A memory: I am twenty-two years old. A new teacher. I am standing by the playground outside the elementary school where I teach grade five. The late September sun is still bright and warm and I am enjoying the heat on my bare shoulders. I am wearing a fitted pink mock top tucked into a pair of grey slacks. I skipped breakfast and my stomach is flat, empty. The emptiness makes me feel powerful rather than deprived. It also makes me feel pretty. Three girls from my class skip over to me, smiling. “Mrs. Ewer, you look like a model!” I laugh and shoo them away, but inside I am dancing, satisfied.
Their admiration is a drug I would never admit I crave.
Thinness has become a goal I have deemed worthy to pursue. I am good at it, and I am applauded for my success. Being thin is an identity I cling to. It is the thing that allows me to walk into a room confident and secure. I may not have the funniest thing to say, I may not be the smartest or wittiest or the most successful, but at least I have the tiniest waist. In a room full of women I know I have what all of them want, some more desperately than others. Thinness. For some reason this is enough for me.
I toss and turn in bed at night, my hunger making sleep elusive. “Just go get a bowl of Shreddies!” my husband mutters. But I loathe myself for wanting more.
One afternoon in my mother-in-law’s kitchen she turns to me and says, “Those pants are looking awfully loose on you!” I know there is a hint of concern underlying her words but in my twisted mind they are a stamp of approval. I’m happy that my thinness has been noticed. I am shrinking. I am succeeding.
The hunger catches up to me eventually. I begin to hide myself in the storage closet of my apartment, dipping salty crackers into a jar of peanut butter with one ear against the door listening for my husband coming home. I hate myself for doing this, it makes me feel weak and soft. I try to escape the shame with more and more exercise. I lace up my sneakers and run on a gravel path that snakes along the ocean, up a long hill and then back down. I do this everyday and soon I stop getting my period. When I mention this to my doctor she fails to see the red flags. “You’re just very active,” she tells me, “This happens to lots of extreme athletes.” I nod and smile — another achievement! I wrap my coat tighter around my waist to muffle the sound of my grumbling stomach.
The truth? Sometimes I miss this body of mine from a decade ago, the one that was twenty pounds lighter than the one I have now. Never mind that the girl inside that body was underweight and unhappy. I suppose I miss being skinny in the same way a sober person might miss alcohol. Even though she knows how dangerous and toxic her drinking was, and how her life is more expansive and bright without it, there is still part of her that grieves for having to let it go.
My appetite is not my enemy anymore, food is joy and fuel to me now, and my period greets me every month like an old friend I’ve reacquainted myself with. But I step on the scale more than I need to, a habit I am still trying to break. That same fear resurfacing: as long as I am this number, I am okay. I look at my muscly body in the mirror and feel self-conscious sometimes. Do I like what I see? Will others approve of me?
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be that skinny girl again. To see a two digit number on the scale, to pull a double zero off the rack and feel it hug all the right places. Sometimes I forget I’m no longer her, only to realize under the ugly fluorescent lights of a dressing room with a pile of clothes crumpled on the floor that everything I’ve chosen — everything — is too tight. That body is not mine anymore but I’m still trying to dress as if she was.
I thought by now, at thirty-six, that I would have won this inner battle but this is where I am. Confident and insecure. Happy in my skin but also envious of others. I am a jumble of contradictions but accepting this feels something like freedom, because pretending is a tiring game. I am still consciously trying — fighting — to forge a positive body image while also being aware of the voice inside me whispering, sometimes inaudibly but other times piercingly clear, but skinny is best.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Ewer is a freelance writer in Halifax, NS. Her writing has been featured in Today’s Parent, She Does the City, Yummy Mummy Club, and Our Children magazine. Before deciding to pursue writing full-time, Andrea received her BEd and worked as an elementary school teacher. When she’s not writing, she can be found wandering through nature, journaling at a coffee shop, or hanging out at home with her husband and their two boys. Usually, she’s eating chocolate.
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