Vo l . 8 N o . 2
Cynthia Steele
Technicolor Yawn
Have a technicolor yawn, bare guts to the world, revisit breakfast, vomit victuals, drive a porcelain bus, “better going down than coming up,” greet your guts. I know what it feels like to barf ice cream, cool and creamy. I didn’t let it stay down inside of me. I know the foods to avoid because they’re un-retch-able. I ran every day until I almost puked (ok, sometimes I did puke). I was a model, size 0, 1, or 3. I shopped the 5-7-9 1980’s junior clothing store priding itself in size shaming. I knew the pain of hitting size 7 and the thought of a whalelike body. I know the five month bloated abdomen of a woman who has just binged on chips and milkshakes and cookies and whatever. I’ve looked over my shoulder, pivoted, tossed the fur coat over the other shoulder, turned. Designer clothing. Many runways. My face on commercials between The Tonight Show and the nightly news. TV does not add pounds. It’s surreal. But, I never needed a screen to tell me I was fat. I’ve worn pants and skirts and corsets I could not breathe in. I’ve pulled over to the side of the road and got out because my clothing was strangling me. An air bubble, like a knife in my side in a too-tight dress. My weight has gone up and down 50 pounds many times and 100 pounds a couple. Now, it’s down 125 pounds, and I’m no longer in the 5-7-9 category. I’m in the 10’s. People said to me recently, “You never weighed 100 pounds more than you do now.” Hmmm. OK. I show them a photo. Yes, I have. The point: “So what?” Why does anyone care? I care for one reason: I’m a recovering bulimic. Even in recovery, size still matters. My goal: to not throw up one day at a time. No matter how fat or thin or horrendously medium my body is, I don’t want to reach a finger back, tracing it slowly way beyond the uvula to the deep bumps, less responsive through overuse. I don’t want to hurk up a cookie. I just ate three that I made with white and milk chocolate and a few handfuls of oats and walnuts. They were delicious. Followed by rice milk. Joy. Then the thought comes. No lunch. I ate a piece of bacon for breakfast. One. A few eggs. Some seed bread. These are my daily thoughts. What for dinner? Popcorn. With butter? Maybe. Does everyone’s mind think like this? I don’t know what it is like to Just. Eat. Food.
57 I am not gaining or losing. I’m stable. I’ll pound a few low sodium V8s. I’ll take two meds to void liquid and food because my system no longer works right: too many laxatives and too much throwing up for too many years. It holds on to everything for a week or two until I’m toxic. And, I’m not alone. A woman told me about watching TV with her husband, chewing food and spitting it into a cup, like chewing tobacco. Never swallowing. Made sense. To me. To her. I’ll go to the gym once this week, not every day. I fear obsessively working out. I’ll take Lilly to a puppy class. I’ll teach and learn from and care for my husband. I’ll decorate my life. But, I won’t throw up my food. No matter how tempting it may be. No matter if no one is looking. My body has been tiny, which I could not see, and it’s been huge. To me, it was all the same. I know what it is to have four chins. It sucks. If that’s you, I know. I get it. No one wakes up and says, “You know, rolls and rolls of fat under my chin might be kind of neat.” No one. No one wakes up and says, “Great, I have no waist, just lumps in the middle all the way around.” But, it happens. For me, I quit beating myself up, quit throwing up, and my blood pressure shot up and cholesterol went sky high. I almost died. While sitting in a chair in my living room, heart exploded one night in agony. A monster reached in, grabbed my heart, and ripped it out. I stayed the night in the hospital, and since then, doctors found significant cardiac damage. Normal for bulimics. Since then, arrhythmia, high and low blood pressure, a weak pulse. I’ve read that throwing up is a violent event. The sheer force of it can even cause blood vessels in the eyes to rupture. I ran as far as I could, and I’d listen to my stomach rumble, feeling good. I’d run daily. Six miles, eleven. At 11:30 p.m. I would congratulate myself. I couldn’t run when anyone would see me. I hated me. My body. My skin. The way my stomach was not flat enough, ever. Since then, I’ve had a few surgeries. My breasts have been lifted, reshaped. More confidence? No. I promptly gained 75 pounds. My stomach fat’s been frozen, but I gained 20 pounds immediately, so you couldn’t tell. Why? Why not lose weight and look amazing? Maybe it’s an inside job. Maybe I would never have felt “good” until I was thin enough to be poking through a coffin. It was just one more reminder that I wasn’t perfect. The demons more at my door than ever. Growing up, the people raising me said unkind things. They were young and harsh. I’m 50. You grow up.