She's Come Undone

I’ve been trying to clean, mostly going through all my stuff and throwing out stuff, like old magazines and recycling as much as I can. I need to get a mega-shredder because I have a ton of old mail that needs shredding. I’m trying to organize everything and I really do have a lot of stuff.

As I was going through a pile of things, I found old journals. I was flipping through them and found this entry:

June 23, 1999

It’s almost six in the morning and I’ve just finished reading Wally Lamb’s book “She’s Come Undone.” I’m trying to come up with the right words to explain the book, but I can’t. All I can say is that a little over halfway through the book, I stopped and just cried. I wasn’t crying over what happened in the book, I was crying over my life. The only thing I can directly relate with the main character, Dolores, on is her weight. And yet, it’s almost like I went through the same pain she did. I started questioning my behavior and that of others towards me.

I’ve always been like, “If people don’t like me because I’m fat, then that’s their problem, not mine.” But now I wonder if I subconsciously molded myself, my personality to one that people will like. In the book, Dolores becomes the errand girl of sorts to her college roommate so that she’ll like her. Her roommate takes advantage of her so bad. I wonder if that has been me. All this time have I just been trying to get people to like me by being someone I wasn’t, just so they’d overlook the fact that I was fat. Is that my life?

I like to think that I don’t have issues about my weight. At least not like my sister. Years ago, about 8 months before the above entry was written, my sister lost a lot of weight in a time span of 3 months. When I left for my fall term of junior year, she was a size 24. When I returned at Christmas, she was a size 16, almost 14. That’s a big difference and according to what mom told me about my sister’s mood while she was dieting, I was happy to be 2000 miles away. She had struggled with her weight since her teens. As a child, she was a skinny little girl. I, on the other hand, was always a big girl. So what brought on this sudden weight drop? A guy. She’d met a guy, a hot guy. A personal trainer, model/actor and law school graduate. They’d met, they went out for drinks, and they had sex. She really liked him, but after that night, she wouldn’t see him again, she wouldn’t have sex with him. Why? Because she was embarrassed about her body. So she lost the weight in an insane amount of time. She hardly ate and worked out all the time and was the thinnest she’d ever been, but she still wasn’t happy. If she wanted to lose the weight for herself, that was one thing, but she lost it for a guy. He’d already slept with her, and the way I saw it, he must’ve liked her regardless of her weight. Even if the lights are off and you can’t see, you can still feel. He apparently didn’t feel anything he didn’t like because he did want to be with her, but she was embarrassed.

Ten years later, he lives in the apartment beneath hers and their relationship is undefined. I know she went through a lot of heartache for a couple of years as I heard her cry herself to sleep when she still lived here. She gained a lot of the weight back, but didn’t get as big as she used to be. We’re not that close, so I know nothing more about her personal life, except that he is still in her life, obviously. As to the extent of it, well, no one knows and no one understands.

I’ve been intimate with three men since I was 24. With the first one, F, I think I was at my most confident because I never thought about my body and what he would think or feel. He was the first guy I was ever sexually attracted to, the first guy I ever wanted to sleep with, and when he pulled my dress down and exposed my breasts, or put his hand up my skirt, I never worried he’d be repulsed by my body. But less than a year later, when things were heating up with P and we were going to have sex, even though we’d fooled around, I was nervous.

From F to P, things had progressed for me. With F, we fooled around in back staircases never used. I was inexperienced and he didn’t want to be the first so it was never more than quickie orals here and there and phone sex in the middle of the night. He was also too busy with two other girls who were experienced to spend time with me. I know this because once I was no longer inexperienced, now he was willing to put in the effort for us to be more intimate. With P, we never went out in public. Our trysts were late at night, in private, but even though I was nervous at first to be with him, when we were together, it didn’t matter. He made me feel special. In that time together, he made me feel like I was the only woman in the world, in his world, regardless of whether or not that was true. I was blinded by the feelings, the warmth coursing through my body. I was blind to the fact that we only existed in that short amount of time together, that he couldn’t even acknowledge me in public. In the real world, we were only passing acquaintances, if that.

And then Boston boy came along. He’d known me in high school. He looked through all my pictures. He read my blog. Who I was, what I looked like was all there and he wanted to see more. He liked me as I was. He wanted me. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever is. But my weight wasn’t an issue. He acknowledged me outside of the bedroom, outside of our intimacy. We ate in public, held hands in public, went to the movies, and shared our bodies.

But now, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s become ever more present in my mind. I’m more defiant than ever about it. I’m still not completely self-conscious about it, but it’s there.

When I go out with a certain friend, I feel out of sorts. We’re just friends and could never be more than friends, but I still don’t want to feel invisible. I don’t want to sit there while he checks out every single girl that walks by and feel like he’s not even paying attention to what I’m saying. I don’t want to feel like I don’t matter, not even worthy of being in his presence because I’m not a size zero. And nothing bothers me more than feeling that way, than being made to feel this way.

More and more of my friends are spending a lot of time working out and watching what they eat. I’ll never be that way. The more they talk about these things, the more I wonder if they’re judging me for not doing so.

Why does any of this even matter? Why is it such a big deal? Why is it such a big deal for women?

And now I’m letting others opinion’s torment my thoughts. Now I’m letting their comments undermine my proven abilities; my record of great work. I’ve become so lost and insecure in just a matter of months. Why can’t I shake them from my head? Why am I listening to their words? Why are those words on constant repeat in my head?

I know I need to snap out of this. Be the strong person I am, but I don’t have the motivation nor energy to do so.