Meet the Parents

So. Wow. I haven’t written in *so long*. There is wayyyy too much to say, I can’t possibly update you with everything that’s been going on. So I’ll stick to the most important stuff.

I recently had to move home. As in, with my parents.

I was having some issues with my apartment and, more seriously, with my landlord. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a new place — rent has gone up dramatically in the last few years — and I had to resort to moving home. It was supposed to be very temporary, but I’ve been here now since mid-April.

It is torture.

Well, okay, I’m being dramatic. There are some nice things about it: I’ve gotten to spend some quality time with my parents, especially my dad. He’s amazing, and it’s always great seeing him. I feel like we’ve been more family-ish than we’ve been in a long time, having meals together, watching shows together, even going to the movies together. My younger brother, usually absent from family adventures, has even tagged along here and there. Maybe the best part? I get to play regularly with my cats.

But let me tell you: it has not been good for my waistline.

I’ve mentioned in the past that my mother has, for the most part, been mortified by my weight gain. We used to run and go to the gym together; now I get out of breath just thinking about the gym, and the only place I’m running is to the donut shop. Ha! It’s almost as if my mother treats my weight as one of her own personal failures. Or, probably more accurately, she fears that my weight will somehow infect her, as if it might be contagious, that if I eat too much, the extra calories might somehow transmogrify into her own excess cellulite. Probably, too, she fears what people will say about her. “Have you seen so-and-so’s daughter? Yeah, she gained a lot of weight in college. Yes, she’s very fat now. No, we don’t know why. I’m sure they’re trying all sorts of diets.” These types of comments, real or imagined, would be a little miniature version of hell incarnate, for my mother.

So she exacts her revenge: we eat spinach salads with strawberries and grilled chicken for dinner, and my piece of chicken is markedly smaller even than hers. Dessert is mostly watermelon. A few weeks ago we had rice pudding, the most indulgent dessert to date, and my portion was enough to feed a large caterpillar. She prepared carbs this week for the first time since June, when she made her famous baked ziti for a dinner party, the same baked ziti she’s been making for dinner parties since at least the mid 90s. I imagine this time she regretted having to make baked ziti, because she regretted that the carbs she was preparing would collect on my hips, and each of my wobbling steps would remind her that she has contributed to making me into the fat monster I am.

Of course, all this measured eating has meant that I have lost some weight recently. Not a significant amount, probably about 15 pounds. I had been up  to about 315-320 after the holidays, in late February, and I’m now back to around 300. I know this with some certainty because not long after I moved home, into the very bedroom in which I used to stuff my pre-teen self with candy, a scale appeared underneath my dresser. I did not ask for a scale, and no one mentioned it. Probably my dad doesn’t know it’s there; I think he would be very angry if he knew, because, in his fatherly blindness,  he sees no fat on my body. He sees me as the same pretty little girl he’s always seen. But my mother has kept a hawkish eye on my waist. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already purchased some clothes of smaller sizes, in anticipation of the day when I will shed my precious pounds and slip into that size 18, 16, 14, 12. I have watched, mostly with regret and horror, as the mysterious new scale in my bedroom dipped lower, to 312, 308, 305.

I have, of course, still been eating, but it is *far* more difficult when you can’t hide yourself in the privacy of your own house. Mostly I’ve had to eat Wendy’s in the car on the way to work, Dunkin Donuts on the way home, pizza salvaged from work parties. My dad, I think, feels bad — he knows that my mother’s ridiculously healthy dinners are a direct result of my bulging belly, a sort of silent challenge to me to become “healthy” again — and one night, when my mother was out of town visiting a friend, he ordered us pizza and we went out after for ice cream. My mother had prepared a menu and shopping list for while she was gone. I think he might have thrown it away.

My dad, I’m sure, doesn’t want me to gain weight. But until I express to him that I am unhappy in my body — which I will never, because I cannot, do! I adore and glorify my body! — he will support me. He wants me to enjoy my life, and sometimes, enjoying life means eating pizza and ice cream. Even if your daughter, who is 6 inches shorter than you, eats more pizza than you do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My weight has consumed my mother. She pities me. Probably she pities herself just a little bit more, that she has to look into my fat in search of her daughter. Of course, she doesn’t really look at me anymore. Even when her eyes are cast in my direction, I can tell, she’s not looking at me so much as through me, as if her determined glare may pierce through my fat and get to the real me. As if I’m hidden under a layer of fat, and if she stares hard enough, the fat might fall off my body and my skinny self, that unfulfilled, unsatisfied, unhappy self, might return. As if my fat is not so much a part of me, but is rather a piece of clothing, that might be shed at any minute. As if my fat is but a costume, disguising the real me.

