Unfortunately this meant we had to go back to the house to get our camping supplies. Ever the good boyfriend, Michael invited Beth to join us. Ever the needy girlfriend, Beth agreed, though it was apparent that camping wasn’t necessarily her forte. She basically wanted to take all her modern conveniences with her, rather than rough it in some tent on the cold, hard ground.
I regretted bringing her along from the moment she complained about riding in the back of the truck.
Gabby didn’t fare much better. Her mood took a nosedive, and I knew she was feeling out of control again. It was her idea to stop for supplies for s’mores. Encouraged that she actually wanted to eat, Eli indulged her.
He had no idea he was loading her gun.
Tall clouds had billowed into the brilliant blue sky by the time we reached the secluded campground set among the Ponderosa pine. The elevation was over 10,000 feet, which felt and looked pretty close to God. I felt the rigors of life kind of pass away with each mile, breathing in the sweet mountain air. It was completely zen, thanks in part to the fact that both Beth and Michael rode in the back so I didn’t have to hear her whine all the way there. Instead she had to save it up for when we finally reached the campsite.
“Ew. It smells like a toilet here.”
“That’s because we are near the outhouse,” Eli informed her with a wry grin. “We’re going to be camping over there,” he said, pointing to a sweet little spot among the trees, complete with its own fire ring.
“Can’t we just go to a hotel or something? We’re out for the night anyway.”
“Because this was what Gabby wanted,” Michael told her patiently. “She won the game. She got to choose.”
“Of course,” Beth sighed, clearly beleaguered by her baby sister. She quickly got lost in her phone, and didn’t come back out again as we all set up camp. Despite her bratty behavior, Michael bent himself over backwards to make her happy. This was extremely dangerous territory for me, especially as I watched Gabby analyze every word, every touch and every kiss. She tried damned hard to hide that was what she was doing, and I was relatively sure that Michael and Beth remained clueless.
One look at Eli, though, and I sensed that he picked up on all the things Gabby didn’t say. It was one long silent scream, and finally—finally—he had heard it.
While Beth continued to soak up all of Michael’s attention, Eli and I kept Gabby occupied. We went for a hike along the trail. We studied rocks and plants and tried to spot some wildlife, and we allowed Gabby to educate us on all the things she had learned in her science class, to give her another moment to shine. Eli walked in between us, one arm around me, Gabby’s hand in his. I knew that he was trying hard to keep her from thinking about the giggly, kissy couple who lagged behind. Despite the fact that Beth squealed at every bug, or turned up her nose at the natural beauty around us, Michael did his best to make her smile. The best way to do that? He showered her with affection.
It all felt painfully familiar. By the time we returned to camp for dinner, I was just as ready as Gabby to drown my sorrow in hot dogs and s’mores. It was dangerous. So dangerous. I found myself analyzing every bite I took, to ensure I ate for sustenance rather than comfort. Like any addiction, it was a lifelong battle.
Beth ate about a quarter of one before she thrust it at Michael with a look of utter disgust. “Ew! Look at my fingers! They’re so gross. Take it!” He ate it in one bite before he reached for a kiss, which she resisted at first among playful giggles.
I stole a glance at Gabby, who put the other half of her uneaten treat on the ground, making it gross so she wouldn’t eat it all no matter how tempting it was.
She was teetering on the verge of a binge. I was thankful that night we shared a tent with her, much like we did in Malibu. I didn’t go to sleep. I couldn’t. Gabby needed me and I wasn’t going to let her down.
Just a hair past midnight, I heard her unzip the bag. I pretended to be asleep so that she could make her escape. I waited only a minute or two before I followed suit.
As I suspected, the remaining bag of marshmallows had been taken from our bags of supplies. I made my way towards the outhouse, expecting to hear her purging her latest binge, but it was empty. I kept walking along the dark trail, with only my phone for illumination. I retraced our steps from earlier that evening, where we’d found a particularly secluded trail. I knew this was where she’d be.
