Romance:From Fat To Fatale(24)
Maybe I'd better check that last reference for accuracy but you know absolutely for sure that real friends are a true example of precious rarity in life and that real friends do not judge you.
They do their damnedest to help. So I started slowly, talking about some of my former habits and encounters as she sat and looked at me, never interrupting me nor whispering a word, just nodding and listening to me as I spoke. And after another glass of water I started to talk more about how I was feeling these days.
How I was seeing myself in a different light, feeling a little angry with myself, a little guilty for hi-jacking those dumb, half-drunk guys into compromising positions that never turned out to be the most fulfilling experience a gal could have.
I could see now that it had been more like a game. It was like I'd been using them, humiliating them in a way, tricking them into having sex with a hideously overweight gal that they'd normally run a country mile from. And then as I reached for another Kleenex, tears escaping my closed eyes and trailing down my flushed face, I admitted that I felt I'd been humiliating myself as well. I'd been punishing myself with each and every casual and empty encounter of the flesh. It had been less than empty. It had been demeaning, as if somehow I'd diminished myself as well. And the sobbing became more painful, more intense as my tears turned to ashes and my heart felt as if it was being consumed in the corrosive fires of my regret. The lady nutritionist leaned forward and took me in her arms, lowered my head to her shoulder, patting me gently on the back.
She held me without speaking and it seemed that time stood still and took a break for us in that little office. Whatever was happening to me, it felt like an avalanche, an unstoppable sobbing tsunami of pain that threatened to overwhelm me and carry me away from this world of disappointment and delusion. I clung onto the lady nutritionist, anchored to her serenity and felt the crisis slowly abate, ebbing like a tide that has reached its highpoint and can now only recede.
She released me from my orang-utan embrace, my tears still staining her white cotton smock, stood carefully and brought me another glass of water. So, she said, sitting next to me again, smiling gently. What do you make of all that? I couldn't speak for a few moments. I don't know, I said. It was pretty intense. I'm not sure what it was about. It felt like a forty pound rock being levered out of my chest that was for sure. But I did know. And so did she.
Chapter 16:
A timely lesson in growing up
The starting point for the change in my life had been a recognition that my underlying issues had been about unhappiness, a lack of control in my life and, maybe, a serious dose of self-loathing that had prompted a whole catalogue of regrettable behaviours. She smiled and then she clapped her hands together and said, Oh Lord, Oh Lord and started laughing. Not some genteel ladylike tinkling but a genuine belly laugh. Like she'd just heard the funniest thing in her life. She was laughing like a drunken Ukrainian sailor on payday shore leave, head back and roaring, and I started to wonder if she was laughing at - no way, dammit! - At me.
It's OK, Honey, she stuttered between barely suppressed guffaws. It's really OK. You just need to lighten up a little right now. Give yourself a break. Go easy on the heavy duty Biblical judgement routine. You're all brimstone and ashes but you haven't done anything wrong.
Really. You are not the first lady on this earth to mess up and you surely won't be the last. You're being way too harsh on yourself.
It's nothing, she said. Really, it's nothing. She took my hands in hers. Look at me, she said. Look me right in the eye and tell me that you're good enough. Go on, she urged. Tell me that you're good enough. I tried to repeat the words but she squeezed my hands harder and told me to say it like I really meant it.
And I had to keep saying it until she believed me. And after the tenth or twelfth attempt, I started laughing too. All those
poor guys. Imagine the indignity of getting laid on a Saturday night, forced to have sex against their collective self-righteous will. It really was funny. She said I should get some special medal for public services way beyond the call of my civic duty. We laughed together until the tears were streaming down our faces. We must've looked like a couple of certifiable crazies on day release without their prescription medication. She held my hands again and said as solemnly as she could that she'd never, ever gone to bed with an ugly man. She looked down as the admission settled between us. There was a long pause before she looked up again and added with a perfectly pained clown's expression, but she'd woken up with plenty. That set us off again.
You see it's OK to make mistakes. We all do the dumbest things and with a little bit of luck and guidance we can learn from them and make better choices. And that was all there was to it. The lady nutritionist declared that making mistakes was fine but we had to try not to make the same mistakes over and over again. That was just plain, vanilla-flavoured dumb and that was one of the few occasions when mercy killing was the only permissible option. I'd never laughed so much in my life.
The error was often to be found in the way we look for understanding in the eyes of others. We seek forgiveness in the hearts of those around us.
But understanding and forgiveness can only come from within ourselves. And that was a hard-won fact, a personal lesson that came at a very heavy emotional price. I was pretty sure I wouldn't forget it. The other problem is that we all get trapped in the illusion that we're somehow the most important thing on the planet.