Not Just a Number: A Young Adult Contemporary Novel

by Sara Michaels

  For so long, I had been sure that it had been my weight and my appearance that had scared him off, but maybe that wasn’t true.

  Maybe I had held on to Brandon for longer than was necessary because I thought being with him—the handsome, popular jock—somehow made me better, but, in truth, our relationship had just been holding me back from everything I could actually achieve. When I was with Brandon, I had minimized myself, made myself seem less smart, less driven, and less ambitious because instinctively, that was what I knew he needed.

  That was not fair, though, and it definitely was not healthy. I deserved to be with someone that celebrated everything that I was, and so did Brandon. It was sad that it had taken me developing an eating disorder to discover that I was fine, great even, just the way I had been, but such was life, I guessed.

  I laughed to myself as I sat on my bed, on my own in my room, thinking about how I sounded like an old lady in a rocking chair imparting wisdom on her grandkids. Maybe one day I would be.

  I stood up and looked in the mirror, thinking about that night when I still held my eating disorder so close to my heart, and hadn’t even identified it yet, that I had looked at myself and wanted to cry. It wasn’t like I thought I was a total knockout now, but I was able to look at myself more objectively. Ryan was a gorgeous guy, and he could pretty much have any girl he wanted. I had even seen Grace flirting with him on occasion before her and Brandon hooked up. Thankfully for all of us, he had brushed her off. I could not really picture him with her anyway. I did not think it to be mean, but I sort of thought she would bore the heck of him in half an hour. He had chosen me, though, and he had been so nervous when he asked me to prom that I could see that it really meant a lot to him. He had been terrified that I had not felt the same way and that he might say something that destroyed our friendship.

  In the moment that he had asked me, though, I had somehow recognized that our friendship had never really been just that.

  I could think back now and recall moments when our hands had touched and I had felt something, occasions when our eyes had met and something else was there. I had brushed all of that off, though; I had not even acknowledged it. Now I knew that we had always been more than friends. I was surprised that Kya, with her strong instincts about these things, hadn’t picked it up sooner.

  I still felt like the girl looking back at me from the mirror could do with some improvement, but I was able to acknowledge that I looked healthier. My eyes were brighter, and the dark purple bags under them were gone. Their color once again shone out as a feature I could be proud of. My hair had a bit of a gleam on the surface again. It had become very thin, though, and I hoped that as my overall health recovered, I would get back the thick, shiny locks I’d had before. It was funny how I had just taken it for granted. I had taken everything for granted, and I had almost lost it all so easily.

  Maybe I would be stuck with the flimsy hair I now had for the rest of my life as a warning not to slip back into my anorexia again. I made a mental note to ask Theresa about the long-term prospects of full recovery.

  Overall, I could now acknowledge that I had many features that had nothing to do with the number that came up when I stood on the scale. Perhaps, for the first time in a long time, I was able to see that I really was more than just that number.

  A knock on my bedroom door startled me out of my thoughts. Jennifer popped her head around the door with a big smile on her face. “Hey, may I come in?”

  “Of course!” I said.

  I owed my sister a lot. She had been truly kind about my behavior, and I hoped that one day I could repay her somehow. I had asked Mom how she had reacted when she had told her about my eating disorder, and she said that she was shocked. Just like everyone else, all the pieces had fallen into place when she thought about it in hindsight. It was a pity that we had to look at things in retrospect to fully understand them, and this was another lesson I would take from this experience. Live in the moment. Experience your emotions now. Don’t shove them down and pretend they aren’t there because, inevitably, without fail, they will come back to bite you.

  That was not just a lesson I would apply to myself either. I felt like this had taught me to be a more empathetic person too. I would do my best not to be so wrapped up in myself and my own stuff that I failed to notice what others may be going through.

  Jennifer had a loop of maroon organza over her arm and I realized, with panic-tinged interest, that it was her prom dress. The prom dress. My prom dress, hopefully. “So I know you are still fighting this thing, and there is a way to go yet, but,” she paused, perhaps considering whether or not she was doing the right thing, “maybe it’s time to try this on and see how far you’ve come?”

  It was a question, so I had the option to decline.

  The thought of putting on the dress simultaneously excited and terrified me. My hands were clammy when I took the dress from her, and I was instantly concerned I would stain it.

  This could be a defining moment in my recovery, I thought. If the dress fit, it meant I was well on my way, but it was not just about whether it physically fit or not. There had to be an emotional fit too. I had come to realize how closely entwined those two things were.

  The material shimmied over my bare skin as I let my shirt and jeans fall to the floor. I was facing the wall, and there was a moment when I thought it might be better to just put my jeans and shirt back on and leave the great reveal for another day. Then I thought about Ryan and how he had said that he could not wait to see me in it, and Jen was sitting on the end of my bed waiting for me to turn around. Maybe there would be no other day, and maybe today just needed to be the day.

  I took a deep breath and spun to face the mirror. I kept my eyes shut, and then hearing Jen’s gasp, opened them with a fright. Was it that bad?

