Food Fights: Stretched skin and other sexy stuff (part 5)

Or: The random thoughts of me, only smaller

By Karen Secord

I didn’t write anything yesterday. It rained. That’s really all I remember — except that this was the day I decided to be okay with being me. “Karen is okay”. That is my new mantra. And I will smile when I say it. No drama. No self-loathing. No soul-sucking negativity.

I’m not sure if this most unusual of epiphanies accosted me now because today I am 91 lbs lighter than I was a mere 6 months ago. Or, if there is some other more obscure reason. All I know is that today I feel peaceful. There is no need to reign in my mind. It is illuminated at last. Accessible.

Finally, I have accepted all the change. Even though the girl who looks back at me from the bathroom mirror isn’t anyone I recognize, I remind myself that, in fact, I know her insides quite well.

The reality is this: I’ve lost the weight of an average “tween”. My muffin-top knees are all but gone. The softly rounded and protruding flesh from ribs to pelvis remains, only in a much altered form. I touch it often. Stare at it with great amusement, squish it between my fingers, and play with it. It is droopy and wrinkly, but it weighs nearly nothing it would seem.

When I was big — and those pockets of fat were filled — there were times when I willingly gave myself up. I didn’t want to be me. Or, more likely, I didn’t know who me was. I suppose I always had this vision of who I wanted to be. I stubbornly invented a me that would fit the mould. She just wasn’t the thin me everyone else thought I should be.

For a time I admit to making myself big and loud. As if a bear were attacking. I would scare him away with my girth.

Today, my size is irrelevant. I feel like a writer, on this day where I promise myself that I will not write. And that is who I really always wanted to be.

I will not write today. Tomorrow I will open up the computer, close my eyes and organize my feelings. I will tackle the job of sorting through my mangled thoughts. Afterwards, I promise, I will be buoyed by an excess of motivation and confidence.

As much as it pains me to admit it, losing weight has helped me to overcome the crippling anxiety that often haunted me. No more shaking from the inside. Only a few weeks ago, or some time ago, I was crazy dizzy. The world was spinning around me and in me. It was difficult to balance upright, on my own feet. My feet were grounded but I was not.

Dehydration and low blood pressure were the verdicts. How could that be? The me I was had no trouble drinking. I always drank with meals. My fingers, like the rest of me, were plump not shrivelled. And I had hypertension. I took medicine.

Apparently those days are gone.

Seems that I lost weight and now society calls me “normal”.

Karen is okay!

(Note: You can find Karen’s previous ‘Food Fights’ entries in the Article Archive.)