Dying to be Thin (an unsent letter to my mother)
Dear Mom,
I think I’ve come to know, over the years, how much you love me. It was a leetle hard to tell during adolescence. And every now and then, a reminder wouldn’t hurt. I know most of your love for me is unconditional. I also know how much you wish I was thin. So much so that I have spent my life trying to be that. The reason I set up this blog was to chronicle my struggle with weight gain/loss in the hopes that some day I would either come upon a solution that helps me drop 100 lbs., or help the world to back off fat people, to understand that just because someone eats kale and collards day in and day out doesn’t mean that they are guaranteed thinness, nor does eating crap guarantee obesity.
This week in the hopes of meeting my goal, with a remedy that was proving extremely successful on other weight loss-resistant women, I injected myself with a hormone I picked up in Mexico. In the process, I also injected myself with an air bubble. Note: if you ever need to kill someone and get away with it, inject them with a syringe full of air.
That I am alive, able to write these words is a miracle.
I have spent the last several days woozy, hobbling about to doctor appointments, wondering if I was going to start gasping for air or just keel over of heart failure.
So far, neither has happened, but I am not out of the woods yet.
I have been to a few doctors, which were difficult to get to, physically and emotionally. Naturopathic doctors told me to go to the ER, and ER doctors told me to drink water and take my temperature. I am grateful no medical professional judged me (to my face, anyway) for my self-administered injections of Mexican drugs, but I’m sure the ER sees lots of strange cases. I take small comfort in knowing that showing up at the ER with a hamster in my ass would have been emotionally much, much worse.
But now I have fallen between the cracks of both allopathic and naturopathic medicine, a space I didn’t think existed. I have an elevated resting pulse of 80-98, a feeling like at any moment I could pass out, pain and heaviness in my calves, and limb fatigue that was previously nonexistent.
It makes me realize I thought Karen Carpenter and Terry Schiavo and women like them, who spent their time and money trying and dying to be thin, were stupid. And now I’m as ’stupid’ as they. Only I’m still alive.
So my question, then, to you is, Mom - what would you have me do to lose weight? What would make you happy? Because under all that judgment about my body, I just don’t think you’d be happy if I died. And I don’t think either of us want to find out.
I’m sorry I’m not the thin daughter you really wanted. I’m sorry weight sticks to me like glue no matter what I do. I’m sorry I grew up in a home and a society in which my body makes me a pariah. But mostly I’m sorry that I don’t love me the way I am. How do I love myself when I feel ugly, and am unable to make the ugliness go away?
I guess somewhere deep inside me, I need to make ugly the new pretty.
And no, Mom, this isn’t me. The two-piece spandex jumpsuit in my closet is pink.
Love,
Melle
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I just want to give you a hug. You may not need one, but I need to give you one.
Awwwww, thanks hon! Hug received!