**Trigger Warning: This article includes discussion of eating disorders, body dismorphia, body shaming, and body image.**
Dear Louise,
There are many memories I’ll cherish from our summer spent together here at Kenyon during KEEP. Memories of dirty rivers and really beautiful sparklers, but none of them will ever be as special to me as was my first lunch with you.
I had picked up a standard portion of something, and had eaten it pretty quickly. I nonchalantly said, “I think I kind of want a second plate,” or at least my remark would have appeared nonchalant to you. How were you to know that in Colorado I spent most of my high school career trying to be thinner, by any means possible.
How were you to know about my friends from high school? They were well-meaning, but they were about my size or smaller and very obsessed with their weight. If they weren’t complaining about their legs or their desperate need to lose five pounds, then they were dieting. I tried to keep my head above water. But I couldn’t not body shame myself when I had a circle of friends who were body shaming themselves, and by extension doing it for me.
You see, when my friends, who were about 15 pounds lighter than me, scrutinized themselves in a mirror for being fat, I used to lay on their bed and wonder, “What in the hell do you think of me?”
And when my friend of the exact same size began eating at least three times less than me at lunch and complained about her stomach, suddenly both my stomach and my portion seemed disgustingly large.
And when my friends vocalized their discontent for their “repugnant,” yet much-smaller-than-mine, limbs, I felt victimized. Did my friends think that my body was disgusting? Probably not, but watching them loath theirs was enough proof for me that they hated mine too.
So I spent four years being ashamed to ask for more food at their houses. I spent four years watching them eat morsels for lunch, and I spent four years “nonchalantly” saying “I kind of want more food” to judge how they would react to me getting more than I had already ate. Usually their reactions were to divert, and say something like “REALLY? I am so full!” as if to remind me of their superiority of skinny. Sometimes they just grimaced, plainly saying (but not saying) “This is why you’re bigger than us.”
“I kind of want food” was a defense mechanism.
You couldn’t of known that Louise, so you don’t quite know why I often looked misty-eyed during all our meals. You couldn’t have known why it made me so happy to hear you say that first day after my “nonchalant” comment: “Oh good me too, let’s go get more!”
In all our meals during KEEP and even today I have never heard you bash yourself. I have watched you eat cake waiting in line to get more food. It is still one of my favorite Louise moments not for the humor, but for the way I saw you unabashedly eat.
What a beautiful thing, to eat without any guilt or remorse.
Throughout KEEP, I ate with you everyday. When I insecurely said, “I kind of want more food” you either came to also get more or came with me as I picked out more to eat. Sometimes we need people like that, you know? People who will just come with you. Perhaps deep down we both knew that I just needed someone—anyone in my life—to offer me that support.
And during KEEP, we went back for plates of onion-rings and for dessert during lunch and dinner, and you never said once during your meal that you felt guilty. You never once said that bullshit thing about finally deserving food because you had worked out.
You were Louise, the moon and the sun shined for you, and what a ludicrous idea to think such a force of nature would ever not deserve all the food she wanted.
You never talked about your body while eating. You never bashed it or bashed others. And when I gained weight at KEEP, and when I pointed it out to you, you said, surprised, that you had not noticed.
And that was new Louise, because I’ve never had friends who didn’t notice. I always had friends who noticed when my portions looked large or when I was eating an unhealthy meal. My friends always noticed, always scrutinized, but you didn’t. And when you noticed that I was insecure about my weight gain, you made care to be extra gentle.
So now it’s November. Sometimes the old habits come out, and I’ll say “I think I kind of want more food.” It doesn’t really matter though, because I know you’ll come with me either way, and we’ll laugh all the way to the brownie stand, and we’ll come back and just eat.
Thank you, Louise, for just letting me eat.
Love always,
Becca
Image Credit: Becca Pachl