Embracing Enough-ness Part 2

She always told me you pay the price to be beautiful, but she never did tell me the cost.

CW: Body Dysmorphia; Anorexia

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

In a sunlit Brooklyn projects apartment, a little girl sat cross-legged on the living room floor. She was five years old. Her tiny fingers fidgeting with the soft pink sponge rollers that her grandmother, Lorraine, expertly twisted into her hair. The air was thick with the stench of hairspray and cigarette smoke, smells that would remain with the little girl well into adulthood. Tomorrow, they would venture into Manhattan to visit Lorraines’s son, Louis, at his Saks Fifth Avenue job. Lorraine was so proud and had a vision - a vision that required perfection.

The little girl tossed and turned all night, tears welling up from the pain of sleeping with those rollers in her hair. “Beauty takes work,” Lorraine would say before bed, her voice ringing through the air asserting her authority on the subject. In the morning, she tugged at the little girl’s rollers, releasing her ringlet curls, her eyes glimmering with a mix of pride and an unyielding expectation. “You pay the price to be beautiful.” These seven words, repeated over and over and over again, hung in the air like a mantra. This phrase eventually became the little girl’s mantra, a reminder of the standards that loomed large for her.

“You have to be fashionable,” Lorraine would say each time they passed the S&D store window. Lorraine hated the fact that her daughter would dress her granddaughter in boy clothes and hand-me-downs, but that was all they could afford. Despite living on a fixed disability salary in the 1980’s, Lorraine always managed to find five dollars for a new shirt or neon body suit for her granddaughter. Despite her strict standards of beauty, anytime the little girl wanted a sweet - a bag of cheese doodles or a barrel drink, Lorraine would rummage through her purse, always finding a shiny quarter; a little treasure for her granddaughter. “Go get yourself something special,” she’d say. The little girl’s eyes would light up at the thought of treat, the contrast between her grandmother’s harsh lessons and these small acts of love creating a complex tapestry of emotions in the her heart, not just about her relationship with her grandmother, but also with her relationship to food.

But as the years rolled on, those moments of sweetness began to fade into background memory, overshadowed by a relentless pressure to conform to her grandmother’s impossible standards. Each compliment from Lorraine came with strings attached, each celebration of beauty laced with veiled critiques of what could be improved.

The little girl grew up with Lorraine’s voice echoing in her mind, a persistent whisper that told her she was never quite enough. On the day the not-so-little-anymore girl showed up at her grandmother’s house in her new freshman cheerleading uniform, Lorraine commented on how adorable she looked and assured her soon that baby fat would melt away. No matter what that little girl-turned-teenager did to be beautiful or fashionable, the mirror reflected someone who felt inadequate. The tender moments with the quarter faded, replaced by a gnawing feeling that beauty was a currency she could never afford.

Now, as an adult, a grown woman stands before the mirror, battling the reflection that stares back at her—a reflection that feels foreign and unworthy. The standards set by her grandmother, and boyfriends past who had explicitly broken it off because this young woman wasn’t thin enough, had morphed into a relentless critic in her mind, one that convinced her that beauty was a distant dream, always out of reach. It’s true - as an adult, she carried too much weight and breasts that were too large for her small stature. To make matters worse, she loved the taste of food and too often found comfort in the richness of flavors that lay in her mouth. Nothing, however, stopped the feelings of inadequacy; the feelings that she wasn’t and would never be enough.

Body dysmorphia had become an unwelcome companion, a shadow whispering lies about her worth, her shape, her very being. The girl who once twirled in delight despite the pink rollers in her hair now struggled to find joy in the simplest of things, lost in a cycle of self-doubt that felt inescapable.

Once again, that little girl was me.

Me and my grandmother at my First Holy Communion - May 1984. My hair had been in pink sponge rollers the night before.

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On April 25, 2019, I had bariatric surgery in Shanghai, China. The process of getting this surgery is quite different to that of the states. I sent my friend’s doctor an email. She scheduled an appointment. They asked some questions and ticked boxes, some of which legitimately deserving to be ticked, and others just for good measure so that the insurance company would approve. Three weeks later, I was laid out on the table. Over the course of the year, I lost 70 pounds. I cannot remember a time in my life when I would have been considered thin, despite the picture above, but now I was. What I wasn’t was prepared for what would come next, after losing all the weight.

What came next was cross addiction, replacing food with alcohol and a shifting goal weight that changed every time I stepped on a scale and saw the number at which I thought I would be beautifully thin enough. That number was never low enough. After a few years, some weight came back on which is pretty typical after your body adjusts to bariatric surgery, and I panicked. I couldn’t stop drinking. I couldn’t stop eating the comfort slider foods that helped me get to where I was pre-surgery, so I did the only thing I could think of - I called my surgeon and asked him to put me on medication that would make me drop weight.

I realize that diabetes medication like Ozempic and Wegovy are all the rage now, but I began taking Trulicity (another one of these medications) in June 2022. You see, I gained back 10 pounds, only to lose 30 after a few months of taking the medication. Finally, I was getting to those numbers that made me feel like I was thin…enough. Recently the Trulicity stopped working, and the weight crept back up. I panicked again and made a switch. Today, I am on Ozempic and have dropped the weight…the eight pounds I gained. Today, I am 100 pounds and feel a rush of pride every time I run my hand along my body and feel my iliac crest sticking out, when I run my hands along my back and feel my ribs, when I see my collar bone pop out. These are all examples of what people in the weight loss community call as NSV (non-scale victory). I live for the NSV. I’m pretty sure if I had some blood work done today, at present, there would be a result that came back indicating malnutrition, and in my trauma brain, that means I am doing something right.

Dear Reader, I am in no way, shape, or form anything other than fucked up…at least in this area of my life. The truth is I don’t feel like I am aesthetically enough. I have not embraced enough-ness when it comes to my looks or my body. So I guess what I am trying to express with this post and in this series is that embracing enough-ness is a process, a journey, a piece of prose one never quite finishes. My She-ro, Glennon Doyle, tells us in her STELLAR memoir Untamed that the only way to your story is through your story. So here I am, Dear Reader, going through my story of body dysmorphic disorder and anorexia with you. Here is where I lean on you, the members of this community with your gorgeous spirits, to help me get to my story.

Can someone please hold my hand?