But she’s mistaken. My fat is not a costume, nor an article of clothing, nor something that can (or will ever!) be shed. My fat is me. It is not just a part of me, it is itself me.

I am fat. *I* am fat. I *am* fat. I am *fat*.

I feel, in my fat, those parts of my identity that had remained hidden from me when I was skinny. I feel, in my fat, those most cherished parts of who I am. I feel, in my fat, my purpose in life. If the universe bestows on each of us a direction, a goal, what Aristotle called “eudaimonia,” the good life — “happiness is doing well and living well” — then I am certain that my purpose is to be fat, to eat junk food, and to grow fatter. Doing well for me is not so much doing well for others as it is doing well to my body; living well is not living healthily, but living fat. Living well is perhaps a euphemistic understatement: living well, for me, is never going hungry, never skipping dessert, indulging every desire and every longing I feel, maintaining constantly the feeling of being overstuffed, such that my body has no choice but to convert the caloric energy I ceaselessly consume into new fat, piling fat upon fat, rolls upon rolls, cellulite stacking up upon cellulite. As my belly begins to process the sweet and fatty foods I’ve just consumed and sends a tentative message up to my brain that it is ready for ever-so-slightly more, I know that those calories are being sent outwards, to my thighs and hips and arms and boobs and belly and butt. To fill out the little pieces of fat on my fingers, to flush out my cheeks with fat, to send my back rolls spilling ever further behind me. As my body processes the calories — it’s too many! I can hear my body screaming, it’s too much to handle! and the other voices deep within me cheer, it’s never too much! give us more! more and more and more! we love being overloaded with calories! — I can almost feel my body expanding outwards, taking up more and more space in this room, spilling ever more off my chair, jiggling more aggressively every time I take even the smallest step. This, friends, is living well: never going hungry, never getting skinny, and watching with paralyzing admiration as my belly flops over my waistline onto my thighs.

Of course, this post is in part about how these desires have been tempered and interrupted in recent months, as I’ve been unable to fully indulge myself since I have been living with Mother. But this post is also about how today was different: for the first time in a looong time, I had the house to myself. Finding private time is immensely difficult: I work M-F, my mother doesn’t work full-time, and my father is home most weekends. Today the fatty gods allowed their fatty stars to align for a trifecta of fat fulfillment: my mother is in another state for a few days, my father had a business trip and won’t be back until tomorrow, and I was granted a sick day for what I described on my call into work as “a weird little bug that I can’t seem to shake.”

That weird little bug, of course, is not really an illness per se so much as an unfulfillable urge to watch my fat body grow fatter and fatter. That weird little bug that I can’t shake is a bug that is demanding of me: eat donuts, eat fast food, eat ice cream, eat and eat and eat. This weird little bug, the bug of insatiable desire, kept me up almost all night, knowing that my mother would be leaving in the morning, that I would call in sick to work, that I would finally, after months of silent longing, have this house to myself. (I thought I would have it to myself last week and was thwarted; perhaps I’ll write about that, too.) As I tossed and turned last night, grabbing my belly in an effort to quell my longing, all I could think about were the donuts that would stuff my fat belly, the fries I would stuff into my mouth, the double cheeseburger that would immediately upon consumption morph into newer and bigger and better fat rolls, wherever my fattening body deemed needed more glorious fat.

