely self-conscious he’d become, and how desperately he tried to conceal both his eating and his size. Having been in the same position just a few short years earlier, I understood his feelings all too well. I cared deeply about Daniel’s well-being. I wanted him to be not only healthier, but happier, too. I viewed living together as my chance to kind of guide his eating, to get him to love the taste
of wholesome foods. The way I’d cook for him would be the same way I cooked for myself: high in flavor and nutrients but lower in calories.

I kept our fridge stocked with more than enough healthy fare for just the two of us. Seasonal fruits, vegetables, organic yogurts, lean meats, and stinky, aged cheeses—all pure, real foods. I’d pull recipes from magazines, cookbooks, and blogs, and I’d hole up in the kitchen for an entire Saturday, cooking for hours on end. Mexican, Asian, Italian, American. A walk through my small kitchen was a food crawl in itself. On the stove bubbled marinara with Paul’s famous meatballs that I made lighter with lean ground sirloin; on the counter to its left, a platter of chipotle pulled chicken breast; beside that, sweet roasted broccoli; and then a homemade whole grain pizza topped with grilled vegetables, crumbled goat cheese, and a drizzle of syrupy balsamic vinegar. I’d tuck all the foods into their own plastic containers, and we’d feast on delicious, wholesome meals for a week—leaving weeknights, when I’d arrive home from work at seven thirty, free to reheat and relax.

The recipe creation and the play of flavors filled me far beyond the dishes themselves. Seeing Daniel content and losing weight, week after week, was a satisfaction of an even higher level. I loved the hours in the kitchen. The preparation, the eating—they were cathartic. And despite the volume, I wasn’t tempted to binge. I didn’t fight a desire to gobble up the full pan of lasagna. Since I was the one making the meals, I didn’t have to quell an urge to freak out at the calories. Instead, I felt calmer and more at ease. I prepared our food to be as balanced as I had begun to feel. I had learned to cook nourishing meals for myself and the man I loved, and in the process, I was making peace with food.

I experimented. Sometimes I failed miserably. But making the
dishes I had always loved, in a way that felt nutritious, was worthwhile. Satisfying. Even the failures. I thought back to the buffalo chicken pizzas Daniel and I shared in my first college dorm, the white paper boxes of Chinese food littered around the table at home in Medfield, and every celebration with thick wedges of sour cream fudge cake.
There can be a life for these beloved eats
, I promised.

I stood there in my first kitchen, eight hours away from my mother, the one who breathed life into my cooking lungs, and I cooked. And when I was done cooking, I baked. Then I baked again. Because I loved it. And I wasn’t myself without it.

The people on-set would have confirmed my obsession with cooking and baking. It really got out of hand after that first week. What began as “a simple sweet treat” for my coworkers turned into homemade Oreos, congo bars, and oatmeal cream pies. The bake shop I set up in the production office on that first day proved a hit. Within thirty minutes, a line had formed to my own little craft service station, and the goodies disappeared quickly. I did it again and again, bringing in a new treat each day. Lemon-scented black-and-white cookies, double coconut cupcakes, cheesecake in every flavor. In the end, I baked for sixty days straight.

It was then that I began to feel an urgency to share my recipes. I’d been reading food blogs for a few years, and as much as I loved lurking on sites and comment sections, there was a gentle itch to create my own. Daniel, who had lost twenty-five pounds while eating my healthy cooking, thought it was a great idea and pressed me to act on it.

As the film wrapped in late October, I contemplated my next move. Our six-month lease was two weeks from ending, and I
hadn’t yet heard of another available film job. Daniel recommended that I take advantage of the free time to start that blog.

Given how passionate I’d become about cooking, I started wondering if working in the film business was something I wanted to continue pursuing. “I’m not sure I love it like I used to,” I told Daniel. “And it consumes so much of my life.” The hours seemed unending.
Can I really keep going down this path if I’m no longer certain it’s the one for me?

Lori had warned me of this. Since the beginning, she gently tried to push me out of film production. Funny, given how I’d followed her states away for another film job. What she wanted for me, she urged, was more, better. She feared that I’d get caught up in moving from film to film, losing years of my life before realizing that I hadn’t done anything else—anything more creatively fulfilling. She knew I craved more artistic control. And not simply in film; I loved so many things. To stay in this business, I’d be turning my back, at least for a while, on the possibility of other careers.

“You’re young, Andrea. Explore other things. Now. Listen, I know you’re going to be successful. I’m sure of it. And film—I mean, film will always be here. You can always come back.”

She had a point. And I did want to try other things. I wanted to cook and bake and write recipes. I wanted to do more in the world of health and weight loss.

I mulled it all over. And then I got a call from Lori one evening, only an hour after I’d left her at the office. “Look, I’m not asking because I think you should come with me; I’m just letting you know because you’re the only person I’d want to offer this job to.” She breathed in. “I’ve been called for another job—a thriller in Connecticut. It starts in a week. You can do it with me, but you
know …” She paused. “I just think … I just want you to try something else, something better. Get out of this shit business.”

I felt blindsided. I was looking forward to a break. I wanted to spend the month of November thinking about what I wanted to pursue next. This news left me questioning everything.

“Just think about it. Get back to me tomorrow. You know I love you. Do whatever feels best.” She hung up.

I talked to Daniel about it for two hours. We labored over staying, going, staying, going. And at the end of it, I’d made my mind up.

I would leave film.

It all sounded wild and terrifying. I had come to the conclusion that I would instead start a blog and try to make a living as a food and health writer.

That next morning, after barely three hours of sleep, I told Lori I wouldn’t be coming with her to Connecticut. She hugged me, knowing that it was the best decision I could have made. I called Mom at the end of the workday and told her the whole ordeal—about the job and the blog idea. Talking it all through with her felt a world harder than coming to the decision on my own the night before. I knew how dearly she loved my work. It all sounded so glamorous to her—working on a big movie, with all the stars, moving from city to city. I feared her reaction to the news.