Skinny B*tch

So I saw a co-worker the other day who reminded me of a rather disturbing moment from my past. I remember being within earshot of her one day (when she didn't know I was) and heard her describe someone as "you know, the new girl—that skinny bitch who works for X." I was stunned. I knew it had to be me, since I was the only person remotely "new" to my boss's employ (though I had been there six months). But I had never, ever before been referred to this way. I mean, I've been called a b*itch, to be sure, but never a skinny b*itch.

And the sad thing is, instead of being incensed, I felt that sort of pleasantly-shocked feeling that must be when the dark horse in the running for Best Actress hears her name called at the Oscars. Skinny? ME? Wow! I didn't hear what she went on to say, but honestly, at that point, she could have said my face looked like roadkill, and I still would have been hard-pressed not to kiss her on the lips.

The truly sad thing about this episode was not just that I didn't mind being called a b*itch so long as the word "skinny" preceded it, but that the very reason I was so wafer-thin was that I was incredibly ill. Physically, mentally, emotionally—the whole schmear. My stomach had taken on some kind of regular vomiting schedule to the point where I wondered when people were going to ask me, " So did you already stick your head in the toilet today, or are you not slated until the afternoon on Wednesdays?" I had never been to doctors before, but everyone around me was so worried as I lost five, ten, fifteen pounds that I saw doc after doc, miserable procedure after miserable procedure, only to have them say, "Huh. Wow. There's nothing wrong." This was sometimes followed by a "that must really suck for you, huh?"

The statement that there was "nothing wrong" applied only to my GI tract, it turns out. At that time, I was also closing in on the end of my marriage, and my only friends were two co-workers, one of whom was as volatile as me. I was also trying to raise a two-year-old, and I was at a total loss as to what to do. I felt guilty that I didn't want to spend more time with my boy and saw him more often as high-maintenance and less often as the charming but strong-willed child he must have been. I felt guilty that I could tell my friends things I couldn't talk to my husband about, guilty for being sick and having to ask my husband to take our son on our Usual Saturday Outing by himself and for ruining Father's Day because I couldn't eat.

I honestly think that I was so mentally screwed up that my metabolism was in overtime just to keep me from asking around for cab fare to the bridge. Whatever the case, the ensuing separation and inevitable divorce didn't relieve any of the pressure—now I felt guilty about bailing on my marriage, guilty that I was a single mother part-time and still didn't know what to do with the poor kid now caught in the middle of all of this shit. My relationship with my work friend went to another level, but it didn't help—I felt guilty about that, too, and our intertwining instabilities often made things emotionally explosive. I clung to him like a lifeline, and I think the weight was just too much for him.

But things were not all bad—I was getting help from an APRN, which is medical terminology for "the person who helps more than any doctor could because she helps fix the Crazy." My family was there for me as much as I let them be—though I cannot imagine any of them even wanted to SEE me again after proving what a waste of carbon-based life form I was over our Christmas visit that year—brooding in my room, staying up too late, fretting over text messages from my work friend that did nothing more than make me even crazier, and then being crabby with everyone when I was around. But they hung in there, trusting, I guess, that this miserable shell was covering up a reasonably nice person who was just having kind of a rough go of it. And, surprisingly, I didn't get fired, despite being the World's Most Worthless Employee.

And of course there was the fact that I was thin. And people noticed, often in envy. I got to complain about not being able to find clothes small enough to fit me (which makes me want to hit my formerly scrawny self—just a good old-fashioned dope-slap). I remember one person and his family of giants always remarking, in kind of an awed tone, that I was "just SO tiny!" I halfheartedly tried to gain weight, but it wasn't happening, and frankly, I didn't care. I loved being able to eat whatever I could and still look like I'd blow away in a good breeze.

I know we all wax Sober and Deeply Concerned by this culture's obsession with the size and shape of women's bodies. I of all people was a stalwart crusader against objectifying women's bodies—my sister's eyes might roll out of her head if you ask her whether I ever shared my strong opinions on this with her, because I did to the point that she never even wanted to point out that there were, like, women in the world. At all. She thought nothing of what I saw as a raging social injustice, really, which always stunned me since she works in a very man-dominated field and even thought once that she got a job because of the way she looked in a skirt. So I was intensely offended by our culture's focus on women's bodies, including their thinness—or lack thereof. But just as the Universe had laughed while She slapped away my pre-conceived notions of motherhood (We'll co-sleep! I'll never use formula! He'll never Cry It Out!), so too did She sit smugly by while I fell down the well of being thin. Or, more to the point, Being Prideful of Being Thin.

But things changed. I went to a new place of clarity, mentally and emotionally, and while I didn't become the Poster Child of Mental Health, I was able to stop checking my phone every two minutes to see if I'd missed a call or a text message. I was still impatient with my son, but I enjoyed being with him more often than not. I was more comfortable in (or perhaps less eager to spontaneously molt out of) my own skin.

And I gained 25 POUNDS in SIX WEEKS. I went from thin to not-so-much in less than two months, and it freaked me out. The irony was not lost on me—that the conditions that had lead to my unhealthily low weight had mended somewhat, only to be torn again by the fact that I gained the weight back and then some. I had said during my illness that "I'd rather be fat and happy than to be skinny and miserable," but it turns out that wasn't true, and it fills me with great sadness to realize that now.

I'm kind of, sort of, maybe even generally in a better place now. My weight has fluctuated over the intervening two years; I've participated in a number of Personal Dietary Experiments that would make a rat in a nutrition science lab appear to have a consistent and healthy diet, even when feasting only on Hot Tamales and Funyuns. Mostly, though, I have tried to look beyond the surface and have figured out (quelle shock!) that my Food Issues are NOT ABOUT THE FOOD. And that even though I know in my heart that being skinny is not a marker of personal worthiness (as any great diet book will tell you), it's still a haunt that I feel creeping behind me as I look in the mirror during kickboxing or look down at my legs as I'm running on the treadmill.

I doubt in this culture that nagging feeling will ever truly go away and that I can, as every self-actualized woman should, claim to be "really just interested in being healthy" and mean it. Right now I'm just kind of hoping to skew towards that goal as time marches on and the ephemeral lure of some kind of ideal body starts to take a back seat to spending time with my family and actually enjoying it. You know, instead of, well, freaking out that I have no control over these lovely but sometimes maddening people's ways of being and turning that need to control something towards food or exercise.

I'd like to learn how to be healthy (or how to want to "just be healthy") rather than mask a desire to be thin in the swaddling clothes of "the pursuit of wellness." But I'm not going to blow sunshine up my own skirt and suggest that has happened yet.

Has anybody figured out how to beat this monkey off one's back? Are there really people out there who eat healthy without obsessing about it, who think about the fitness aspect of exercise before (or, in the truly evolved, without) considering the calories burned or the effects of said exercise on one's metabolism? People who don't mind 10 lbs of fluctuation in weight? Or people, God love them, who DON'T get on the scale every day?

Seriously, I want to know, and I want to know how. I need a roadmap. THAT'S the kind of diet book we need—writing the words "skinny b*itch" reminds me of the vegan manifesto in which the skinny b*itch is in the kitch, which is apparently her only respite from blathering on and on about what an idiot you are if you eat meat or dairy and thinking that if she just throws some Shocking Curse Words or heaps on the verbal (written?) abuse, that you will reform your nutritional acts of terrorism. I don't need that shit. I need a book that tells me how to break away from crappy labels like that and just BE. Being "in the moment" for me is about as likely as winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, so I'm going to need a step-by-step, how-to kind of guide, not an end-of-yoga-class guided meditation on Experiencing the Now. Got anything?