And of course, donuts and fries and burgers are exactly what I did: as soon as my mother had left (later than planned, alas! I was supposed to be stuffing myself by 930, but when she didn’t leave till almost 11, my plans were nearly thwarted!), I was in the car on the way to Dunkin Donuts. I bought two glazed, a jelly, a chocolate creme, a chocolate frosted cake, and a powdered. I scuttled over to Wendy’s for a double cheeseburger, a medium fries, a four piece chicken nugget, a medium cherry coke, and a medium frosty. I sped home and prepared my fattening, gluttonous, and overly-caloric feast:

I would consume it all, I thought to myself. I even feared it wouldn’t be enough. The smell of the donuts was intoxicating; I swooned with the thought that soon, so soon, these donuts, chambers of sugary and caloric heaven, would be added to my bulging frame. My breath got heavy as I tasted the first salty, fat-fried fry, and the first chicken finger made my heart sink deep into my belly with desire. I longed to consume these donuts, this fat, this sugar, these calories, and my body twitched with an unspeakable fever to feel them traverse through my digestive system, to feel my body pulse with the shock of fat overload.

The donuts glistened with the promise of newer and better fat; the sugary frosting and glazes whispered sweetly that they would fulfill my desires, that if only I would consume them, my most sincere wishes and longings would subside, and I would become contentedly happy. They shed their savory goodness and taunted my olfactory senses: eat us, and you will get fat! Eat us, and you will be happy! Eat us, to live!

I got started as quickly as possible. The burger melted in mouth, its greases dripping quickly into my belly. A gulp of soda and a mouthful of fries followed. A chicken nugget, then a donut, made their way next to the grease and cheese of the burger inside my body. As my belly swelled, I imagined my body redirecting the fat away from the stomach so more could be consumed. I relinquished all control to my inner feedee, who ensured that I would eat as much as humanly possible. The Fat Demon inside me, reigning completely over my mental, physical, and emotional state, dictated from on high: eat eat eat! Consume consume consume! Shuffle the greasy burger outward to the thighs, make room for incoming donut! Scoot the soda out to the fatty arms! Let those fries fill out the back rolls! More donut, these bits to the hips! We must grow, we must expand, we must allow the fat to take over completely!

I made my way, sometimes slowly but always with fierce determination, through the initial bites:

Half the burger, half the fries, half the chicken, probably about half the soda, and two donuts, all of them down into my fattening belly, to be redirected to their eventual fatty homes. My belly was beginning to moan, but far too quietly for my Fat Demon, now my ruler, to pay any heed. All I knew was more; all I desired was more. The donuts failed, so far, to live up to their promise: they had sated nothing, and the promise that more donuts, more sugar, more calories, might satisfy rang ever louder inside my head. I rubbed my belly feverishly and almost giggled with delight at the thought that it would only expand, only grow more jiggly, only hang lower and lower over my thighs.

I kept eating as I started working on this blog post: more burger, more fries, more soda, more donuts. The food piled inside my belly, spilled into my hips and thighs, swelled in my chest. My heart became very slowly dislodged from the grip of the Fat Demon inside me, yet I longed still to grow fatter and fatter. I longed to consume all of the food in front of me; I was caught in the grip of my addiction to my food and to my fat.

I finally swelled; my belly groaned, I could hardly move; I hit a food coma, where to move is uncomfortable and you desire only more food, yet you find that you can no longer process. I started in on a new donut, and found it difficult to push it down; I chewed, I savored the taste, yet it was as if the donut had nowhere left to go; I chewed and over-chewed, and finally it slipped into my belly, probably through some backdoor so as not to be counted among the official spoils of my gluttonous feast.

The double cheeseburger: gone. The medium fries: gone. The chicken nuggets: gone. The medium soda: gone. Three donuts and a half donuts: gone. I looked at the greasy wrappers of paper and the crumbs and imagined my belly swelling with that same grease, that same fat, those very calories. I imagined my Fat Demon, from his home deep within my spine, directing those calories outward, clearing my belly for later, when I would finish these donuts and finally turn to my precious chocolate frosty.

But as I looked on that last precious half of a donut, I felt the Fat Demon roused to action. Would we leave this lonely half of a donut all to himself? Could we make no more room at all for a new companion? Would these calories really be wasted? My Fat Demon roused his fatty friends, the cellulite gripping my thighs, the rolls stacked upon my belly, the pounds of flesh hanging from my arms, the fat packed cutely around my face, to action. Yes, this half of a donut will join us, the troops cried! I imagined an old Uncle Sam poster, pointing at that lonely half of a donut: I WANT YOU! Those last few bites were practically impossible; there was simply nowhere for that donut to go. I swallowed it practically without chewing, almost writhing with the feeling of being so overly stuffed, and yet grateful with the the thought that I might, because of this little precious donut, expand with even more fat. I was done.

