Food Fight

I love memes. Part of the reason I love them is that they make me laugh, and they are a great equalizer. Anybody with a funny thought can make one.  Since the coronavirus shutdown first began, we have all been flooded with memes, and they're hilarious. "Wash your hands to the intro for Law and Order", or "Is that you Rona?" 

There were some others that really caught my attention. The ones about the death of swimsuit season or the picture of a chubby baby with the caption, "When you've eaten all your quarantine snacks on the first day." The gist is that we're all being tempted to eat too much because we're bored at home.

 At about the same time, I saw a conversation between two women, obviously friends, on Twitter. This is not quoting exactly, but I'll paraphrase the best I can. 

"I can forget bathing suit season this year!"

"I know. I'm definitely going to gain five pounds, but I've felt so stressed. My body has needed the comfort, so I'm not going to be ashamed of that." 

I had mixed feelings about this exchange. For most normal people the concerns about "putting on a few pounds" during quarantine are real, but for people, like me, who even under the best of circumstances struggle with weight, it's downright terrifying. It's understandable to indulge in ice cream if you are going through a bad break up or to treat yourself to a crispy order of fries if you're having a bad day. But that only works if the sad feelings are temporary. Using food as a long-term coping mechanism, like any other addiction, can be very unhealthy. 

So a few weeks ago when quarantine started, I had a freak out. I lay there, sleepless, in the middle of the night worrying about my weight. The added stress and specific circumstances were making me want to eat, all the time. There in the silent dark I started thinking about my childhood as a fat kid. As a child, I was warned more than once that if I didn't stop gaining weight, I wouldn't be able to get out of bed. I would be stuck in my house. This was not some exaggerated or idle threat. It could happen. It does happen to people. Since then I have carried around a hovering anxiety, that if I didn't stay in constant vigilance over my diet and exercise, the unthinkable could happen. I hope you can see how being in quarantine stirred up all these deeply held anxieties for me. 

The good news is that I am okay. Thankfully after years of "Sweating to the Oldies," drinking chitosol shakes, not eating carbs, only eating carbs, and doing Weight Watchers, I have found a set of healthy guidelines for myself. I'm still a work in progress, but I can say I've figured out some healthy ways to cope. These strategies give me the know-how to steer myself back into a healthier direction when my eating gets out of control.  At the same time, I am still a big woman. I have never been to the doctor for help with any illness without hearing this, "I see that you are suffering from [fill-in-the-blank], but you know if you would just lose the weight..." I have not spent a single day of my life not being fat, but that's okay because I've also learned over time that how much I weigh is just one thing about me, and it's not even close to being the most important thing about me. 

Let me tell you a story. It takes place in my school's cafeteria. When I was thinking about my childhood eating issues several nights ago, I realized a lot of my battles with food took place there. It's where I took extra slices of pizza from other girls with different eating disorders. It's where I starved myself some days and binged on others in high school. Compared to the cafeteria at the school where I teach, our cafeteria was small -- maybe room for 100 kids at a time. Part of the reason I spent more time there than other kids is because I was in the "gifted and talented" program. A handful of us were bused from the elementary school over to the complex that housed the middle and high school once a week. That meant we had to eat our lunch in the cafeteria with the "big kids." I loved our teacher and the few other kids in my group, but I always dreaded going to the cafeteria. Our teacher had to give me pep talks to psych me up to go in there. 

That's when I met Ms. Martha. She was the lunch lady that collected the money at the end of the line. She wore a white apron and had short hair. She was also big; she was tall and quite heavy. I guess someone must have told her how I was paralyzed by my fear of coming into the lunch room with the older kids because she started making a serious effort to put me at ease. To be fair, she went to a lot of effort to put everyone at ease. 

This morning I asked one of my dearest friends about her memories of Ms. Martha. She said, "She was always smiling." And she was. Every student that came through the line was greeted and drawn into the atmosphere of love and joy that seemed to naturally surround her. I remember coming up to the glass door and looking to make sure she was there before I came in. Over time, her constant presence made coming to lunch something to be anticipated instead of feared. 

She stood at the cash register for nearly a decade of my school lunches. I can still picture her in my mind. When I was in the eighth grade, she died suddenly in a car accident. Even now I can remember how sad I felt when I found out. Lunch wasn't the same after that. There's a memorial page for her in my eighth grade yearbook. It says, "Martha worked in the HHS lunchroom for 16 years. She was a kind, compassionate person, who always wore a smile. No matter what a person did, or who they were, she loved them. She is greatly missed." I realize that sometimes peoples' positive attributes can be exaggerated after their deaths but not this time. Every word is true. 

The reason I wanted to tell you about Ms. Martha is that she, unknowingly, helped shape me. Even now I am staggered at the impact her consistent and simple kindness had on me as a child. I'm sure others feel the same. This morning my friend also reminded me that some kids made cruel jokes about her weight shortly after her death. I had forgotten about that, but they did. When I search back in my memory for those classmates, there's nothing there. It's like a missing tooth, just a blank hole. On the other hand, I've never forgotten Ms. Martha. All these years later, seeing her picture in my yearbook makes me feel so much joy because she is so beautiful to me. And I don't really care if our world's standards of beauty agree with me or not. I hope that thirty years from now when my students see my picture, they feel the same way about me. 

If you've read this far, let me say one more thing. Whatever brokenness  you have in your life does not define you. There are so many wonderful things about you that can't be eclipsed by a drug problem, an eating disorder, mental illness, or any other thing you feel is holding you back. I have a deep suspicion that you mean more to others than you know. So don't let this time of isolation get you down. Hang in there. 

Books I recently read related to this post:

All That's Good by Hannah Anderson

Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven