I’m really glad you’re happy that you’re losing weight, mom. I’m happy that this is making you more confident in yourself. I’m happy that you get to buy a bikini for the first time in 30 years and are going to be brave enough to wear it in public. I’m happy that you make enough money that you can afford weight loss drugs, because you’ve tried so many diets over the years and none have helped you.
Please. Please stop telling me every week. I know you feel good about yourself now. I know you don’t intend to make me feel like this. Right? Or Is this punishment of some sort? After years of telling me that it was my fault, that you gained weight with your last pregnancy and could never lose it. Is that what this is? I remember being 13 with an undiagnosed and ignored eating disorder and skipping meals, making myself throw up whenever I could, because you were so focused on loudly counting calories that I thought I was disgusting for liking food. Now I’m an adult with a different kind of eating disorder. I either don’t eat at all, or I eat until I throw up because I never was allowed to enjoy food before, and there’s this fear in me that eating will become something that’s shameful again. I guess it is, just in a different way. Instead of being afraid to eat a slice of bread by myself, now I’m afraid of eating in front of other people. I used to think that if I was fat that I deserved to be dead, and now I can’t even imagine feeling thin anymore. Both are curses in themselves.