That last half of a donut: gone. I licked a patch of powdered sugar off of my shirt, where it had collected on my chest. I was stuffed; I could hardly move. I have two more donuts to finish, and I will, soon, but for now: the couch. I laid back, swung my (now fatter) legs up below me, and rubbed my pulsing belly. I was short of breath. The thought of more food made my stomach churn, and yet it also made me smile ever so slightly: soon, I thought, soon, I will have more room, and I will eat more, and I will grow fatter.

As I write this, now, I’ve cleared some room: I have started in on my chocolate frosty. I kept it in the refrigerator, not the freezer, so it has mostly melted: perfect for drinking, slurping, chugging; perfect to consume as quickly as possible, to add the extra calories to my bulging frame as efficiently as possible. As I gulp it down, the Fat Demon resumes his post: yes, eat, you fat little pig, grow fatter, swoon with your own fat, give in to your most addictive and destructive desires. My breath grows short as I feel the cool chocolate calories, soon to be converted into precious new mounds of fat on my growing body, press against my lips. I watch the chocolate drain from the cup, knowing that my body will hoard the added calories, and my heart pulses, beats with desire, beats so hard it feels it will pulse right out of my chest. Yes, I think, this is living well. The frosty gathers on my upper lip as I gulp it back as quickly as possible; I feel as though I might black out with longing, with desire; it’s not enough, I think, as I chug another gulp, it won’t do, and I need more! Another gulp, and another; I put the cup down for a moment, lick the frosty off the top of my lip, and grab a layer of fat swelling from my hip. This needs to hang lower, sag further, jiggle more, the Fat Demon whispers. He’s serious now, the Fat Demon, he’s not barking orders, he’s not directing; he has sat back in his chair, leaned his head upon his chin to let me know he’s being serious: you need to finish that frosty, or that heaping mound of hip fat you’re grabbing will never, ever grow, even one ounce. With a new determination, eager to please my feedee Fat Demon, I pick up my frosty cup; I tilt it back to my lips; my heart skips a beat as I watch the frosty drip down towards my lips. But I was over-eager, and my gulp was too big for my mouth, and the frosty collects again on my upper lip. I am such a fat little piggy, my Fat Demon tells me, a sloppy fat mess, and my calories are now spilling onto my face, making a mess of my lips. I am nearly out of breath; frosty has spilled onto my body; my heart is pounding in my chest and a familiar longing deep within my pelvis cries out. I feel, where my spine meets my pelvis, a tightening that promises to me it will loosen with just another big gulp. My heart beats excitedly with the thought that this desire lodged deep within me might dissipate after another gulp and I rush the cup back to my lips — all I have to do is finish my frosty. I lean my head all the way back and take my final gulp and — alas! — the tightness remains. I long for more. I lean back and feel my belly gurgling with its new fat. I crave my next stuffing, and feel contented to have finished, at least, my frosty.

So it is done. I can hardly breath, because I swell both with calories and with the desire for more. Here’s the final tally:

• Wendy’s double cheeseburger, 790 calories, 51 grams of fat, 8 grams of sugar
• Wendy’s medium fries, 420 calories, 19 grams of fat
• Wendy’s 4 piece chicken nugget, 180 calories, 13 grams of fat
• Wendy’s medium soda, 320 calories, 66 grams of sugar
• Dunkin Donuts chocolate frosted  cake donut, 350 calories, 19 grams of fat, 20 grams of sugar
• Dunkin Donuts glazed donut, 260 calories, 14 grams of fat, 12 grams of sugar
• Dunkin Donuts chocolate creme donut, 320 calories, 19 grams of fat, 14 grams of sugar
• Dunkin Donuts powdered donut, 320 calories, 19 grams of fat, 14 grams of sugar

And last but not least, a medium chocolate frosty, 460 calories, 12 grams of fat, and a whopping 63 grams of sugar. Woof.

The totals for today’s lunch? 3,420 calories, 166 grams of fat, and 197 grams of sugar.

Now it’s time to lay around and rub my fat belly so I can finish my last two donuts and then figure out what’s for dinner.

Living well, done right 😉