Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life (27 page)

That was the recourse of a sad kid, one who didn’t have the guts to grow the hell up. It was like the behavior of a twenty-eight-year-old who still partied like a college kid. In fact, I
was
that twenty-eight-year-old, because sweet potato fries were how I partied in college.

I got home from work around seven that Wednesday, no longer swearing a blue streak. Heating up a plate of chicken and pasta leftovers, I still felt the lingering rumbles of my morning grump. How easy it would have been to just turn on the television and drift away from the day. But I wasn’t that twenty-eight-year-old anymore, solitary and bloated on the bedroom floor, lost in unreality. I was right here in my thirty-year-old life, eating dinner at a wobbly IKEA table. It wasn’t amazing or terrible. It was just Wednesday, not the Wednesday That Changed My Life—and there was nothing wrong with that. I’d get pretty exhausted if every Wednesday was
incredible
. It took me thirty years to realize it. But when I did, finally, thank God, everything was better.

G
ood-byes are not my strong suit. Whether it’s leaving a wedding or quitting a job, I’d rather just do it over e-mail. Trust me, it’s better for everyone that way.

I watched the last episode of
Friends
in my college dorm room with a group of other girls who lived on my floor. Jenna had a tiny TV that sat on top of our rented microfridge, making us extremely popular during Thursday night primetime. Jenna, of course, was already popular, and I spent the entire hour on my side of the room, watching a pile of girls on her bed go through the five stages of grief as we said good-bye to the TV show that defined our formative years, God help us. Jenna had teared up as soon as the theme song began, kicking off a chain reaction of eye fanning and quiet awe.

“If I order Cinnastix, will anyone else have some?” The entire group turned to me, the heathen on a cell phone. Who called Domino’s at a time like this, such an important historical moment? Me. That’s who.

I just don’t cry at finales—film, television, or otherwise. But dry eyes notwithstanding, when
Friends
ended, I was panicked and devastated as any red-blooded American would be. If I didn’t care so much, I would have eaten fat-free popcorn! Watching Monica and Chandler pack up and move out of that big, purple apartment, leaving nothing but a soundstage, was so emotionally shattering that I needed immediate and plentiful Cinnastix.

The same thing had happened a few months earlier, when
Sex and the City
aired its series finale. At the time, my high school best friend, Sydney, was a student at the nearby Boston Conservatory, and she invited me over to the apartment she shared with two other musical theater majors. Rolling my eyes at their hysterics, I worked my way through a pile of pad thai, all the while thinking:
This is the end of an era and the end of your youth. Remember what you are wearing right now so one day you can show your grandchildren this BU hoodie. And, yes, I said, “grandchildren,” because you were a child when this show began and now you are twenty and basically dead.
By the time Big professed his tearful love to Carrie, I’d eaten everyone’s forgotten leftovers and the entire party was clutching hands in a spontaneous support-group circle, weeping vodka-drunk tears. That time, I succumbed to the peer pressure and decided just to fake it.

Most TV series finales soften the blow by oversweetening the story; they pump us full of high-potency nostalgia, and tie things up with a bow so neat we’d never tolerate it if it weren’t the last hurrah. But the embarrassing truth is that we want that bow, so badly. It is our reward as loyal acolytes. When the screen goes black on Tony Soprano midmeal, we riot. That shit is just not fair. We need to feel safe and secure knowing all the brass rings have been caught: Carrie gets Big, Ross gets Rachel, and then everyone goes to the coffee shop. Only after that cure-all finale can we have our cathartic cry and get back to chasing our own brass rings, assured that we will get them, too.

Jon and Chrissy moved out of their big, white loft one gray morning in June. All of us—the VIP friends—came over to haul boxes and sweep floors. There was a fair amount of hugging and staring out of windows, talking about how far we all had come. It’s easy to turn moving day into a finale of sorts, and this one was already gooey with sweetness. “Reel it in, guys,” the director would shout. “I’m not buying it.”