I found her footprints easily in the dirt, so I followed them. Finally I could hear the crinkling of the plastic bag, right before the violent retching sounds of someone vomiting. “Gabby?” I called softly. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer for a second, probably hoping I’d just keep walking.
“I know you’re here, honey. Come out and talk to me.”
“I don’t feel good,” she muttered from behind a rock. “Go away.”
“I can go away but it won’t make you feel any better about your binge. Purging won’t make it better, either.”
A long silence followed. She had finally been busted. I knew she was scrambling for what to do next. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally said.
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I do. Because that’s what I used to do.”
It took a few minutes, but at last she walked around the rock. She held the almost empty bag of marshmallows in her hand. She’d killed half the bag within minutes, and probably didn’t even realize that was what she had done. In a panic, she threw up to undo the damage.
But that never worked. And she needed someone to tell her that.
“What do you mean?” she asked softly.
I walked over to join her near the rock, which I sat upon. “I have a binge eating disorder.”
It had been a long time since I had said those words. But I needed to say them now. She needed to hear it now.
“It came on after my parents’ divorce when I was eight years old. I didn’t start purging until later, after I fell head over heels in love with my sister’s boyfriend, Wyatt. He told me that I would be so pretty if I just lost weight.” I sighed. “I started my first diet when I was nine years old. I didn’t lose weight fast enough because, when you’re nine, your body is already changing, storing fat in your chest and hips, filling you out as you mature. Only I didn’t look mature. I looked like a garden gnome. I hated it. Every time I looked in the mirror I hated it. I saw what he saw, which was essentially what my dad saw every time he looked at my mom. That’s why he looked elsewhere, and everyone excused him for doing it.”
She didn’t say anything, just looked up at me with bright eyes filled with unshed tears.
“So of course I knew that if I didn’t fix myself, I’d be alone. Forever. But as an emotional eater, I dealt with stress and all those feelings of having everything out of my control, my family, my crush, even my own body, by consuming large amounts of food. I knew it was bad for me. I knew I was messing up. I was making everything worse. But I couldn’t stop. And food was everywhere. There is always this pressure to eat to have a good time. Holidays, birthdays, summer barbecues. Funerals,” I added ruefully. “And I came from the south. People wouldn’t cuss, dance or watch TV, but they could murder a plate of ribs quicker than you could say yeehaw.” She laughed a little. So did I. “It’s the only addiction people around you deliberately feed, then blame you for your inability to withstand temptation. No one would take an alcoholic into a bar and line ‘em up with shots, but everyone will tell you, ‘One bite won’t kill you,’ when they’re finding reason after reason to give you something bad to eat.”
I took a deep breath and she watched me carefully.
“The more weight I gained, the more I hated myself, every bit as much as everyone else hated me. I wasn’t pretty, like my sister. Mom always loved her best,” I confessed softly. “With me she saw her own failures. She hated me for it.” I paused only for a moment. “Still does.”
Gabby joined me on the boulder.
“I was twelve when Wyatt proposed to
Amber. She made me a bridesmaid. I had to wear this ugly pink dress, a strapless sheath that showed every flaw. By then the binges had caught up to me and I was about twenty pounds overweight. I had to lose the weight fast, but every time I thought of the two of them together, married forever, with him at every family function for the rest of my life, I wanted to eat everything in sight. So I started purging,” I said. “I hated vomiting. I couldn’t bring myself to do it very often. I was so afraid that people would find out. If they knew about the purging, they’d know about the binges. Then everyone would know how weak I was, including Wyatt, who had finally started treating me like a girl thanks to my growing curves. He’d say stuff,” I confessed softly. “He’d notice.”
I slid from the rock. I had to move or do something or I’d finish off her bag of marshmallows, even though I could smell the stench of her vomit nearby.