  The image in the mirror was not what I had expected, and for a moment, it confused me. The girl in the mirror did not fill out the dress properly on top, the straps were a little loose, but there were no bulges or straining material—the images that had haunted my mind for months. The dress actually looked really flattering. The diamante waist rested perfectly around my middle, and I could picture it making me look quite curvy on top once I was able to fill it out.

  How strange, I thought.

  “Oh, Abby, you look beautiful.” Jen had her hand over her mouth, and her eyes were glistening. I really hoped she wouldn’t cry because I might just join in. She stood up and moved behind me, pulling the straps tighter and the bodice inwards so we could see what it would eventually look like. “You just need to put on a little more weight to fill out the top, but if you carry on as you are, you will be there in no time.”

  I stood for a little longer, silently staring at myself in the mirror. It was time to admit the truth to myself. If this dress was still slightly too big for me, that meant that I was nowhere near fat. Jen filled this dress out perfectly, and I would never describe her as fat. So, I guessed that meant that the reality was, I was not fat either. Was that something that I was ready to fully take on board? That I was not sure of yet, but this made a huge shift in my mental picture of myself. I suddenly understood how people with really advanced anorexia could be near death and still think they were fat. This disorder really did a number on your rationale.

  My heart ached for men and women who lived with this disorder on a daily basis and could not bring themselves to ask for help, just as I had not been able to. What if those people did not have a Ryan to force their hand and then hold it throughout their recovery? What if they did not have a Theresa to slowly guide their brains and bodies back to health? Would they ever experience the joy of understanding how wrong they had been?

  Jen had something else she wanted to say. “If you would be okay with it, I would also like to start making appointments for bridesmaid dress fittings again,” Jen said tentatively, clearly unsure of what my reaction would be. “But if you feel you are not ready, it is totally fine, we can wait as long as you need.�
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  I nodded quickly. “Yes, of course,” I said with conviction. “I’m really sorry you have had to put your life on hold like this for me, Jen.” I did not want to change out of the dress just yet, so I carefully lowered myself onto the bed and sat next to her.

  She turned to me, shaking her head. “Abby, my life was not on hold. You are as much a part of my life as my wedding. In fact, it has actually been nice to have a bit of a break from continuous wedding stuff.” We both laughed at that. “I also want you to know, Abby, that no matter if I’m married or if you are off at college, I am always going to be a part of your life, and you will always be a part of mine.”

  The lifting weight that I felt when she said those words made me feel like I had been holding my breath for a really long time. Like when you challenge yourself to stay underwater for as long as possible and then come back up and take a deep gasp of air, your lungs burning and your body celebrating the life-giving oxygen.

  As the air rushed back into me, I looked at my sister, the young woman who had been my hero and the person I modeled myself by. The way she had handled this whole thing was even more inspirational to me. She could have thrown me out of the wedding party or told me that I was just a spoiled brat that was trying to ruin her wedding. She hadn’t, though; she had loved me and embraced me with all my faults.

  “Thank you for saying that, Jen. I think that was something that was weighing on me.”

  As though realizing that I needed to stay in the dress a bit longer, Jen hugged me and then stood up to leave. “Well, that is yours now.” She winked at me. “You may as well hang it up in your closet when you’re done.”

  I smiled broadly. I had not told her that Ryan had asked me to the prom yet. I didn’t want to tell her right at that moment, though. I just wanted to soak in the experience I had just had.

  Jen clicked the door closed behind her, and I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror again. How strange that life can shift so sharply and suddenly you are working 180 degrees in the other direction. A few months ago, I was all gung-ho about Brandon, and now I realized how bad he actually was for me. Just a few weeks before, my goal had been to lose weight to fit into this dress, and now here I was, wondering how I could put on enough weight to fill it out. Wasn’t life strange?

  Or maybe it was not that strange. Maybe it was exactly as it was meant to be. I had never been much of a believer in karma and things always working out exactly as they were meant to, but I had to admit that this year had given me a bit of a different view on life. I had always felt like things just happened and there was no rhyme or reason to them, but the more I looked back and self-reflected, the more I could see that there really was an order to things.

  Order had been something I had sought so desperately that I had tried to manufacture it in my own life, to disastrous effect. It was kind of nice to think that maybe there was some type of order after all, even when everything felt chaotic. When everything was changing, then nothing was standing still, and there was purpose to that movement. I did not always need to understand that purpose in the moment, but it was most certainly there. Even when my life seemed most disrupted, there had been a perfect order to things happening right under my nose. I had just been too blind to see it at the time.

  17

  Theresa’s office had become a safe haven for me. I had not realized how many things I had to talk about until there was a professional to talk to, and especially one with such a caring and genuinely interested demeanor.

  The border collage was coming along nicely, and I was starting to see a change in the type of pictures that Theresa’s patient was painting. There were fewer darker images displaying turmoil and black spots within people. They still appeared occasionally but, for the most part, the pictures were brighter and cheerier. I had always wondered about the patient that drew these, but I knew that Theresa would not be able to tell me anything about her. All sessions and patient information were confidential, which was a comforting thought.

