Issue #18 Let Them Eat Cake
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
Across the Ohio River, in the hamlet of New Albany, IN, lies a bakery that sells, fairly inexpensively, cake in a cup. One plastic quart container of cake with flavors like german chocolate and orange sherbet. (Yes, an orange sherbet cake!). The price is $2.50 per quart or two for $5—such savings! Anytime I am in the vicinity, my in-laws live in New Albany, I plan my drive to get
cake in a cup.
I'm sure you can guess what I'm eating for breakfast. (Today it is yellow cake with dark chocolate fudge icing.)
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Back in January, I made the declaration to get a healthier lifestyle. Mother, who is nearly 75, is a heavy diabetic whose lost several toes and might possibly lose a foot, only gets around in a walker, has no concept of the outside world from her nursing home, and demands much but gives very little. She is a bitter, hateful woman who rules the roost under false pretenses. Everyone thinks she's kind and wonderful yet none of her family speak to her and her children struggle to love her.
I do not want to become my mother. My younger brother does not want to become my mother.
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He and I struggle with body shaming by the family during our youth. Me on being tall and "fat" and him for being tall and "fat." Looking at pictures of us from our youth, we look normal. Neither fat nor skinny (tho definitely tall). We were healthy weights but the compounded shame of the signaling out our differentness in the family took its toll over the years. We are both considered to be morbidly obese as my brother casually mentioned on our weekly phone call this past weekend. I laughed mightily. We were not considered, we are morbidly obese. The upside to both of us, however, is we are healthy fats. Our bloodwork (cholesterol, blood pressure, various organ functions, etc) are all smack dab perfect normal. Our eating, our feelings, ourselves, has long taken over. We both need to lose 100lbs or more.
But our delusion that is enough is just that—a delusion.
Back in January, I began counting calories again, swapping Coke out for Diet Coke and more water, refraining from butter and salty foods. But my weight wasn't budging. Well, it budged by ounces every week but nothing significant. I looked back at my diary and saw my "healthy" eating wasn't really "healthy." Still a lot of pre-packaged foods. Sweets, while well timed (I thought) still predominated. We eat out a lot so there are all of those hidden calories. I was getting cake in a cup on a regular basis and while I was honest in recording it and thinking I had the calories to cover it, most days I was still over my allotted calorie amount. Some days only by 50 - 100, and others over 500+ or more. I am rarely at or below. I scanned through previous entries and it was all the same—over and over and over. I console myself that at least I wasn't gaining.
Another delusion.
My depression was making its usual known self this winter when my talking shrink suggested I walk 30 minutes three times a week to get some kind of exercise. I started walking 30 minutes every day. I've skipped maybe three or four days either completely or with smaller walks in the last eight weeks. My walks are much longer, at least 45 minutes—I am out and about for 1.5 to 2 miles every day. The dog is my guide, of course why I started doing this, and while I can go the distance and my body feels slightly more limber, the weight hasn't changed. Packaged foods, cake in a cup, having the occasional Coke still rule my life.
But even under the guise that something is better than nothing, I remained delusional I wasn't eating my feelings, I just was big. It isn't until the last few weeks I've finally, finally!, admitted to myself what my shrinks have known all along—I eat my feelings, my feelings are mostly fucked, and the only thing I think can cure me is food.
Back to the opening of this issue—I am eating cake in a cup right now because I am feeling overwhelmed with my life. In addition to cake in a cup, we bought ingredients for me to bake many different kinds of cake several times over; there is also Cadbury cream eggs, Peeps, ice cream, and god knows what else hanging out and aboot our kitchen. TEH thinks it's suspicious I can keep sweets forever and make them last (I can keep a pint of ice cream going for weeks), again under the delusion I am parceling it out to keep the sweet tooth and not starve off binges but this horde proves this has to stop. I no longer have a choice. Despite the daily walks and stretches, the long carrying of this weight is evident when I move around with creaks and pops. There is my argument I am sizing myself out of buying clothes out of plus sized stores and soon I will be wearing nothing but caftans. I can barely fit into airplane seats. I nearly choked myself from my fatty neck doing a bend where my arm goes over my head while doing my daily stretching. I don't want to be this way but my habits and health tell a different story.
Where does that leave me now? The walking and stretching will continue, that is no question, but I need to get a handle on my food. I have to find a way to love food without smothering it. My talking shrink thinks my inability to confront the past, and I'm not talking the recent past, but my childhood years and my family, is part of the reason why I'm not progressing in losing weight. Who wants to deal with being sexually molested, a grandfather who used to rape and abuse his wife, a mother who would leave her young children alone at night while she went out on dates, a father who was never there, my almost gang rape and the over and over date rapes. I swore in my early 20s I didn't want to become one of those people, the ones I perceived using their grief as badge of honor so I didn't and still do not talk about my past. I bury my feelings and I there under all that guilt and shame.
My talking shrink is suggesting, in addition to the walking, I confront that past this summer. She wants me to write about my family, even in a fictional way, to finally confront and put rest these demons that have chased me across the US and back and in my mind forever. I told her I started this process already with confronting mother over dubious things she said and done and mother gaslighted me so when I walked out of that visit, I had no idea what to believe. Was my memory right? Was hers?
It has to go much deeper than just confronting her and getting her, albeit cripped, version of the story. I called on my brother to help, to tell me what he remembers, to fill in the gaps and he agreed on the predicate I write a fictional version of our to strip away identifying marks and he will do it as it will help me in the process. TEH and I will be up in Northern Michigan for the summer and I'm making plans for me to come see my brother to interview him over the course of the summer.
I just don't want to end up like my mother.
(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)
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