“I gained five pounds by the wedding, most of it in my bra. The dress was so tight. I felt every bulge as I walked down that aisle. And Wyatt had this look in his eyes. I’d never seen it before.” I took a deep breath. “After they married, she moved in with him. Since Amber and I never had much in common, I only saw them on weekends and holidays. I spent most of the time in between those visits on some sort of diet, just to prove…,” I trailed off. “Just to prove I could, I guess. I was sixteen when I finally got to my goal weight. It was Thanksgiving.”
I turned back to her. There were tears running down her face.
“He couldn’t stop telling me how pretty I was, and how I would make some man very lucky one day when I finally decided to marry. He told me,” I started, but the words refused to come. I cleared my throat. “He told me that I had learned how to catch a man, but the real trick was learning how to keep one.”
God, I wanted a fucking marshmallow.
“Amber was pregnant with baby number three by then. She’d gained twenty pounds with each pregnancy, and was way bigger than I had ever been. They weren’t as affectionate anymore. He didn’t touch her or kiss her anymore, unless beer was involved. Instead he saved his charm for me, rewarding me with praise and approval whenever I pushed away my plate. He told Amber she could learn a lot from me. She got super mad. They went home. The next day he called me to the house to babysit because Amber had gone Christmas shopping on Black Friday with my mom, and they would likely be gone all day. They had always shopped till they dropped, usually closing down whatever mall they happened to be in at the time. Wyatt said he didn’t want to be stuck at the house all day.”
I cleared my throat again. This story never got any easier, no matter how many times I told it.
And this was a ten-year-old girl. A mature ten-year-old girl, but a ten-year-old all the same. If the situation weren’t so dire, maybe I could have spared her.
“At first he said he wanted to go play football with his friends. But then they canceled, so we watched a movie instead at the house. He encouraged me to stay even after he sent them to bed at eight o’clock. He said that I should just stay at the house and go home with my mom after she dropped off Amber. He suggested a movie to kill the time. It was an R-rated movie with lots of stuff I shouldn’t have been watching with him, but he told me that he knew I was mature enough to handle it.”
Gabby was already shaking her head, like she knew where this was going. But the bandage was only halfway off.
“He got close. He talked to me about crushes. He asked me if I still had mine.” A sob I didn’t even know I was withholding erupted from my throat. “Next thing I knew he was kissing me. And I knew I should have pushed him away, but I had wanted him to love me since I was nine years old.” ’
I took a deep breath, sparing her the dirty details, like how it my pants were off in a second, and how it was over before I could even figure out if I wanted to say no… which I really hadn’t—despite his being married to my very own sister.
I had felt loved, or at least wanted, for the first time ever. And it was over as quickly as it started, which fucked with my head for years afterward. “After it was over, I realized that no matter how I fixed myself on the outside, inside I was the same old person. Everything else was just a lie. That weekend I ate all of the Thanksgiving leftovers. My mother criticized me, so I headed to the mall to get away from her. There I made an around-the-world pass at every restaurant at the food court. I ate so much I made myself sick, no purging required. Nothing helped. My life had spun completely out of my control, and Wyatt kept finding excuses for us to be together, where he’d make his moves when nobody was looking. He wanted me, but I didn’t want him anymore. Within a year, I gained back all the weight I lost. Wyatt finally left me alone after that. At my graduation party, he made a drunk toast congratulating me on making it through high school, but cautioned that I should really be careful during my first year of college, because I couldn’t afford to gain the Freshman 15. The audience didn’t know whether or not to laugh. Was it mean-spirited? Or just brotherly teasing?”
“Sounds like an asshole,” she said, using a very colorful word for her age.
In this case, it was completely apt. “That night he cornered me and said he’d be more than happy to help me work off the weight. He just wanted to help me be beautiful again. But I, for the life of me, couldn’t think of a good enough reason to attract a jerk like him. I just wanted it to end. I decided to do what I should have done in the first place. I told Amber.”
Gabby gulped, as if she knew what was coming.
“She accused me of lying, of course. She thought I was trying to be mean to her, rub it in her face that I was the thinner one now. Said that it was no secret that I had always wanted Wyatt even though he could have never wanted me.”
