A Great Big Love

by Alona Jarden

  "For some reason, I believe you." She chuckled lightly. "But I'm not going to stay fat, so I can't be your fat anything."

  "Sure. Everyone here is going to lose the weight, right?" I started to laugh, but stopped once I noticed that she wasn’t.

  "You can joke all you want, but one day, I really will lose the excess weight."

  "And I will land on the moon! And be a group guide for fatsoes at the beginning of their journey, like Janice," I said gesturing again toward our leader.

  "No, Don. I won't be like her. I'll really lose the weight."

  "If so, Michelle, I guess I'll see you here tomorrow morning." I managed to say before the bell Janice was holding rang, and everyone took their seats so they could continue complaining about their ongoing struggle with their emotional eating.

  Chapter 3

  Michelle

  At the end of that meeting, I took off as if my life depended on it.

  Something in the way Don looked at me made me really uncomfortable, or maybe it might have been the comfort that his look gave me, that was so uncomfortable.

  I hurried to where I parked my car, making sure no one was trying to follow me and breathed a sigh of relief after realizing that I was all alone in the parking lot.

  I crammed myself into the driver's seat, pulled out the box of sliced vegetables, reluctantly chewed some of them, and set off to start the rest of my day.

  My job as Noel's personal manager allowed me to plan my schedule however I wanted, and I took advantage of that. I arranged all meetings based on the load I could handle, and in the meantime, I seemed to be doing a pretty good job at it all.

  The cityscape passed me by, and I tried to run my daily tasks through my head, but thoughts of that Don guy I met still bothered me.

  I couldn’t let go of how easily he held his hands out to his sides and declared himself a fat person. I've been sitting in these meetings for over a year, and still didn't dare raise my hands and share anything about my personal life with any of them.

  I suppose that if my presence there were conditional to me sharing my feelings and low self-esteem, I would probably retire. Luckily, though, Janice allowed me to sit there in silence every morning and roll my eyes at them judiciously. But him? How did he refer to himself? A mammoth? A human couch? An oversized potato?

  He was so different from anyone else who came in or out of those morning meetings.

  I actually couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the trip, after I remembered Janice's face as he supplied more and more alternative ways to say he was fat.

  Word pairs are the worst. Self-image, over-weight... Man…How many times in my life have I heard these annoying words and not always used them accurately. Low self-image, high self-image, you have to work on your self-image, you need to make peace with your self-image... Ugh, I'm sick of it. It's been years since I was able to stand word pairs. For years I’ve done my best to avoid them.

  When I talk to others, I try to say exactly what I think they prefer to hear. I have long since stopped sounding my true voice, except for a few times when I accidentally spit out my nasty comments, as happened that morning in the support group.

  Usually, I find it easier to agree with the claims that my lifestyle is unhealthy or that I must learn to come to terms with myself. Sometimes I get carried away and expand that my goal is to forgive myself for coming to such an extreme situation. People love hearing how I realize that I have no reason to punish myself and how I'm willing to accept my appearance. Be that as it may, when I look at my reflection in the mirror, I know that it's all bullshit.

  I will never be able to raise my hand and shout out, 'Hey, I'm Michelle, and I'm fat.' Even though I nod in agreement when some people advise me to do so. I'll never be okay with the huge pieces of fabric I call shirts sitting in a neat stack above one another in my closet, and I'll never be okay with having to think twice before placing my body weight on a particular surface, hoping it will hold me.

  Never.

  "Good morning." Noel smiled at me from inside her office while continuing with her phone conversation.

  "You!" I turned firmly to Nathan, and he immediately sat upright in his chair. "Where's the report you were supposed to submit yesterday?"

  "I... I gave it to Noel yesterday. She... Didn't she tell you?"

  "Did you submit it on time?"

  "Yes." He swallowed hard.

  "So, why are you so stressed?" I smiled at him and went on. "If you submitted it on time, what are you stuttering about, huh? By the way, Nathan, you did a great job! I saw your report. It was business-oriented, and most importantly, very helpful."

  "You scared me. I thought that—"

  "Well, you shouldn’t have. You should do me and yourself a favor and stop with the unnecessary guilt shifting." I was a real heroine in advising others to do what I couldn’t and continued. "You have no reason to doubt yourself every time I come close to your desk."

  "If you say so," Nathan mumbled, and I could tell he was wondering if he was allowed to break eye contact with me.

  "I'm serious, Nathan. Let loose."

  "Okay."

  "And anyway—"

  "Stop harassing my employees!" Noel called out from behind me, interrupting my conversation with Nathan. "Come on. We have a lot of work to do." She invited me to join her in her office, and I happily obliged.

  For quite a long time, I helped Noel plan a logical schedule for the afterschool activities of her young daughters. One that wouldn’t create a conflict with the days she promised her husband she wouldn’t work late and also one that would leave enough free time for us to have fun. Next, we compiled a list of employees eligible for the annual bonuses and even got as far as to decide what awards would be given to those who had performed outstandingly in the traditional annual toast, which was upcoming.

