If nobody ever saw me eating,
Then it couldn't be my fault I was fat
by Kaye Bailey, Published July 18, 2005, You Have Arrived
I became a closet eater when I was in junior high and a skinny girl sucking on carrots in the school cafeteria asked me "Should you be eating that?" pointing at my Hostess Ding-Dong. I felt instant and complete humiliation. I was already well aware that being fat was bad and I believed I was a bad person for being fat. When you’re in the 7th grade it’s difficult to separate the two. So red faced and degraded I stuffed the remaining Ding-Dong in my lunch bag and tossed it in the trash. I had a good cry in the restroom. And for the rest of the afternoon instead of thinking about conjugating verbs in English class I thought about how badly I wanted to eat that Ding-Dong because eating it would make me feel better.
So began my secret life of eating because I quickly concluded if I ate alone in secret my bliss would not be interrupted by the scorns and disapproval of the superior people who were lucky enough to be thin.
If nobody ever saw me eating, then it couldn’t be my fault I was fat.
Quietly I mobilized my secret life of eating creating a "Goody Drawer" in my bedroom dresser. It was a treasure trove of comforting delights. At first the drawer held simple items, stolen cookies or crackers from my mother’s "reward cupboard" and candy purchased with my allowance money. Then I added zippy bags of breakfast cereals – the good kinds like Cap’n Crunch and Apple Jacks. For salt cravings I stashed bags of chips, not the snack sized, the family sized that my mother would complain always went missing.
My collection really improved when I became a competent neighborhood babysitter earning my own money, most of which was invested in my Goody Drawer. But worse, I took to snooping in my clients cupboards and on more than one occasion they unknowingly made a contribution to the Goody Drawer. In fact, one time I actually smuggled an entire Sara Lee Pound cake from the Mitchell’s (sorry about that).
The Goody Drawer was my temple, my sacred secret place. And my parents were unaware and so were my schoolmates. In fact, I was often asked, "How come you never eat?" Even my mother and father justified, "Kaye has big bones and slow metabolism She’s just got our unlucky genes, she hardly eats a thing." I kept my secret and I even believed I was just unlucky and big boned. The mind is powerful and from myself I hid the truth – my secret snacking while oh-so-comforting was making me fatter.
As I grew up I found ways to expand my world of secret snacking. A car is a wonderful place to hide a dirty habit. In college it was not unusual for me to cruise through one or two (yes two!) drive-up windows on the way home from classes. I loved a McDonald’s Big Mac with fries and nothing tasted better with that than a Frosty Dairy Dessert from Wendy’s. And since I was already at Wendy’s, why not a bacon burger for later. But a secret eater knows there is no "later". I always ate to completion my purchases as if I feared there would never be another burger or fry again.
Each night I sat at the dining table with my roommates who were also obese and I ate salad while they ate their burgers and fries. "It’s so strange," they would say, "Kaye hardly eats anything, yet she never loses weight." I always responded, "I have a slow metabolism and bad genes and just look at these big bones."
My secret eating continued to adulthood through marriage number one that ended in divorce. I think he said something about me being a "fat pig". In my second marriage, the one in which I’m presently blissfully happy, there is no need for secret eating because we both love food and we celebrate with food. The problem, my husband is physically active, strong and lean. He does not gain weight. I was not physically active, strong or lean. So as we "celebrated" he thrived and I got wider.
Jump ahead to gastric bypass surgery. When I met with my surgeon my story was the same; "I am big boned and have bad genes and a slow metabolism. I hardly eat anything." He nodded, but he knew the truth. I was eating far too much of the wrong things too often. He would help me. My life as a secret eater ended.
Oddly enough, today my car is much cleaner and smells fresher and I don’t miss digging out those run-away fries from between the seat and console. And can you just imagine the lovely lacy little-bits-of-nothing I can keep in my "Goody Drawer" now?
Sometimes in a parking lot I see my former self, a lone obese person, voraciously eating in their car. They don’t look out or meet my gaze; they are just eating, concentrating and hiding. This makes me sad. Sad for this person because I feel their pain and sorry for myself because I suffered that pain for so many years. But time is healing those wounds for me and I take a knee in prayer that all those suffering from obesity may someday heal their emotional wounds and free their bodies.
As for my eating habits these days: I happily eat in public, have lunch with friends and I’m not ashamed to dine alone in public. Not long ago my husband and I shared a table with eight strangers at a charity event. A beautiful compassionate woman said to me, "No wonder you are so small, you hardly eat a thing." And I accepted her compliment proud to know that I would not binge eat in the closet that night when we got home.
Return to Kaye's Essays
© 2005-2007 Kaye Bailey - All Rights Reserved |