It was Jon’s big move, really. Three weeks prior he’d suddenly announced he was moving in with Ben, his boyfriend of almost a year. We’d all seen it coming, of course. This was the Age of Engagement, when every other weekend was devoted to housewarmings and weddings and pretending none of it fazed us at all. But Jon was the first of our inner circle to break ranks and join the cohabitators. And, true to form, he’d done it perfectly. In quick succession he’d gotten the European dreamboat, the whirlwind romance, and finally, the Fort Greene brownstone.

“When it’s right, you just know,” he told Debbie, Chrissy, and me over pizza one night. I felt my smile turn to smirk, but then I realized he wasn’t quoting the Nicholas Sparks movie we’d hate-watched last month. He meant it. I’d never been so sure about a lunch order, let alone another person. If Jon could be reduced to such unabashed sincerity, then this must really be it. So, in a slightly jealous show of support, we came to pack the boxes that would go in their new home.

That moving day was top-heavy with milestones. By odd coincidence, it was my and Harry’s two-year anniversary, Chrissy’s thirty-first birthday, and the week Debbie got her master’s degree. Never before had we been such a sitcom.

“Are you excited, Dr. Debbie?” The floor was still covered in bottle-cap litter from the farewell party the night before. Outside we could hear Harry, Jon, and Ben having the very specific conversation of three dudes negotiating a mattress into a U-Haul, and decided not to help. Debbie and I stood in the empty living area where Jon and Chrissy’s couch had been, bopping a balloon back and forth to each other.

She smiled. “Not a doctor yet.”

“Half a doctor?”

“Yes, I’m excited to be half a doctor.”

Chrissy came down the dark, skinny hall to join us, the clunk of her boots echoing off the suddenly huge and empty space.

“Is that everything?” she asked.

“Think so. You need help up there?” Still scrambling to find a new roommate, Chrissy had moved into another apartment on the second floor.

“No, I think I’m all good.”

“So, are we doing drinks tonight, birthday girl?” Debbie asked.

“Oof, I don’t know. I’m already beat.” I bopped the balloon to her.

“And who knows if Jon will be around?” She flicked it toward Debbie, who let it fall almost to her feet before kicking it back up to me like a soccer ball.

“Right, I guess they have to unpack and everything,” I mumbled, hitting the balloon just past Chrissy’s shoulder. “Wait, get it!” I yelped, as she crouched down just before it hit the ground, scooping it back up into the air.

The balloon floated back and forth between us for a silent minute and then another. Jon came striding in, all bubble and fizz now that the truck was full.

“Wait, I wanna play!”

“This is a very complicated game,” I said, knocking the balloon toward him with my forehead. “It’s like Quidditch.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Never mind, shut up.” For another few minutes, we stood in the empty apartment, completely absorbed in the balloon-bopping game. Then Jon aimed for Chrissy and bonked the balloon way too hard, sending it out of the circle and onto the floor.

“Oh my God, I dropped the ball! I ruined everything!”

I swear to God, this happened. There was a literal ball and Jon dropped it and said, “I ruined everything.” Believe me, I’m a sap but even I could not have scripted such a painfully obvious metaphor. I have witnesses.

The highly symbolic game was over and I leaned over to pull Jon in for a sideways hug. He hadn’t ruined anything, of course. He was simply moving forward into his own life and that meant stepping outside of our shared past. Even the fucking
Friends
couldn’t live across the hall from one another forever. They had babies to raise and spinoffs to tank.

Jon had a brownstone apartment to remodel, but we all seemed to be spinning off into a more adult adulthood. Debbie was still only half a psychologist, but she’d already treated patients in some of New York’s most renowned and/or terrifying hospitals. Chrissy had defied every possible statistic, forging a successful painting career (not successful-for-a-painter—successful, period). And Jon hadn’t just lapped us on the relationship front—he was probably going to be famous. After years of beating down doors in the television industry, they had finally begun to open for him.

