Dear Me
Dear Me,
I feel ridiculous writing a letter to myself. I am only doing so at the suggestion of Inga Lund, my therapist. She believes if I write a letter to my younger self, confiding my innermost feelings and confronting my fears, I can get some control back over my life. Since it's awkward and confusing to refer to the sender and the recipient of these letters in the first person—even though no one but me will ever read them—with the exception of the salutation, I will address the young girl I used to be in the second person (you) and refer to my forty-plus-year-old self in the first (I).
Here goes nothing.
The reason I'm currently seeing a therapist is to stop my steady weight gain and hopefully reverse the process. Inga tells me I'm using food as a crutch, a way of not dealing with problems from my past. She doesn't quite understand that food is my problem. I can't get enough of it. Burgers. Pizza. Candy. Cake. Potato chips. I could eat them all day. Hell, I even dream about food at night!
All this eating has taken its toll on me, one that can be measured by my bathroom scale. Or at least I used to be able to weigh myself on the scale. Since going over the four-hundred-pound mark, I haven't been able to get an accurate reading. That was the point when I realized I had to stop my downward spiral. Not only did I have a difficult time finding clothes in my size, but I'm risking my health as well.
Diet.
Maybe I ought to write it D#!T since it's a four-letter word in every sense, as obscene to me as those curse words that mothers used to wash their children's mouths out with soap when they dared say them. You know them as "daddy words," expressions our father used when he was angry and we were forbidden to repeat.
Diet.
How many well-intentioned people have suggested to me over the years "you really ought to go on a diet"? They make it sound so easy. Yet all the while I'm trying not to have another slice of pizza or supersize my order at McDonald's, I'm fantasizing about devouring a fudgy chocolate brownie with half-inch-thick peanut butter frosting, topped with gooey dark chocolate ganache.
Mmmm! My mouth waters just writing about it!
STOP!
Stay on track. I have to remember why I'm doing this.
Back to my narrative. For two years, I rode the diet—there's that hated word again!—roller coaster. My weight went up and down, up and down. In the end, more up than down. I would lose five pounds and gain ten. It was clear I couldn't win the battle of the bulge on my own. I needed help if I wanted to keep diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease from knocking on my door.
I consulted Dr. Pernell Westervelt, a weight loss specialist, who put me on a twelve-hundred-calories-a-day diet—ugh! (This letter ought to be given an "X" rating for profanity.) While I had every intention of following it ... you know the old saying. Or maybe you don't know it yet. You are, after all, only a child. Anyway, the old saying goes that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Trust me! It was pure hell sticking to twelve hundred calories a day!
When that damned scale refused to show the progress that was expected of me—it was like an annoying younger sibling who tattled every time I cheated—the doctor suggested I needed psychotherapy to deal with my "issues." (What I really need is to have my jaw wired shut so that I can't eat anymore.) Still, I gave the doctor the benefit of the doubt and contacted Inga Lund.
After several sessions, during which I repeatedly assured her there had been no traumatic events in my life, she came up with this idea of writing letters to you: me as a child. I am to tell you what to expect of life in the years ahead of you. Of course, if I really could write to my younger self and you were able to read those letters, I would give you some sound advice: Don't grow up! Stay a child forever. Remain in your protected little world, that safe cocoon built by the hands of loving parents. Don't throw away those stuffed animals, Barbie dolls, jump ropes, roller skates and frilly pinafores our mother used to sew for us. Believe me, those are the best days of your life, my dear. It's all downhill from there.
* * *
Dear Me,
I could hardly give you an account of my life (destined to be yours) without mentioning the twelve years I spent in school—thirteen, if you count kindergarten. Admittedly, at first, school was fun. I learned my ABC's and one, two, threes. I created masterpieces with finger paint, which our mother would then proudly display on the refrigerator door. In those days, kindergarten was more like daycare than school. We sang songs to learn the alphabet and how to count. We played, we had snack time, we had nap time and the teacher read us stories.
I hate to be the one to rain on your parade, little girl, but school is not going to stay like that. Beginning with the first grade, you'll have to attend the entire day. Your teachers will no longer be kind substitute Mommies who help you put on your boots in the winter or dry your tears when you scrape your knee playing tag. A few of them will be nice, some will be downright harridans (you'll learn the meaning of that word soon enough) and most will be robot-like strangers who sit at the front of the classroom issuing assignments, grading tests and collecting homework.
