Unquiet
Things

There is no featured image for this post, although I do implore you to conjure forth in your mind’s eye the following…

My sisters call it a “Sarah special” – a bowl of Doritos, Cheetos, and Funyuns combined into what can only be described as a glorious trinity of processed corn product. It’s probably the last thing someone with borderline hypertension should be eating, which makes it both more delicious and more absurd. The tragedy lies in craving a combination of snacks that’s essentially a salt delivery system when your doctor has just finished explaining the DASH diet to you with the kind of patience reserved for tiny, willful toddlers.

It was a pleasure too private to share, too personal to expose to the judgment of others. The Sarah special lived as a family legend, passed between sisters who understood that sometimes comfort and camdaderie comes in a poorly balanced meal of neon-colored snacks eaten straight from an enormous Pyrex bowl at midnight while binging season 5 of BtVS.

I wrote about weight loss on this blog in 2014 and 2015. The posts still make me wince when I stumble across them in my archives. I called the series “weight loss for weirdos,” as if giving it a quirky name could mask what it really was: another chapter in a lifetime of trying to shrink myself to be worthy. Another echo of my mother’s voice, telling me from age five that my body needed fixing. No matter what size I was – and I’ve been many sizes – I never felt good enough, pretty enough, worthy enough.

I shared honestly, vulnerably, and some readers found comfort in that shared struggle. But I wonder how many others came to this corner of the internet looking for stories about art or perfume or death cafes, only to find yet another thin-seeking narrative. How many thought, “ugh, not this shit again, I thought this was a safe space!” The truth is, I was documenting my reality at that moment, but of all the stories I could have told about my body – about how it moves through the world, how it creates, how it loves – I chose to write about making it smaller. And quite honestly, I hate that for me.

Reading those posts now, I find myself wondering why I found my body’s measurements worthy of documenting at all. I spent precious words – hundreds of them – tracking numbers on a scale, as if that was a story that needed telling. As if the size of my body was somehow more compelling than all the other stories I could have been writing. I don’t want to shame that version of myself who thought these posts mattered – she was doing her best with the narratives she had inherited. But my body’s size was always the least interesting thing about me, even when I couldn’t see that.

Now my doctor tells me I need to lose 25 pounds and follow the DASH diet, and I find myself thinking about the sarah special. It was never a regular indulgence – more like a twice-yearly ritual when I had the house to myself. A ceremonial combining of three specific snacks that only happened in moments of perfect solitude. I never kept the ingredients on hand; buying all three required a deliberate choice, a specific journey to the store for the express purpose of eating them alone, unseen, triumphant in my orchestrated excess.

But of course, after my doctor’s visit and over the past few days, I’ve become obsessed with tracking milligrams of sodium – reading labels, measuring everything. The bizarre plot twist is that in trying to stick to low-sodium, unprocessed foods, I can barely consume enough calories to function. Each label I read is another door closing: this soup has how much sodium? This bread contains what percentage of my daily allowance?  My favorite Marie Calendar’s blue cheese dressing may as well be pointing a gun right at my chest. These numbers reshape my relationship with my kitchen, with hunger itself.

How’s this for growth? Me, the eldest child, the TAURUS… I enlisted help. The thing about carrying all this shame for a lifetime is that it gets tiresome. But I’m in my “fuck this shit in particular” era. Years ago, this news from my doctor would have been a secret I’d carry alone, something too shameful to share even with my partner. But I told Yvan first thing, and his immediate response was to talk about how we would address it – facts and numbers and plans. His approach was devoid of the emotional weight I might feel, because he’s far enough removed from my baggage and history to face it dispassionately, but also compassionately because he loves me and wants to help. There’s something freeing in having someone who can hold the problem lightly while still taking it seriously.

Nowadays I find that when friends post about their weight loss journeys on Facebook now, something in me breaks. Each time I press “mute” (or, more often than not, “unfollow”), I’m trying to silence more than just updates about calories and measurements. I’m trying to silence forty-three years of being told my body needs fixing, from my mother’s early diets to my doctor’s current concerns. But mostly, I’m trying to silence the voice that still whispers every time someone celebrates getting skinny: you are still fat.

Every transformation photo, every triumphant weigh-in sends me back to my own posts from 2014 and 2015, makes me want to delete every word I wrote about making my body smaller – but I can’t delete the shame that made me think those posts were worth writing. Each one betrays my body, which has carried me through every joy and grief. It betrays everyone else’s body, too, each one stubbornly existing in a world that has no interest in their strength or their struggle, only in whether they’ve managed to shrink themselves smaller. I want to be happy for my friends, but truthfully, I am just sad and hurt for all of us– especially those of us approaching 50 who can’t eat a bag of Funyuns anymore because it may literally kill them.

I may not be able to eat the snacks anymore, but I can still devour your stories. Tell me about your secret food rituals – the combinations that only make sense to you, the things you eat when no one is watching. Not because they’re shameful, but because they’re your own kind of special. Your sisters might even have a name for them.

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