For months, I’ve wondered when my personal Three Mile Island moment was going to occur. Would it sneak up on me while I stood in line at the grocery store? Would I lose my carefully cultivated control in the midst of a traffic snarl? Would I go mental on the mailman for delivering torn mail? The suspense was killing me.
This past Saturday, my husband and I had tickets to see Incognito, a remarkable jazz funk band, in concert. Nearly three months of anxious waiting had come down to this. My level of excitement, which heretofore was somewhere in the range of 9.2 on the Richter scale, had become somewhat muted as I surveyed the pile of clothes strewn across my bed.
I was upset. Despite having lost 25 pounds in 2012, and managing to keep it off successfully … until a couple of months ago. Despite the fact that I go to the gym at least three times a week. Despite dubbing myself a success story. Yes, I’m putting it all out there: my body had the audacity to cease doing what I wanted it to do.
A closet full of clothes and none of them fit anymore. What the hell?!? [I suppose here is where I lapse into Stage One of brutal honesty: not all of my clothes are too small for me. I still have loads of sweatpants and t-shirts … perfect for camouflaging.]
My subconscious self waited for my husband to go downstairs while I stared at the thickish woman peering indignantly back at me in the mirror. For the love of all that is pure and sweet, I tried to be strong, put on a brave face and poopoo those thoughts that were running rampant throughout my head.
That’s when it happened.
I had gone nuclear. A meltdown was afoot. It started with a quiver in my mouth and worked its way across my entire face. I cried. I cried ugly. My face was contorted into a mask of pain, yet there was no physical discomfort … if you don’t count the stabbing feeling that coursed its way throughout all four chambers of my heart.
I wanted to punch something, someone. I marched from my bedroom—naked except for my gray Victoria’s Secret bra and matching underwear—to the guest bedroom across the hall, walked along the side of the bed, drew back my arm with the knobby-knuckled balled up fist attached to the end and let it fly. My diminutive fist of fury landed smack dab in the middle of Sampson’s snout. Yeah, I cleaned his clock.
[Now would be a good time to tell you that Sampson is a giant stuffed polar bear.]
What’s wrong with this picture?
It’s me . . . I’m what’s wrong with this picture. I’m the culprit. That deep, cavernous abyss of self-pity invited me in with open arms and I waddled right into them. That my wonderful husband hasn’t told me to shut my pie hole and stop all this nonsense about my body is beyond me.
Body image. Stressing over it went out of style in my 40s. Now that the 50s have claimed me, the realization of what truly is occurring with my body should come as no surprise. My metabolism has slowed to a crawl. Gone are the days of eating an entire Sara Lee cheesecake and not gaining an ounce.
Ahhhh, the good old days.
As I looked back fondly on the skinny me of my past, I realized that memories are made in the moment. What I do today will become a lasting memory tomorrow. Why not blow out the candles on the cake, pull the plug on this pity party and stop agonizing over the slightly worn façade (a façade, which I might add, is “gorgeous” according to my husband).
As women, we can sometimes be our own worst enemy. We wrestle with whether our ass looks big in these jeans, question whether our hairdo is a hairdon’t or freak out when the needle on the scale tilts wildly to the right … and stays there. Of this, I am guilty. However, this doesn’t mean that I will sit down quietly in a dark corner, pint of Ben & Jerry’s Hazed & Confused firmly in hand, and let midlife be the ghost that haunts me the rest of my days.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I cried that night. Then, I wiped my tears away and took a good, long, hard look at myself once more in the mirror. You know what I saw? I saw a woman on the cusp of 52 who had her act together. The woman who regarded me with red rimmed eyes had swallowed self-pity whole without leaving a single lump in her throat. Misery tasted damn good.
I sifted through the jumble of discarded clothes, pulled together a fierce outfit (because, really, most of my clothes actually do fit), held my head high and went downstairs. “Wow, you look nice, baby.” My husband’s words made me feel like I had won the lottery. Through his eyes, I saw my true self for the first time that night.
Okay, so I would have to work out a little harder (and smarter), limit the fatty foods and just generally take better care of myself. It’s a lousy 5 pounds. Piece o’ cake. It’s all about change. Change is challenging, but change is good. And so it goes for midlife.