In all fairness, I learned a lot when I was in school, making the honor roll nearly every marking period. I even earned the right to wear a gold tassel on my cap at graduation. But I feel I excelled in spite of the school's efforts, not because of them. The formal education I received was highly regimented. The students performed according to a tight schedule that was maintained with bells that sounded at forty-minute intervals. More often than not, I felt like a lab rat running through a maze or a trained dog jumping through hoops. With the exception of the occasional movie shown in class or the even rarer field trip, instruction was routine: open your textbooks, read the required number of pages and answer the questions that followed.
Is it any wonder I never went to college? I was a bright child. I had potential. To quote Marlon Brando, "I could have been a contender!" The only problem was I hated school! Honestly, I feel I would have learned a hell of a lot more had I been left to my own devices at the town library for six or seven hours a day.
As for the other inmates of the educational institution, they were all right. Although not one of the popular kids, I was never picked on, bullied or made fun of. I made several good friends during my formative years, although most eventually moved away. But when they left my life, new students came to the school and new friendships were made.
What else can I tell you about my childhood, adolescence and teenage years? They were pretty much like those of other girls in my generation. We had crushes on boys, went on dates to school dances and to the local movie theater, received our first kisses, broke a few hearts and had our own hearts broken. It's funny. There were one or two boys in high school that I swore I could never live without, and now I can't even remember their names. If I saw them on the street, I doubt I'd even recognize them.
As for the other milestones in my teenage years, there was my first job, that of a cashier at a grocery store. I was hot shit! At seventeen, I got my driver's license—even hotter shit! Excuse the profanity, but you have no idea how great it feels to be a teenager standing on the precipice of adulthood with a paycheck in one hand and a set of car keys in the other!
Then came graduation day, arguably the happiest day of my life up until that point. As I put on that white cap and gown (and the coveted gold tassel for graduating with honors), I felt like Nelson Mandela after being released from Victor Vester Prison, his final place of internment. Free at last!
See what you have to look forward to? But I have faith that you'll do it. You will persevere. You will do it because you are me, and I did it.
* * *
Dear Me,
I had another session with Inga Lund. She was disappointed that I've only written two letters so far. What can I say? I'm not much of a letter-writer. Like everyone else these days, I prefer to just send a text. But she won't hear of it. It has to be a bona fide, pen-to-paper letter. So, to appease my therapist, here is letter number three.
Let's see, on our last episode—after all, these letters sound like the scenario of a bad reality TV program (is there any other kind?)—the star of our show graduated high school. Like I said previously, I hated school, so there was never any question of going on to college. Instead, as though playing Milton Bradley's The Game of Life, I spun the wheel and elected to pursue a career rather than an education. Of course, real life is no boardgame. Getting a good job without a degree is difficult. My "career path" started out with my little pink peg (in keeping with The Game of Life analogy) becoming a typist for a major insurance company. Peg and I then drove our white plastic convertible to the new field of word processing, passing PAYDAYs along the way, until we eventually left the insurance company and became first a secretary and then an administrative assistant for a firm of civil engineers. Although the road would never lead to Millionaire Acres, at least we would not find ourselves in the Poor Farm at the end of the game.
My parents always predicted that once I began working for a living, I would miss being in school. How wrong they were! Those two-month-long summer vacations aside, I much preferred going to work. A good deal of what I did was repetitive and boring, but at least I was paid for my time. Besides, I was still living at home, basking in the love of my family. My mother spoiled me outrageously by cooking my meals and washing my laundry. Other than the one hundred dollars I handed over every payday for "board," I had no bills except for the occasional car repair.
I was happy, or was I merely comfortable and content? Is there a difference? Is true happiness nothing more than just the absence of unhappiness? Okay, now I can see why Inga insists I write these letters. They make me ask questions and search for answers. Who would do that by texting, a practice that doesn't require even a rudimentary knowledge of spelling and grammar?
Okay, you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about since there are no cell phones in your world. This is crazy! You'll never even see this letter. But Inga insists.
Anyway, let me get back to the matter at hand. I was working as a secretary for an engineering company. (I went from insurance policies to sewage treatment plants. Can it possibly get any duller?) Being a secretary wasn't all that bad, though. I had a certain amount of freedom, not being tied down to a desk and a keyboard like I was when I was in the typing pool or the word processing department. There was the feeling of camaraderie with the other secretaries when we went out to lunch and complained about our bosses. We received gifts at Christmas, and once a year we were treated like royalty on National Secretary's Day. Well, not exactly like royalty, but we did get flowers and a free lunch.
Looking back on those years, I now realize those were, in Charles Dickens's parlance, "the best of times." Yet while the story of my life is hardly A Tale of Two Cities, a definite dichotomy did exist. That brings me to the flip side: "the worst of times."
