WBB ESSAYS
A Really Big Sledgehammer
- by writingchica05
The scene is all too familiar. Sitting in the back seat of a car, there is a girl who is crying, a boy who is holding her and telling her the same mantra over and over.
“You’re beautiful. You truly are. You’re an amazing girl. I wouldn’t trade you for the world,” he whispers, hoping, praying that this time the message will stick.
“Not even for a size 2? Or a size 0?” she demands.
“Why would I want a size two? Why would I care what size any girl is if I care about her. Babe, I would love you if you weighed 100 or 300 pounds. I love you, not your weight.”
“So you’re okay if I weighed 100 pounds? Its okay?”
He sighs. He should have realized this would be the response. “I would love you … but I would be scared for you. I would be afraid that you would break … that I would lose you. I don’t want to lose you. You mean so much to me. You do. I know you don’t realize it but you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
“You don’t mean that. I put you through too much. I come with too much baggage. You could find someone better,” she whispers in spite of herself. She knows that she loves this boy … so why is she trying to scare him away?
“Take a look around, everyone comes with baggage. There isn’t a person in this world without it.”
She snorts derisively. “Theirs isn’t as obvious. They hide it … I should hide it.”
“NO!” he exclaims, his calmness momentarily breaking. “I want you to tell me. I need you to tell me. I have to know what’s going on in that head of yours. I love you. I want to know when you’re hurting, when you’re happy, when you’re having a “fat-day”, when you feel fantastic. Please, just let me in a little bit. Please.”
“I shouldn’t bother you with this. You’ve got other things to worry about,” she murmurs.
“They don’t matter. YOU matter.”
“How can you say that!” she half-screams, her voice catching in her throat. “How can you say that when I have lumps of lard for legs and a pouchy stomach and chipmunk cheeks and a zitty nose and wobbly arms and monster calfs and cankles and back fat? How can you say that?”
“Because I see who you are and how you look. I see from my eyes, not from yours. You see with Ana. I see with me. And I frankly trust my eyes more than Ana’s. You’re amazing. You take my breath away. You make me forget where I am when I’m around you. You make my life make sense and I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
Tears fall more quickly now. “But I weigh more now than when we started dating … do you love me less?” she whispers, so terrified of the answer that she looks away from him.
The boy gently reaches down and raises her chin so that she can look him straight on in the eyes, and holds her face in his hands. “I love you. I want to spend as much time with you as possible. I want to live out my life with you. I love you more today than I ever dreamed of. When we started dating, I was afraid that I would hurt you … that you would break, that you would blow away. I was afraid that you were dying. I worried about losing you. I still worry about losing you. I worry about you relapsing. I am so afraid that you are going to be swept-away from me. That you, the girl who has made my life worth living, will be disappear to something that I can’t protect you from. I can’t save you from this. I know that … I know that when I tell you that you are beautiful, you don’t listen. That when I tell you that you are thin, you ignore me. That when I complement you, you think horrible things. But I have to hope that if I keep saying them, that if I stay persistent about it, one of these days they will come through to you.”
She keeps crying. ‘Is he lying? Is he going to hurt me? Is he just trying to get something? Do I trust? Do I let him in? Is it the truth?’ In an instant, the tiniest shadow of doubt appears to all her past thinking, a catharsis of sorts, a decision to believe … just this once … but how to say it? “Maybe,” she whispers, so softly that he has to lean his head forward to hear her. “Maybe, just this time … maybe I believe you just a little bit … is that okay?”
A pause. Ten thousand times her heart beats a rapid tattoo against her chest. And then …
He smiles. Broadly. His eyes shine with something that she hasn’t seen all too often. He laughs as he says, “Of course it’s okay.”
She smiles shyly back.
“I love you so much,” he says, the smile still gracing his face.
“I love you too,” she pauses. Thinking for a second, she poses the question on her mind, “How do you manage to break through to me? I mean … you just … you burst through. But I’ve managed to keep people who have known me for much longer out. How did you do it?”
“I guess I was gifted with a really big sledgehammer.”
She grins and lays her head on his chest, thinking that maybe, just maybe, with this boy at her side, things could get better. And maybe, just maybe one day the things he says will be easily accepted. And maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t even need someone to tell her good things for her to believe them … maybe, just maybe, she’ll be able to tell them to herself.
~*~ Author’s Note ~*~
While being in a relationship while recovering hasn’t been easy, I am so glad that I have stuck it out. My boyfriend and I started dating before I even started recovery. He has stood by me through my refusal to at certain foods, through my crying fits and panic attacks, through my confident days and my “fat” days. He has learned to read me better than anyone else in this world and in spite of all the stress that this has put on him, he has been there, ready to catch me when I fall. During the majority of my struggle with my eating disorder, I isolated myself from other people … pushed them away and built up very, very tall walls around myself. When my boyfriend came around with his massive sledgehammer, I resisted at first but before long, he broke through my walls. I resented him for that for a bit. But now, I couldn’t be gladder of his perseverance. It’s an amazing feeling to know that I don’t have to hide various facets of my personality to better suit what people think they know about me. I can be completely up front about how I am feeling. There is no judgment. There are no lies.
What I’m trying to say is that in recovery, you have to have SOMEONE. There has to be at least one person that you can rely on. It takes a while to find them sometimes. It took me quite a long time to find someone who was willing to listen when I needed to talk or to hold me when I needed to just sit, cry and be held. Eating disorders are so cruel because they isolate people from everyone they love … so in recovery, it is crucial to find someone to stop you from isolation. I may never tell my boyfriend this but I will say it here … he saved me from myself … he saved my life. He didn’t do it through therapy, from hours of couch time or through drugs but through unconditional love and a willingness to listen. He’s taught me to love, to be open and he’s helped me to start, little by little, to love myself.
- by writingchica05