Oh, right. And
I got a book deal, bitches
.

For the first time, I could appreciate my friends’ successes without being swallowed up by toxic envy. I had my own bright, tangible milestone within reach. Not only did I have a book to write, I was ready to write it. I had a story to tell and, at last, the courage to spit it out. Later that afternoon, I’d go back to my apartment, put up my hair in a getting-shit-done ponytail, and sit down to work on my next chapter. But first: high fives, all around.

“Nothing else is allowed to happen this summer. Cool?” I demanded. By now, our circle had closed into a quiet group hug. It was tense with a kind of loaded affection, all of us feeling The End coming fast, and none of us wanting to cry at the finale. I didn’t have Cinnastix to call attention to anymore, so instead I just called it to myself.

“I’m serious. This is it. I have to write a book this summer, so no more big life changes, okay? No terminal illnesses, no one can get hit by a car ’til next year.”

All three of them chuckled and nodded, accustomed to this after fifteen years of my moment killing.

“It’s a deal,” Debbie said quietly. I heard something close to tears in her voice and shone a big, loud grin in her direction. She didn’t smile back, but nodded.

“We have a lot to celebrate.”

Two weeks later, I sat in Theresa’s waiting room, scrolling through notes on my phone. Ordinarily, I got the ball rolling in our sessions with a new success story (“I declined a cupcake at work because I didn’t feel like it!”) or else a pressing food crisis (“I
only
want to eat cupcakes, help me, oh God”). Either way, we always had something to hash out. But, that week, my chipper little Notes app was full of only story ideas or anecdotes I wanted to remember for the book. They looked like the jottings of someone who didn’t think about food all that much, someone who had bigger fish to fry than lunch.

I’d quit recording my meals two months prior. It didn’t seem necessary to manually write down every feeling, desire, hunger pang, and degree of fullness anymore. Those things were still important, but they’d become a natural part of the process—thoughts I didn’t really think about. It was almost as if…but, no. Shut up, don’t scare it away.

“So. Any challenges in the coming week?” Theresa probed after we’d passed fifteen minutes of food-related small talk.

“Um, nothing major. Fourth of July is coming up.”

“Okay, and what do you usually do on the Fourth?”

Normally, I went to a friend’s rooftop in Greenpoint, the northernmost neighborhood in Brooklyn. From there, my friends and I could usually catch Manhattan’s fireworks and even the edge of New Jersey’s. We’d drink plastic cups of spiked lemonade and eventually run out of buns, but eat the hot dogs anyway. I’d always looked forward to these food-focused holidays, knowing everyone else would overeat, too. I wouldn’t be the anxious fat girl, forever clutching a plate in her hand. I’d just be celebrating like everyone else, and then we’d all spend July 5 nursing bloated hangovers. But thinking about it this year just felt like a stomachache I’d once had, or a virus I’d cleared and was now immune to.

“What would success look like in this scenario?” Theresa asked, as usual.

“Just enjoying the party, I suppose.”

“And, in regard to the food?”

“Success would be not leaving the party uncomfortably full, for once.”

“What do you think you need to achieve that?”

In truth, I didn’t know. Let’s be clear: It wasn’t as if I’d become a socially comfortable, panic-free barbecue wunderkind. If it weren’t federally mandated that we, as a nation, put on shorts and stare at the sky together, I would just as soon spend Independence Day independently. Maybe with a magazine. The only difference now was that hot dogs no longer had the power to assuage my party nerves. All they could do was assuage my hunger, if I was hungry. If I wasn’t, they were just there. So was my anxiety, but that was my issue, not the hot dogs’.

“I’ll just eat what I feel like eating, I guess.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. Again, I noted her lack of note-taking and wondered if I was just being lazy.

“I might still overdo it. I mean, I know that’s definitely possible. But I guess that’ll just give us more data?”

She smiled. “Well, don’t do it just so we have something to talk about.”