Memoir: Medium

Medium.

How long has it been, since I was a Medium? I think it’s been at least twenty years. When I was three years old, my mother gave me a baked potato for dinner. I asked for butter. She told me we didn’t have any. I complained. I wanted butter! She explained to me that we were poor, we didn’t have money to buy butter. She said someday we would have more money and then I could have all the butter I wanted. She told me to use salt instead.

I have spent my life avoiding having that happen again. Piling on the butter. Eating like every meal is my last chance to have whatever it is we are having. Eating when I’m not hungry. Eating when I’m already full. Eating fast, and eating the last thing I do before going to sleep. Once I start eating, I keep eating. More than once, I have eaten myself sick.

At forty pounds overweight, my clothes don’t fit, my knees hurt, my self-esteem is shot. And all this to satisfy a three year old who didn’t get what she wanted. With all the formidable determination of a three year old, I have never let that happen again. It became a habit, a lifestyle, a compulsion.

What would it be like to be free of that? Maybe it’s time to find out.

Signed,

Extra Large