Just when things in my life were on an even keel, I fell in love.
With my boss.
Sorry, Inga, I just can't bring myself to continue right now.
* * *
Dear Me,
It has been quite a while since I've written to you. Although I did see some success with my diet—at least I can use the word without cringing now—after that last letter, I went on an eating binge and gained seven pounds.
But I'm back on track now.
Okay, are you ready for this part? Like I said, I fell in love with my boss.
Don't jump to any conclusions. This is no sordid tale of an ambitious young woman having an affair with a much older married man, nor is it a situation that began as a case of sexual harassment in the workplace. My boss was no Harvey Weinstein. Rather than a "Me Too" moment (two more references you know nothing about), this was simply a case of a single woman being attracted to a single man, only four years her senior. The fact that he was my boss had no bearing on how I felt about him. It did, however, complicate matters since the emotions were strictly one-sided. Working closely with this man eight hours a day, five days a week, harboring these feelings and knowing they were not reciprocated was torture.
Like the biblical Job, I endured. Perhaps part of me held out hope that eventually my boss would come to care for me. Unlike the girl in the white cap and gown with the gold tassel, I was no longer hot shit; I was a sap.
I was at a low point in my life (Death Valley low) when Rick Hartnett entered it.
I don't want to go into details about how we met. You'll find out for yourself soon enough. I fully admit I never loved him. I did, however, decide to marry him. There is a song by Stephen Stills that goes, "And if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with." That is exactly what I did. What Stephen Stills does not tell you is that you may live to regret that decision.
Granted, the first three or four years of marriage were not entirely awful. There were moments when I could honestly say I was happy. As the anniversaries mounted, though, those moments were fewer and farther between.
At some point in your life, you will watch the classic Orson Welles film Citizen Kane. (I think I was around the age of ten when I first saw it.) During a memorable montage sequence, covering a twelve-year period that featured scenes shot at the couple's breakfast table, viewers are witness to the disintegration of the marriage of Charles Foster Kane and Emily Norton. I would like to think my marriage was over as quickly, but it wasn't.
Rick and I were married for a period of time just shy of twenty years. Over the course of those two turbulent decades, differences of opinion and mild misunderstandings frequently escalated into arguments and eventually fights. We ought to have cut our losses and gotten a divorce. It was a loveless marriage, after all. But we owned a house together, and neither one of us wanted to give it up and start over.
So, we stayed married and continued to make each other's lives miserable. Many a night, I lay awake on the living room sofa, praying I would not wake up the following morning. (When my prayers remained unanswered, I came to the sober conclusion that no one was out there to hear them. That's the day I became an atheist.)
I think that's enough information for one letter. I'm emotionally drained. Who knew that regurgitating the past could be so exhausting? Let me fold this up and put it with the other letters, for safekeeping, in our mother's old jewelry box, which is all I have left of her.
* * *
Dear Me,
I don't know why I continue to follow Inga's advice. It doesn't seem to be working. Dr. Westervelt claims that if I were sticking to his diet, I would have lost at least a hundred pounds already whereas I lost only nineteen. Who can live on twelve hundred calories a day? There are more than five hundred calories in a Big Mac and more than six hundred in a Whopper, and that's not counting the calories in the accompanying French fries. And I'm supposed to eat three meals a day. What do I eat for the other two?
Okay, I realize I've cheated a little bit. I can't help it. It's like those Reese's peanut butter cups were screaming my name when I went to Shop 'N Save to buy fresh produce to make a salad. I think there ought to be a law preventing grocery stores from putting candy bars at the checkout lines.
I suppose I ought to talk about my past, as per Inga's instructions, not my present. Looking back at my last letter, I see I left off my narrative at the point where I was still married to Rick. Honestly, I try not to think about that chapter of my life, preferring to let it remain a closed book. Just seeing the image of his face in my mind makes me want to run to the cabinet, open a jar of Skippy Roasted Honey Nut peanut butter and devour it by the spoonful.
This is no ah-ha moment. No major breakthrough in the therapy process. I've known all along that it was my toxic relationship with Rick Hartnett that led to my eating—overeating?—disorder. During those twenty years, all too often I turned to food for comfort after our arguments. Wise potato chips became my best friend. I would eat them by the bagful along with sour cream and onion dip. Mmmm! Nirvana! Then I would wash them all down with a can of Coke.
I've got to stop this. Neither Inga nor Dr. Westervelt would approve of my dwelling on my food cravings. If I hope to succeed in this weight loss endeavor, I must follow my therapist's advice. That means I have to write to you about my feelings toward Rick.
