Today I woke up in my mother's apartment and considered putting on jeans. To most girls, this is a pretty familiar and downright common morning ritual. But for me, jeans have always held a great deal of anxiety.
In the seventh grade, I was best friends forever with this one girl, who I'll call Sophia. It was the kind of friendship/love I'd end up seeing replicated in that super creepy Kate Winslet movie Heavenly Creatures where the girl kills her friend's mother (based on the life of crime novelist Anne Perry, no joke). I adored Sophia. I'd do anything for her. It wasn't like a lesbian love, it was that deep love young girls feel for their bestest of friends.
in this picture I'm the one that's not Kate Winslet
Every day after school we would walk to McDonalds and order Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meals. Or, at least, I did. She often just got fries or a shake. During this period, I did not wear jeans. I'm not sure why, maybe it was the weather, maybe I was just way too into my cool skorts. We'd go to McDonalds for a 'second lunch,' then go home to our respective houses, do homework, and call each other. I'm serious when I say I would have taken a bullet for this girl, I loved her that much.
Anyway, as is also common for young girls, we had a falling out. There were a multiple of factors, she was cutting herself (also common for thirteen-year-olds), I was accused of lying, we both had fighting parents at home, I was smothering her... a lot of the blame likely lies on my feet. But the desolation I felt when I could no longer call Sophia my best friend was unbearable. It was worst than any breakup I've ever gone through, and I've had my heart shattered, resplintered, then shattered again. When Sophia and I ended, I wanted to die.
It was after this breakup that I tried to put on jeans, and I realized with horror that I simply could not fit in them anymore. Due to our frequent trips to McDonalds and the onset of puberty, I had suddenly gained a ton of weight. I was no longer "thin," I was portly-esque. And forever seared in my mind of this feeling of despair-- friendless, and now a fatty (again, the thoughts of a young girl) unworthy of love - have forever been wrapped up in how I feel about jeans.
I went to camp, lost the weight, whatever. I learned better eating habits. However, I refused to ever put on a pair of jeans again. I was the girl in high school who always wore skirts, and while most of my peers assumed this was to be 'different' and 'weird,' that wasn't totally the case. It was because I was terrified of how I'd feel in jeans.
Along with the jean anxiety, a fear of weight gain has haunted me. This fear likely did not originate with the Sophia-Jean debacle, but rather due to the fact that my mother had a proclivity towards over-exercise and anorexia when I was young, where instead of daycare I sat on an unused treadmill and watched her run for hours. Nonetheless, this anxiety came to head after a particularly bad breakup when I was still at USC. I learned to handle my depression by not eating, and glorifying in my newly discovered ribs. And suddenly I could wear jeans again.
Take, for example, this photo taken by my friend Francesca:
I look super healthy and happy there, right? Wrong. I weighed maybe 97 pounds and only ate sashimi. I was five steps away from becoming that dude on Entourage. This was after gaining eight pounds (so, being 89 pounds) when my mother threatened to send me to a mental hospital unless I "stopped being crazy." It was not a great time for me. But man, I got to wear jeans! Nice jeans, too. I was at the top of the world, like a gentleman from another great Kate Winslet movie:
Several years of therapy and such later, I can now where jeans when I weigh more than 95 pounds (a lot more, no worries). But every time I consider them, I have to check my mental confidence. Today, I didn't have enough confidence to wear anything other than an elastic skirt in an outfit similar to this one:
I realize that most won't see a great deal of difference between these two pictures, but to a recovering anorexic, there's a difference. And it will always be there, a little voice in my head telling me that my tummy is gross or my love handles won't hide forever. There's the voice telling me not to enjoy that soy latte or popcorn. But I tell it to shut the hell up, and usually that's enough. Because while I don't have Sophia's love, or that asshole ex boyfriend's love, I have something far more important: love of self. And love of friends and a wonderful supportive boyfriend who encourages eating of the carbs.
And with that love comes the knowledge that going down the path that involves me wearing my "skinny jeans" also means falling into a pit of despair where I eat nothing fun-- unless you count guessing how many pills of exlax you can swallow at one time as fun (I could swallow in one gulp about 12). This path also requires alienating and lying to the people I love, and getting extra hair on my arms. All for a concave stomach.
So I'll wear my regular jeans, be a regular girl. Being skinny is just too lonely, and is just too much hard work. If I'm going to be a Kate Winslet character, let it be the emotional (but otherwise halthy) Marianne Dashword-- lady gets to end up with hottie Alan Rickman. Lucky bitch.
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