“Didn’t you tell her that he’s the one that came onto you?”
I sighed. “By then I had spiraled out of control, gaining a ton of weight, drinking a lot, going with all the boys, trying to figure out what the great mystery of it was, or why I was supposed to want any of it. I couldn’t be perfect, so I decided why bother? I turned into every bad thing that my family now thought I was. Meanwhile Wyatt turned into an exemplary father and husband. He joined a church. He stopped drinking. When he said that I had come onto him, and he had rejected me, they found it easier to believe him. I was the odd one out. Again. As always.”
Gabby scooted off of the rock. She tossed the bag of remaining marshmallows off into the darkness before she walked towards me and curled her arms around my waist for a big hug. “I’m sorry you went through that.”
I knelt down in front of her. “And I’m sorry you’re going through this.”
She nodded. She still hadn’t said the words yet. Who knew if she ever would? But she saw now that some problems go far beyond being fat or being thin. I took her hands in mine. “After college, I spent some time getting things right in my head. I joined groups. I went to meetings. I found a trainer who was focused more on being healthy than being thin. She taught me food wasn’t my enemy or my friend. It was just a thing. I found other ways to cope, like meditation and self-care. I forged positive friendships with people who didn’t need me to change to accept me. I gave up the scale, or diets, or fitting into a certain size. I allowed myself to be me and loved myself despite my imperfections. I had to. If I didn’t, no one else ever would.”
I took another deep breath. “In the end, I had to leave my family. Every time I tried to be around them, they would trip all the triggers. The longer I spent away from them, the stronger I felt. With my new support group, my new family of choice, I didn’t have to earn their love. I just had to be me. And that was enough. With my family, I’d always be the lying Lolita who tried to seduce my brother-in-law. Eventually I realized that it wasn’t my job to fix their opinion about me. I could be me. I could be happy. Even if they didn’t think I deserved to be. I started walking and I never looked back. Sometimes that’s necessary. You can love anyone in the world, but you’re under no obligation to fix it if they can’t love you back.”
She nodd
ed. I knew she was thinking about her mom, not Michael.
I wiped the tears from her face. “You don’t have to walk my path. You are strong. You are smart. You are beautiful in all the ways that really matter. Real ways. Ways that don’t change by what size dress you wear. I can help you see that, Gabby. We can fix this.”
Another tear slipped from the corner of her eye. “And you’re leaving in January.”
Her words pierced my heart. I didn’t even know what to say. When she started to cry, I took her into my arms and held her tight.
We walked back to the camp together hand in hand. I let her go in first, then slipped in next to Eli. He waited until she had fallen to sleep before he said, “You okay?”
“No,” I murmured softly before I turned away.
The next morning we headed back to the cabin. The town was hosting a 4th of July celebration that evening, and we were all supposed to go. I knew it was the last thing Gabby and I felt like doing, but we were experts at keeping up appearances.
Eli watched us warily, trying to figure things out. We didn’t get much time to talk, especially with Daphne micromanaging all of us to escort the brood into town for an early start to our day. She and Beth had entered the marathon, which she praised her stepdaughter for endlessly, bragging about her discipline to train. She was supportive and encouraging, telling Beth she would prove to herself how strong she could be after it was all over.
Instead of praising Gabby for all the amazing things she did, she would use those things to prod her to lose weight, or control her body. There was only one criteria to perfection in Daphne’s book, and no matter what Gabby did outside of that, she’d never truly be worth her mother’s praise.
She had Gabby change at least twice, virtually shaming her into living up to her standard. It was likely a subtle hint that I should change as well, since it was clear she wasn’t going to be happy with me until I did. But I was done changing to make other people happy, especially people who worked that hard to find reasons to hate me in the first place. I kept what I was wearing. I ate what I wanted. I drank what I wanted. I danced with Eli as we listened to live music. And when the fireworks exploded overhead, I kissed him long and deep. I didn’t care if she saw. I didn’t care if she didn’t like it.
Glitter on the Web Page 27