My mom was always trying to lose weight, always thinking about how many “points” she had to spare. She tracked her food in paper trackers made by Weight Watchers. One of the consequences of tracking your food is that you will start eating the same thing every day because its easier to track. Once I was in front of my parents mirror and I said a pair of pants made me look fat. My mom, who almost never spoke sharply to me, snapped "I don't ever want to hear you say that."
I used to retch without success. I'd sit in the shower, where the noise of water hitting tub and body masked any unintentional gagging sounds. I kneeled and hung my head, putting my index finger at the back of my throat. My body created gallons of spit in these sessions, it seemed, and I retched over and over again. Sometimes I pushed through the nothingness until something came up, usually so little that the whole exercise seemed pointless. My cunt would weep whenever I did this, and of all the ways I destroyed myself, this is what made me hate myself the most.
My jaw felt loose. The taste of my stomach lingered for hours.
Is that the taste of strength? I am so much less interested in unpacking the origins of my self-inflicted trauma than I am in eating another snack, walking away from this project and making lunch, pouring another cup of tea.
In St. Louis, I asked my cousins if we could go to Brasserie and have a long, luscious meal. This was before Colin's gall bladder surgery (it was dying inside of him) and Emily's cancer diagnosis (at 38 she had stage 2 breast cancer). We went. Colin told the waiter right when we sat down that we wanted to linger, and he helped us take our sweet time. We ordered amuse-bouche: gougères and olives. We ordered appetizers: pate with red onion confiture, steak tartare, a selection of cheeses, and a salad with goat cheese hazelnut crostini and a shallot vinegarette. We ordered two desserts. We drank. We even had dessert wine.
I used to study my mom's logs, looking at how many points everything had, how she had "flex" points for the week, what she ate each day.