  It did not stop me from wondering about the mysterious artist, though. I wondered about the girl’s age. I had learned that while everyone thought eating disorders were something only teenagers developed, that was not correct. It also was not particular to one gender.

  My experience had made me look at the world in a very different way. I now realized that you didn’t really know what battles people were fighting.

  Theresa had asked for a minute while she made some notes about her previous patient, and when she was done and she looked up, she saw me looking at the border of pictures.

  “It is coming along nicely isn’t it?” she said.

  I smiled and nodded. “Yes, I feel like it’s almost representative of what happens in this room.” I had no idea where that had come from and thought that Kya would be proud of my sudden art interpretation skills.

  Theresa arched an eyebrow and cocked her head. I had come to recognize that tilted head as an indication that I had said something interesting. “How so?”

  I struggled to put it into words at first. “It’s just like,” I pointed to the first few pictures, “those pictures are pretty dark and sort of tell me that the person painting them was probably in a pretty dark place when she did them.” Of course I knew that not all art was representative of the artist’s feeling at that very moment in time, but I felt like this particular piece had to reflect how her patient had been feeling to a certain extent. If she was Theresa’s patient and she was sketching these in her office, those two things had to be tied in. I traced my finger in the air along the line. “Then as you go along, it sort of evolves, and the pictures get brighter and bolder, like maybe the person painting them is also getting brighter and bolder.”

  Theresa nodded slowly. “There are still some dark ones in between, though.” It was a question she wanted an explanation for, although I was quite sure she already knew the answer. Perhaps she just wanted me to say it out loud.

  “Of course, there are. There are always going to be dark days, but the bright ones outweigh the dark ones now.” I expected her to ask me if that was how I felt too or just what I saw in the pictures, but she didn’t.

  “I like that.” She smiled at me as though I had just introduced some new information to her life. “So, let’s talk about you.”

  I thought we had been talking about me, I wanted to quip.

  “How are you feeling about following your eating plan? Has it been difficult for you to relinquish control and follow someone else’s instructions?”

  I thought about the question for a while, no longer needing to distract myself by staring at the collage while thinking about Theresa’s questions. I was now able to more easily self-examine and be honest about things. I really thought that was a good sign, and it made me feel good without anyone else telling me that I should. Really, that was what I knew I needed to aim for.

  My sense of achievement and approval needed to come from within. The more I relied on others to define my self-worth, the more I was going to be doing things like this to try to prove myself. It did not work. I needed to make sure that my own personal self-worth was not linked to any external factors. It was easier said than done, but I felt lucky to have come to this conclusion. It was far better than going through my whole life self-destructing just because others weren’t giving me the validation I was looking for.

  It was a process, I knew, but I was getting better at self-examining and recognizing negative behaviors and their triggers.

  “You know, in the beginning, it was rough. I felt like I was being treated like a child, but the more I got into it, the more I realized that I still have control, just in a different way.” I explained to Theresa that before I felt like I was in control by not eating so that I could lose weight. Now I was still counting calories, but I was doing it to get my BMI back to where it needed to be in terms of gaining weight. “I think it helps a lot that I have a plan and I just need to focus on not letting anorexia take over again.”

  Theresa n
odded and smiled at me. “I’m really happy with your progress, Abby.” It felt good to hear that. I had come to really feel connected to Theresa. I could see that to her, her patients were people, not just brains, personalities, or bodies that she had to help heal. “You know that this is a long journey, though, and even though you are doing so well, you must understand that we will need to continue with our sessions for quite some time.”

  I not only understood, but I was glad. I had actually been apprehensive that once I was physically healthy again, the sessions would end. “I’m actually really grateful for our sessions, Theresa. So much is going on right now in my life and everything is changing, but my sessions with you are the one constant, and that’s really helpful.”

  Just as, on that first day, I never would have thought I would be sitting in a therapist’s office, now I could not imagine where I would be without one. I did wonder what would happen when I went off to college, but I was sure that if I still needed the sessions at that stage, Theresa could recommend someone good in Chicago. Or maybe I could still have sessions with her over Zoom.

  Theresa and I chatted about a few other aspects, and then my session was over and we said goodbye until next time...

  I turned my cellphone on as I walked out of her office, and a message from Jennifer came through. We had planned to meet for a bridesmaid fitting after my appointment, and she had promised to let me know when she, Jasmine, and Taylor got there so I could join them.

  Hey, Abby. We just got to the shop. We’ll wait for you.

  On my way, I replied.

  I was nervous. The last fitting had gone really badly, and even though I had a very different frame of mind now, I wasn’t completely happy with where I was. I just didn’t want to give Jen grief again.

  The shop was called Bride Times, and luckily it was within walking distance of Theresa’s office. I was not exactly sure why Jen wanted to try a different dress shop, but I did think we had tried on almost every dress in the previous shop and not found anything that we all liked. I hoped that it was not because she was embarrassed of the scene I had caused at the last one.