  "...Which brings us to the next thing I wanted to talk about," Noel said, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms behind her head, "The most glamorous event of the year. Are we having the 'My-boss-thought-a-cabin-in-the-woods-was-a-beautiful-place-to-drink' gathering again?"

  "I think we should, yes. There's ample parking, the location is convenient for most employees, and the rental charges and catering costs are relatively low compared to the other places I checked."

  "But I hate the atmosphere there. It doesn’t feel like a party, Michelle. It's a douchebag toast with sad elevator music, and everyone's just miserable that they're obligated to come."

  "Not everyone." I smiled.

  "Okay, not all of them." She waved her hands at me. "Sandra from accounting is very glad that she's the host of the evening, but other than her, everyone else just wants to get the annual bonus and go home."

  "I don't understand what you expect there to be."

  "I want a party! I want to dance, I want everyone to post blurry stories on Instagram, and I want them to violently vomit from alcohol—"

  "And, I want to schedule a psychiatric evaluation for you," I interrupted her, and we both laughed for several minutes.

  Noel always dreamed of managing her office workers as their friend and not as their boss, but her meticulous nature prevented her dream from coming true.

  She'd been dealing with the contrast between her desire to be soft and accessible and her need for control for as long as I can remember.

  I often wondered if she was just paying herself lip service like I usually do, or if she really did want to be different.

  "Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she began, as it turns out, they're going to open a gym on the second floor."

  "How does that have anything to do with us?" I asked, playing dumb.

  "I thought we could offer them a collaboration. Wouldn't you want to stop at the gym on your way home?"

  "No, thank you. I'm already subscribed to a gym near my house."

  "You are?!" Her face wrinkled with disbelief.

  "No need to be alarmed, Noel. I said I was a member of my neighborhood gym. I never said I was act
ually going there."

  "So why are you still a member if you—"

  "Because one day," I interrupted knowing exactly how she was going to finish her sentence and made sure to explain farther, "One day I'll decide to live healthier, and when I do, I want all options available and immediately accessible for me." I ended the discussion and casually changed the topic to other issues that were on the agenda.

  Soon enough, my workday came to its end.

  Since I left my parents' house, I would take advantage of the drive home to talk to them, though it's hard for me to say that I missed them.

  Sometimes, if my dad answers the phone, I might find myself strengthened by our conversation, but when my mom is the one who would undoubtedly answer, I would have to breathe deeply before even greeting her.

  "Hello?" She answered my call almost immediately.

  "Hi, Mom." I slowly exhaled the air I previously inserted into my lungs.

  "Hey! It's my beautiful girl! How are you?"

  "Everything is fine, how about you?"

  "Oh, yesterday we had a wonderful evening." Within seconds she made use of my interest in her and elaborated in great length on their busy social life "...And that's about it. Nothing new besides that."

  "Nothing new… You're so funny," I replied with a smirk.

  "I'm glad to hear, but that's no joke, Michelle. It's actually the truth. Our lives are dull compared to the life of a career woman such as yourself."

  "Yeah, right."

  "Come on, tell me about you. What's new with Noel?"

  "She wants me to tell her about me and then asks about Noel..." I muttered to myself. "Do you want me to tell you about Noel?" I asked aloud.

  "Yeah, what's new with her?"

  "Not much. We're getting ready for the annual toast, the girls started their new school year, and I thought about starting—"

  "Oh, that's wonderful! What grade are they in now? They're probably all grown up already."

  "Brittney started first grade, and Meghan is in third. The year started really smoothly for both of them. No emotional outbursts whatsoever," I finished giving her an update about the granddaughters who weren’t hers.

  "Oh, that’s good to hear. Just great." I thought she was going to end the call, but I was unpleasantly surprised when she went on. "And when are you planning to come and visit me in Miami again?"

  "I don't know, Mom. I'm not sure."

  "What do you mean? Aren't you coming for the holidays?"

  "I... You know what? I have a call waiting. It's work, and I have to take it, Mom," I lied and kept on lying. "I'll call you back in five minutes."

  "No problem. I'm here, my beautiful girl." It sounded like she was smiling when I hung up the call without any real reason to do so.

  “My beautiful girl,” I mimicked to myself.

  She always called me that, but somewhere during fourth grade, I stopped feeling like I was her beautiful girl.

  Growing up as a fat girl would be a challenge for everyone, but being fat in Miami is almost impossible.

  On sunny days, when all my friends would walk around wearing minimal tank tops, I wrapped myself in overalls. On the holidays, when the city was overflowing with tourists and guests, I preferred to stroll around with Noel in the mall or to stay in my air-conditioned home.

  I grew up in a city defined as a summer town. And me? I just prayed for weather that would justify the massive clothes that fit me, not to mention the sweat stains that appeared everywhere possible the second I stepped out into the humidity and on rare occasions in which I went to the beach.

  I suddenly remembered how just a moment ago, my mother had expressed her interest in me through Noel's life. I got upset, but that wasn’t her fault. I'm the one who insisted on combining my life with Noel’s. I'm the one who connected my luck with hers, and I'm the one who found all my social needs in Noel. So my mother is right to assume that what goes on in Noel’s life actually reflects on what goes on in mine.

