It Was Going Great Until, One Morning, I Blacked Out
“The doctor said she’s twenty-five pounds underweight.”
TW: anorexia, body dysmorphia
Amid my suspicions that my older son was autistic, eating food was a comforting ritual. Pregnant with my younger son, I went to a routine OB/GYN appointment. She asked about my diet; I said that I liked decaf lattes. She eyed my growing belly. “You’re getting them with skim milk, right? And a sugar substitute?” I shook my head. She grimaced.
I recalled Matthew Crawford in the fellowship hall at First United Methodist Church. A picky child, I skipped the casseroles and filled my plate with mostly bread items. Then, I sat down with two friends.
“You’re ugly,” Matthew Crawford said — nary a word of greeting.
My friends, Megan and Jamie, looked at each other in shock and then started to laugh. Matthew laughed, too — his bowl cut shimmying with each guffaw.
Outraged, I stood up and shoved my plastic chair against the folding table. I stormed out of the fellowship hall, leaving my plate behind. I knew I was bigger than Megan and Jamie — twig-thin girls who took gymnastics after school. Maybe that was why I was ugly. I wasn’t the kind of girl who rolled herself into a ball on a gym mat. I was the kind of girl who made pine-branch forts in my backyard and read Nancy Drew novels in my room. I also couldn’t do the splits — which, for a young girl in the ’90s, translated to social-pariah status.
I stopped eating, then. I invented reasons for eating less food: I was a vegetarian now. At lunch, I microwaved frozen broccoli, spooning limp florets onto a white tortilla. “Heather and her broccoli burritos!” my family would say. At dinner, I perfected the art of moving food into napkins, morsel by morsel. The paper towel in my lap would fill up; I’d throw it in the trash can and pull another paper towel from the roll.
It was all going great until, one morning, I blacked out at the top of the stairs. My mom loaded my siblings and me into a minivan and headed for the doctor that same day. I stepped onto the doctor’s scale: I was a mere ninety-five pounds.
My childhood pediatrician tapped at the slider above the scale. He exhaled sharply. “Based on her height, she’s about twenty-five pounds underweight.”
I bit back a smile. This whole thing had been some kind of contest in my mind — and I’d won.
As was customary after a doctor appointment, we headed to my grandparents’ house. (Their condominium complex was near the doctor’s office.) On the way over, my mom picked up lunch from my favorite fast-food restaurant. I chose my usual spot at my grandparents’ kitchen counter. My mom slid a paper-wrapped taco toward me.
“It’s time to eat, Heather.” Her tone was no-nonsense. “You heard what the doctor said.”
I nodded slowly and took a bite of my soft taco. Satisfied, my mom headed to the living room to chat with my grandmother. My grandfather, watching me from his recliner, slowly wandered into the kitchen. He slid onto the bar stool next to me and gestured toward my taco. “How’s that taste?”
“Good. You want a bite?” I held out my paper-wrapped lunch.
“No.” He smiled. “Thank you.”
We could hear my mom and grandmother talking in the next room.
“...The doctor said she’s twenty-five pounds underweight.”
“Well, I thought she was looking a little thin, but I wouldn’t have guessed that much!”
Silently, my grandfather stood up and pulled a tempered-glass plate from the overhead cabinet. He untwisted a loaf of bread on the counter, next to my grandmother’s half-eaten banana in pink Saran wrap, and retrieved a slice. Humming, he pulled a jar of Skippy brand peanut butter from the cabinet next to the oven. He dropped big goops of peanut butter onto the bread, then slid a knife over the slice, smoothing the goops into a single creamy layer.
“Mind if I eat with you?”
I shook my head.
He took a big bite of his open-face sandwich. “I love peanut butter,” he said, licking his fingers before wiping them with a paper towel. “I like tacos, too — but they don’t sit right with me.”
I finished my taco and balled the paper up.
My grandfather pulled a second taco out of the bag. “Have another.”
I wanted another. I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten a substantial meal in so long. I unwrapped the taco without protesting. I sunk my teeth into the soft tortilla and juicy meat.
Years later, my coffee-shop usual was a sugar-dusted blueberry scone and a full-fat iced vanilla latte. I ate it slowly, savoring each salty-sweet crumb, washing the dried blueberries down with sweet milk and espresso. That combination of flavors meant safety. We’d leave the children’s hospital, or yet another therapeutic evaluation, and — on the way home — I’d get my usual. “Do you want that scone warmed?” Did they even need to ask? The taste of icy vanilla and warm blueberries meant that yet another appointment — an appointment in which I was informed of all the ways my son didn’t measure up to a mysterious set of standards — was over.
At thirty-seven, my perception of food has shifted significantly. I’ve learned that peace is found in Christ and Christ alone. I understand the rightful place and purpose of food. Food, in the end, is meant to sustain life. Several years ago, I developed a friendship with the mother of a young boy who received nutrition exclusively via a feeding tube. While other parents worried their kids might not get cast in a school play, this mother grieved the reality that her son would never orally consume a meal. Her kitchen counters were perpetually littered with organic fruit and vegetable peels — food her son would never taste, but food she daily prepared for his feeding tube. For this woman and her family, the experience of eating and serving food was highly emotional and intimate. Knowing the complexities that surround the act of eating for many — those living in poverty, those living with disabilities, and others — has cured me, mostly, of the desire to under-eat or overeat.
In the end, the boy in the fellowship hall was wrong. Ugliness isn’t a physical trait. Ugliness contorts the soul, not skin and bones. The beautiful one, to me, is the mother who spends her days preparing food her child will never taste. She understands that what is hidden inside a body, what is secret, gives life.
“‘For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’”
(1 Samuel 16:7b)
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Everything you write is so powerful Heather. I look forward to your posts. Thank you for sharing them with us.
Oh, Heather. What pain we can put ourselves through in the name of self-improvement. Thank you for sharing this.