I miss some aspects of life when I was big. 145lbs ago.
I miss the reckless abandon.
I miss the volume of food, the horizon of eats that lay before me on a table, knowing full well that the only thing stopping me was my fist-sized stomach. And even then there was always stretch.
I miss the way the fourth slice of pizza tastes. The fifth even more.
I miss bricks of brownie + ice cream + caramel + whipped cream + the crumblies of a Reese’s twosome. For a snack after lunch.
I miss fried food!!!!!!!!!
I miss when menus at restaurants were just lists of delicious dinners. And nothing more nutritionally threatening.
I miss not thinking for more than four seconds before deciding that, why yes, I’d absolutely adore donuts for breakfast.
I miss plunging my forearm into a bucket of thrice buttered pop corn at the movie theater. Shoveling mouthfuls of salted and soggy kernels into my gullet. Then Snow Caps. Then Sprite.
I miss brunching with sausage, egg, and cheese on greased and griddled everything bagels ........with hash browns and a mind on lunch.
I miss not caring when or how my next meal came, only that it came. And stayed. And never left.
I miss the way Cap’n Crunch-ed so loudly I couldn’t hear anyone hollering for me.
I miss that feeling I had when every fiber of my anatomy believed food to be the kindest, most loving spirit a girl could know.
I don’t miss the way heat felt suffocating. The way temperatures teasing 70 threatened me.
I don't miss not being able to play with the grandkids...
I don't miss wondering if I will see my kids and grandkids grow old.
I don't miss the way I felt........all the time.
I don’t miss the caramel creams ....and how I would get sick eating them.
I don’t miss the Lucky Charms and the Corn Pops and the Honeycomb that helped me with me cope. They never filled the answers like I’d begged them to.
I don’t miss wondering if invisibility would be a more comfortable state. There are no places to live there.
I don’t miss the way my legs chafed, the way shorts rode up until I discreetly tugged them down.
I don't miss ripping pants out....in public.
I don’t miss the way my legs fell asleep if I dared sit cross-legged on the floor.
I don’t miss feeling like a wallflower.
I don’t miss watching people move, and act, and sing, and dance and wishing, oh wishing, I felt that free.
I don’t miss sealing my hopes and dreams into an envelope and mailing it to the future. I never knew how to get there. Or why it never came.
I don’t miss thinking, “Someday they’ll see. I’m better than they know. One day…”
I don’t miss my stomach calling my brain to tell her I’d eaten enough and I just couldn’t (couldn’t!) eat another bite. She never answered.
I don’t miss the staring.
I don’t miss loading a gun with ‘fat’ and ‘pig’ and ‘whale’ and handing it to others to pull the trigger. They never heard mercy.
I don’t miss the excuses and the regrets and the feeling like I’d wasted precious years.
I don’t miss the tears.
I don’t miss dreading, oh dreading, any occasion with dresses, or dressing up, or dressing, really. Not the girdles.
I don’t miss thinking that size 16, 18, and 20 ....24....26 would fit differently, more acceptingly, in different stores.
I don’t miss waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
Then waiting some more.
For life to begin.
Because she was hanging out all along.
And when I found her sitting quietly, off to the side, just waiting on me to begin her
I had missed her.
What’s the moral here?
What’s the matter with missing 145lbs? With letting every one of them go completely and asking, gently, that they never come back? It’s not you, it’s me.
The matter is that, fat or thin, big or bitty, I’ll always be both. No, I won’t look in the mirror and see the other. No, I won’t praise one too highly. Because they’re all I know.
Each is valuable.
When you’re big for thirty plus years, the only thirty you’ve ever known. You’ll know that who you are was formed in there, and that’s beautiful.
Hear me.
Beautiful.
I hear accounts of those who’ve lost a tremendous amount of weight. Maybe they were on the Biggest Loser; maybe the cover of People. Most often, they speak about their former selves, the bigger ones, in a very detached way. As if the here and now is infinitely better and more lovely than the past. And maybe it is in lots of ways. But here’s the thing: it was you all along.
I don’t think back on my past and want to redo it. I don’t flip pages of my baby book and think, ‘dear, what cankles you had.’ I don’t see my adolescent self, my teenage self, and wish those pictures, scrapbooked and framed, would disappear. Really? My life, big, was always all I knew. And that is perfect in its own right.
Yes, I know now that with 145 extra pounds, something more was wrong than my weight. The scales I tipped should have tipped me off to emotional suffering. But not all of it was sad, or scared.
Some of the weight was happy and as well rounded as it came across.
Some of it meant that I developed a personality first.
A sense of humor before a sense of entitlement.
Empathy before ego.
Some of the weight meant that I didn’t care about myself. But in turn, maybe I cared deeply about a number of meaningful external parts of life. I poured my heart into relationships, molded to fit friends and circumstances. A big ball, I rolled with the changes. I doubt I’d be able to do that now, so much more rigid and spindly. I had a protective layer. Something to pull over my eyes , and the world, threatened to break me.
I found spirit.
I cared deeply about the way people perceived me. But maybe that made me more in tune and intuitive. Maybe that’s why, now and always, I could and would like to sit for hours and days on end, just listening to someone else. What’s your story? Where are you from? And, are you content? love and peace xxoo
I find there’s a fine line between like and obsessed. A whisper-thin, sliver of a line. Take my reverence for Target, for example. What began nearly ten years ago as a casual, “Hey I really think that place is the cat’s pajamas” slipped almost too quickly into me considering ways to spend an entire weekend within its red doors. How lovely a weekend that would be.
My relationship with my muffin tin is similarly alarming. We can call it obsessive if we must. The thing is, I just can’t quite seem to help myself.
Because, I mean, well… everything can be cupcaked…made petite…muffined even. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert can all be popped, hot, from the twelve cup tin.
So then- shouldn’t they be?
Petite Lasagnas
recipe slightly adapted from Hungry Girl
(makes 12)
12 oz raw ground turkey
¼ tsp salt, divided
¼ tsp pepper
1 cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped mushrooms
14.5 oz can crushed tomatoes, or tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tsp dried oregano, divided
½ tsp dried basil
1 ½ cups part skim ricotta cheese
24 small square wonton wrappers (the kind near the tofu in the refrigerated section of the produce dept)
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Preheat oven to 375ºF. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the turkey, onions, mushrooms, salt, and pepper. Crumble the meat and saute the mixture for about 10 minutes, or until the turkey is cooked through. Add the garlic and stir constantly for 30 seconds.
Add the crushed tomatoes and 2 tsp of oregano. Bring the pan to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, a pinch of salt and pepper, the remaining teaspoon of oregano, and the basil. Stir to mix well. Set aside.
Coat a 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Place 1 wonton wrapper into each of the 12 cups, pressing firmly in the bottom of the cup and up the sides.
Using half of the ricotta mixture, divide it among the 12 muffin cups. Next, using half of the turkey tomato sauce, spoon it evenly over each of the ricotta filled cups. Sprinkle with 2 tsp of mozzarella.
Gently press another wonton wrapper on top of the mozzarella layer.
Repeat the process by distributing the remaining ricotta, then the remaining tomato sauce, and finally the rest of the shredded mozzarella.
Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.
Let the cups cool, remove them from the pan, and serve!
Nutrition Info for 1 petite lasagna: 5 PointsPlus
Calories: 181.2, Total Fat: 7.9g, Cholesterol: 41.9mg, Sodium: 389.5mg, Total Carb: 13.6g, Fiber: 1 g, Sugars: 1.6g, Protein 14.1g
beautiful, and so insightful!
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