  Just as my mother suspected, in the past few weeks before that call I had been obsessed with parental gatherings, buying the necessities needed for the beginning of the school year, wrapping the girls' books, and writing their names on their various notebooks.

  I guess I've engaged myself in Noel's life due to the absence of any real interest I had in mine, but I was okay with that.

  It's been that way forever with us. When I make Noel’s missions my own, it makes me feel like my life has real meaning and that I’m not all alone, as I actually was every time I walked back into my desolate apartment.

  About three hours later, after I devoured a large pile of cabbage leaves, chopped cucumbers, a basket of cherry tomatoes, a few cauliflower heads, some peeled kohlrabi strips, a medium-sized can of corn kernels, three fried Portobello mushrooms, and one large raw zucchini, I was still hungry.

  I turned off the TV when the credits for the movie I was watching began to roll and tried to ignore the croaking noises coming out of my stomach.

  "Stop whining!" I said to it. "In terms of volume and capacity, you're supposed to be full." I tried to appeal to it with simple physics, but the laws of physics didn't apply to my stomach when it came to it being hungry.

  Since the last time I collapsed at home, I tried to maintain a healthier diet. I wasn’t going to show up for all the follow-up doctors' appointments that I scheduled, but I did decide that I had to be healthier. Not because I wanted to look better, but because I didn’t want to pass out again of cardiac arrhythmia.

  I didn't declare to anyone that I'm going on a diet. I didn't need their unnecessary fake words of encouragement, nor any grids and goals that I would surely fail to achieve. I just started buying less processed food, tried not to overeat the regular junk that would be my snacks during the boring hours I spent alone in my apartment, and avoided eating fast-food, although every now and then, without any intention, I found myself at the end of a chocolate bar or two.

  I loved binging, but since I couldn’t binge on food anymore, I binged on TV sitcoms or romantic comedies that reminded me how I would never be in the heroine's predicament.

  "Do you hear, stomach?" I looked at it. "I'll give you one glass of red wine and a little bit of butter popcorn, but just because it's basically chicken food and chickens look pretty healthy to me, so I'm guessing it falls into the category of being healthy. Or at least healthier." I got up and went into the kitchen to make myself a big pot of butter popcorn.

  The next thing I remember is opening my eyes when it was already dark and quiet around me.

  The television was playing something I didn't recall watching, and I was still sitting on the couch in my living room. I assumed I had fallen asleep and saw that a good few hours had passed since the last time I looked at the clock, but I didn’t imagine that I had walked in my sleep again, as I once did, during my worst times.

  "Oh, Michelle. What did you do?" I shook my head in disapproval at what I saw had occurred around me.

  On the couch, right beside me, were some empty wrappers of healthy snack bars. On the table, in front of me, were other wrappers of chocolates and savory snacks. There was an almost empty bottle of wine in my right hand, and my shirt was covered with crumbs and leftovers of the nighttime eating binge I couldn’t recall.

  Damn it! It's been years since the last time I did this, so why now? Why today? I had asked myself.

  I used the back of the couch to support myself and stood up. I sent another shameful look at the total chaos I left behind and was so embarrassed.

  There was no other way to describe what I felt when I looked at the results of my actions other than to admit that I was ashamed of myself.

  It was late, and I was very tired. I wanted to shower and wash away the scraps of food that had melted on different places of my body, but the wine I had consumed made my head spin.

  "What did you do to yourself this time?" I got angry and slid my hand over my forehead, wiping away the uncharacteristic cold sweat. "Oh, no. Not again,"
I mumbled, confused as I hastily searched for my phone so I could dial Noel. But I knew I wasn’t going to make it before my expected collapse. "You took it too far this time, Michelle. You just..." Everything turned black, and I dropped to the ground before I could say how disappointed I was in myself.

  Chapter 4

  Don

  If it weren’t for Michelle's beautiful eyes, I would never have gone back to that dreadful morning meeting of the weight loss support group. But I did go the following morning, in hopes of finding her comforting look again.

  I waited for her to open the door and come in like a storm, apologizing for being late as she did last time, but unfortunately, she never showed, and I found myself sitting and listening to difficulties, I couldn’t care less about.

  I heard a guy explaining how he pretends to be sick just so he doesn't have to go to dinner at his parents' house. Another woman detailed how she felt victorious as she sat in a coffee shop with some of her girlfriends and had only a glass of water. A riot almost broke out when another woman shared her decision to starve herself for a whole week. A noisy group of women that sat across from her immediately explained how stupid and dangerous that decision was, and Janice, the overweight group guide, took the opportunity to speak up and explain the damages that starvation can cause to the body.

  All I could do was sit and nod at them, as I didn’t understand or agree with any of their claims.

  I wasn’t lying when I told my mom that I could lose the weight anytime I wanted to. She knew it too, that’s why she kept quiet about it. My problem had never been not being able to lose weight. It was finding the will to do it.

  Twice in the last two years prior to this time, I'd been successful in doing so. On the first occasion, it was my mother's pleading and the second, an alarming blood test result, which made me decide to exercise and keep track of what I put in my mouth. Not long after that, the pounds started dropping. Within a few months, I matched the definitions that my GP called “healthy” and my psychologist called “depressed.”