I took an innocent drive in the country today, just me and my son out to enjoy a sunny Sunday at my folks’ house. Or at least, that’s what I thought. It turns out I had a secret agenda, which my clever husband uncovered, at great personal pains, later on this evening.
Recently we’ve embarked on a personal overhaul, possibly brought on by our unbridled joy at the inauguration, and partly fueled by the fact that we have very little money these days. My dearly beloved and I could each stand to lose quite a bit of weight. We have a crazily energetic four-year-old who loves to bound up and down stairs waving a light saber, and neither of us thought it would be psychologically healthy for the lad if we dropped dead one day in the middle of playtime. We both love food, but we love our son more and so we are trying. Really trying. Weekend discussions of where to get takeout have been replaced by menu planning, and debates about the many disguises one can give spaghetti squash. Thrilling stuff, I can tell you. We’ve each given up a list of food that’s as long as your arm, or long enough to wrap around my thighs say, just to be kind, twice. We’ve stuck with it so far, too. Through two birthdays, Valentine’s Day, and at least ten different “special days” at my work, schools are really just fronts for sugar factories, didn’t you know? But that’s another story.
In short, too late, we are pretty damn proud of ourselves and the fact that we are starting to see progress. Very, very small progress, but a positive change (well, a negative change actually), and our clothes are starting to fit better already. Nobody but us would notice the difference yet. Well, perhaps our loved ones would notice. At least, I was hoping they would when I decided to go deliver Valentine’s Day flowers to them in person today. I was beaming as I announced our new project, and shared our success. Surely these people who raised me, who have seen me struggling with my weight for the past twenty years would recognize and support my accomplishment.
“How much weight have you lost?” was my father’s skeptical question. Oh. Then he went on to describe how he and my mother follow South Beach diet to the letter, which clearly, we are not doing.
Crushed is such an inadequate word to describe how you feel when the people you love most, the ones you still depend on for support no matter how old you may be, let go of your hand over the drop off. In just a few words my father is capable of destroying me, when all it would take are just a few of the right words to put things forever back on the right track.
Why am I, almost forty, still so dependent upon his approval? I ask myself over and over again, particularly today as I was driving back home, defeated and wanting to eat. I asked myself as I waited so impatiently for my loving husband and son to go out sledding, so that I could gorge myself on whatever was handy. It had been nearly a month since I’d done this, my escape mechanism grinding into action again. Deluge the brain with fat and carbohydrates, and the pain might go away. The questions don’t give up so easily. Why am I so unlovable, so unsuccessful, in the eyes of the first man who loved me? He does love me, I believe it with all of my heart, but the way he’s always chosen to show it has damaged me; sometimes I worry, possibly beyond repair.
My husband caught on to the fact of what I’d done when he got home, and he said all of the right things. He is a man who loves me for who I truly am, and I know how fortunate I am to have him, and my son, who I can count on for support at any time. And yet here I sit, still feeling inadequate because once again I have failed. I cast out my line and came up empty yet again. And in the back of my mind I wonder if I will be doing this forever, all because it’s what I’m used to, and recovery is the black unknown in front of me.
