It Was Me All Along: A Memoir by Andie Mitchell

more. I experimented with that place where people went for self-flagellation: the gym. And at the end of a month of an off-and-on, loose-as-a-goose plan, I only weighed more. I went to the dance larger than I’d been in the fall. I had a dress tailor-made at a bridal shop—a purple dress that cost Mom three hundred dollars that we didn’t have. Worse than the small fortune she paid, I didn’t even remotely love it. The empire waist made me feel as if I were wearing the latest in formal maternity. The eggplant hue made me feel like the vegetable itself. When we posed for the professional photo, I stopped breathing as my date stood behind me and put his hands on my hips. I was mortified thinking he might feel the girdle I’d worn underneath my gown—the one that cut off the circulation between my abdomen and my thighs. And when we picked up the pictures at school the next week, I wanted to burn them in a ceremonial hate fire along with that dress and the awful rhinestone studs I’d asked the hair stylist to tuck into my updo. The eight-by-ten alone made my eyes prickle with tears. Sharing half of the photos with my date at his locker felt as if I were giving him photos of me in the nude.
    After the dance, I spent a week gorging on every food I saw. I ate straight through Christmas and clean into the New Year. My self-esteem had fallen to a new and seemingly bottomless low. I realized the food wasn’t making me feel any better, but even still, I stuck with the habits I’d created long ago.
    I promised myself I’d try again to lose weight.
    When winter break ended and ninth grade resumed, I tried out for the girls’ lacrosse team. Thankfully, it was less of a tryout and more of a “we’re going to accept anyone.” After our first practice, where we were instructed to run suicides across the field, I went home and threw up from exhaustion. Running with what felt like a knapsack of fat left my knees in agony. Gasping for air left my throat hoarse and dry and my lungs racked with sharp, icy pain. On top of being terrible at the sport and winded from a light jog to get my water bottle, the uniform was a horror show. The shirt, even in extra-large, barely made it around my midsection, distorting and somewhat obscuring the letters as they stretched to either side. And the skirt. The skirt barely covered the place where my thighs mingled and chafed.
    That whole spring season—despite falling in love with being part of a team—I dreaded all the practices, all the games. I knew that my body would not only fail me physically but also embarrass me. And the fatigue made me hungrier. Rather than wanting to eat healthy things, I found myself ravenous and unable to control the kinds and the amounts of food I was eating. Pizza, ice cream, cookies—they were rewards for hard work, for putting myself out there. I gave up on losing weight when I realized that the very thought of trying to cut back sent me into panic attacks, which sent me directly to the candy aisle of CVS.
    By the time sophomore year came, I was diet weary. I’d already attempted downsizing a dozen times. I’d gone to a Weight Watchers meeting with Kate’s mom, who also wanted to lose weight, and I’d cursed myself for half of the meeting, knowing that no one else in the room was under thirty with no children. I feared discoveringthat any of the women at the meeting was a mother of one of my classmates. I worried that she’d tell her child she saw me, with the other Medfield moms, at a diet center.
    One week of tracking my meals and counting points in my head at the school lunch table, and I felt like a loser. I resolved to buy a salad every day, only to end up pouring ranch dressing on top as though it were water on a fire. I knew the points ascribed to creamy dressings, but I wasn’t always competent at eyeballing a two-tablespoon serving or willing to stop there. I went to the YMCA after school to work out; it was the only gym in the area where I was