"So...13 pounds since May?"
I leaned my head to one side slightly, as if I'd misheard the nurse-practitioner. "I'm sorry?"
"Can you explain why you've gained 13 pounds in...8 weeks or so?"
She was tall, thin, perky. I rearranged my face to conceal my horror at the question, and tried to appear nonchalant, if flabbergasted.
"I mean, I think you look great!" she said, a bit too perkily. "But that's...you weighed 120 when you came in in May, and you just weighed in at 133. That's...that's a pretty significant increase. Can you think of any reason why you've gained so much weight?"
So much weight. I laid my hand over my stomach protectively, as if trying to hide it from view. I mean, I'd just come from lunch. All I had was a salad wrap, and some chickpeas with edamame, and tea. How much could that weigh? What about breakfast? And my clothes? Did she have to phrase it like that?
"Um, well...I started a new job in May," I said vaguely. "It's pretty physical. Maybe it's all muscle?"
"Hm. Maybe," she replied. "But you ought to keep it in check. You're not very tall. Your BMI is still within limits, though."
She then cheerfully sent me off with free emergency contraception and an appointment card for October, and with approximately 85% less confidence in myself. When I returned to my apartment I stood in front of the mirror and felt exceedingly, impossibly depressed. I poked at my skin and pulled at all my problem areas and examined all the cellulite and stretch marks and remembered all the snide comments people had thrown my way over the months and years as I felt my body go from its lowest point - about 105 pounds, about two years ago - to now, almost thirty pounds later. And I missed my old body the way you miss someone who has died, who is gone forever.
**
Last night was a similar disaster. I went out with Anika to the Meatpacking District. There needs to be some rule about having tall, thin, blond supermodel-esque friends when you yourself are short, "voluptuous" (as Anika delicately put it as I was trying to squeeze myself into one of her extra small bebe dresses), and brunette. As in, going out with them when you feel bad about how you look is generally a mistake.
So there we were, at the Standard (eugh), milling about the crowd. She wore one of the dresses I could not sausage my way into, along with a pair of D&G heels with a matching purse. I stood next to her, approximately eight inches shorter despite my platformed stilettos (purchased at TJ Maxx, maybe). My ruched tube dress was sized medium, and I think it might've set me back $30. I looked sadly down at my clutch, which was falling apart, I noticed, as a short guy in a plaid shirt approached us.
"Look out, stage right," I warned playfully into her ear. Nothing like good old-fashioned male attention to perk you up. She and I exchanged smiles. We had been about to leave, but maybe this guy would buy us drinks, or something.
"Hi," he said. He was drinking a beer the approximate color of apple juice and I judged him for it. His plaid shirt screamed "desperate hipster." He extended his hand to Anika and introduced himself. He glanced at me, then refocused his attention on Anika. I didn't catch his name as it became apparent that he was not talking to me. I stood there, momentarily stunned, as he struck up a conversation with Anika and made no effort to acknowledge my presence.
It went on like this for a few lines of conversation, dominated by new friend Douchebag explaining that his "buddy over there" - he helpfully pointed to a guy cowering nearby in a corner - had a "broken heart," or some other such nonsense that no one cares about. He went on to extol the virtues of his friend, who must've suffered from social anxiety, or perhaps explosive flatulence in the presence of women, because he was definitely not approaching us anytime soon.
Anika interrupted, "This is my friend, Kate."
He turned and said, "Oh, hi," as he briefly lifted his beer glass in acknowledgement, or maybe his arm was cramping from the strain of carrying the weight of Williamsburg-bred douchebaggery on his shoulders and he thus needed to shift the weight of his horse-piss beer. Either way, I looked at him icily and said with sweetness so saccharin I could hear the Junior League cheering me all the way from below the Mason-Dixon line, "We were just leaving." I promptly turned on my cheap stiletto heel and stomped off (although for anyone playing the home game, the Standard on a Saturday night is just packed full of people enough to prevent a genuinely satisfying flounce, but no matter).
We left the Standard, and walked down to our old standby - a dance club called Cielo. I was sure that we'd have better luck there, in terms of finding guys we both could talk to/dance with/cajole drinks out of. Upon arriving at the line, the guy checking IDs bumped us up to the front, and gave us reduced admission tickets. We were wooshed in almost immediately. This was more like it! I could almost ignore that the handle had just broken off my clutch.
As we entered, we immediately noticed the huge amount of men present. Yes, this would surely be a successful evening. We went to the bar and, as per usual, bought ourselves one round of drinks to get started.
Now generally, in all the times I've been to Cielo, the same thing plays out each time. Anika and I each drink half of our respective beverages before being whisked away to the dance floor. Or, we procure our drinks and take them to the dance floor, where within a few minutes we have guys dancing with us. It's a very simple and straightforward process that has yet to not happen in some way, shape, or form.
Ten minutes later, we were under the massive disco balls, and the music felt pretty good. The place was appropriately hazy and smelled peculiarly of chlorine. (Fun side note, I now associate the smell of chlorine with Cielo. Not, say, a swimming pool. Like a normal person.) I'd already sucked down my Ketel and cranberry, which I immediately decided had neither alcohol nor cranberry juice in it, just pink water and ice and an anemic lime. Whatever. The next one would be stronger.
A guy came up to us and started dancing. He showed off a few skillful moves, and then extended his hand to Anika and they started to dance. Okay, cool - my guy would show up soon then. Anika oddly pushed her handbag into my arms. Okay, whatever, sure - although now I had two clutches in my hands (please someone, insert a joke here about having clutches in my clutches, or something. All the components are there but I'm far too lazy to put them together).
I kept dancing by myself. Several minutes passed. It became increasingly apparent, though, that here I was, standing in the middle of a dance floor that vibrated with the motion of all the bodies gyrating on it, and that I was dancing alone, in a cheap dress and cheap shoes, holding both my cheap, busted-down purse and my friend's designer purse while she was happily paired off with someone else. And I looked around - perhaps in a vain attempt to catch someone's eye and smile - and saw nothing but empty, anonymous faces. Suddenly I felt unsure. My constant fear of being lost in the shuffle was coming true, in an entirely literal sense.
Perhaps that's what I look for, when I go out - to connect somewhere, to anchor somewhere, even if that connection is barely larger than a pin point. To prove to myself that I can throw myself into the ocean and still find a way to float. In that moment, I was struck by the impression that I was drowning.
I was, as I often like to put it, being suffocated by my own unimportance.
I looked around again. Between being in the shadow of my more glamorous friend, and then being largely ignored the entire evening - I mentally noted that the bartender and the bouncer had both addressed Anika, not me - my self-doubt attacked my (already precarious) sense of self-worth. I thought of my heavy thighs and bruised legs, of my broken-out skin and the perpetually prickly heat rash on the squashy areas of my body that my clothes rubbed unfavorably against. I sat down at the edge of a couch, still awkwardly cradling two purses in my hands, trying not to appear as rejected and forgotten as I felt.
**
I've never been so acutely unhappy with my appearance as I have been of late. Similarly, I have not been as sick as I am now in a long time. I feel very much alone. And I want to believe it when people tell me I'm okay. I do not feel okay.