As I wrote in my previous letter, I didn't love him when I married him. I wanted to, but I couldn't. My heart was elsewhere. I tried to love him just like I tried not to love my boss. But the heart wants what the heart wants. I couldn't control my emotions any more than I could control my overeating when things got bad.
When Rick and I were first married, the two of us shared a common goal. We wanted to buy a house and have a family. It was while we were working to reach that first goal (home ownership) that we actually got along pretty well. Once we moved in, things started to go to hell.
It was around the time of our fifth wedding anniversary that I realized not only would I never grow to love my husband, but that I found it increasingly difficult to even like him. They say opposites attract, but not in our case. He and I were so different we had no hope of ever seeing eye to eye. The only thing we had in common was that we were both stubborn. That's what kept us together for so long. Neither one was willing to give in.
Eventually, however, the inevitable happened. Rick found someone else. I am probably the only woman in history who was overjoyed at the advent of "the other woman." Now that my tormentor finally conceded to a divorce, I felt freer than I did on my graduation day. Rather than being bitter or harboring any hard feelings toward the new woman in his life (a woman I never had the opportunity to meet), I pity her. I'm sure it will be only a matter of time before Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde.
To make a long story short, I moved out, and Rick kept the house. I didn't mind it so much. To me, that three-bedroom ranch had become a prison. With the awful marriage behind me, I began a new life, one that was a mixture of old and new. I had a new place to live, but I still had my old job, I had new goals, but unfortunately, I could not get rid of the old bad habits—particularly my fondness for junk food.
There is currently no man in my life, nor is there likely to ever be one in the future. I never want to risk being stuck in another dysfunctional relationship like the last one. I much prefer to live alone (not completely alone since I have my cats for company).
There you have it. My life in a nutshell, spread out over five letters written on lavender stationery I bought at the Hallmark store solely for such a purpose. I hope Inga will be pleased.
But why do I still want to call up Dominos and order a large pepperoni pizza?
* * *
Dear Me,
Inga insists I write one last letter. I am to ask myself two questions: Where did it all go wrong? How could I have prevented it? (The "it" being my downward spiral.)
I told her in our last session, "That's easy. It all went wrong when I married Rick Hartnett. And I could have prevented it by not marrying him."
"Answers are seldom that simple," she insisted. "Dig deeper. Try to remember."
The past few days I've been racking my brain, trying to answer these questions. I need to see beyond the obvious. Yes, my life took a definite turn for the worse when I married Rick, but what possessed me to enter into a loveless marriage in the first place? The obvious answer was that if I couldn't have the man I loved, I would settle for the next one to come along. But why? I must have known it would never work out.
I've tried to remember those days when I still worked as a secretary for the engineering company, yet I found no answers there. I went back to my days in high school. Still no answers. Should I go back even further? What's the point? How likely is it that something happened to me in the third or fourth grade that caused my life to go so off-kilter later on?
Just how far back do I have to go? To the time when you, my six-year-old self, was in kindergarten? Was I molested and then buried the memory deep in my subconscious mind? No. I had a happy childhood with kind, loving parents. I was never mistreated. There were never any skeletons in the family closet that could come back to haunt me.
I have only happy memories of my life at your age. In fact, I would give anything to go back to that time. To play on the swing set in the backyard. To sit on Mommy's lap and have her read me my favorite fairy tale, "The Tinder Box." To wake up Christmas morning to all the presents under the tree. To go trick-or-treating on Halloween and not worry about the number of calories in the candy. To go to the amusement park and ride the rides. To play dress-up with Mommy's clothes and her jewelry ....
Oh, my God! No! It can't be! It's just not possible!
How on earth ...?
* * *
Inga Lund put a call into Dr. Pernell Westervelt's office, inquiring as to the current whereabouts of his patient, Callie Hartnett. The doctor told the therapist that he had not seen Mrs. Hartnett for several weeks, that she had missed her last three appointments. The two health care professionals concluded that yet another morbidly obese person had given up trying to lose weight. It was, after all, an all-too-common occurrence.
I really believed writing letters to herself would help Callie, Inga thought, saddened by her failure to achieve the desired result. Such therapy has helped other patients. Perhaps she wasn't being honest with me. Maybe she didn't write the letters after all.
Since the therapist had never actually seen the finished products, she had no way of knowing they did, in fact, exist. There were six letters in total, all penned on lavender stationery purchased at the Hallmark store. Five of them had been neatly folded and placed in the Lady Buxton jewelry box that once belonged to her patient's mother.
It was in the bottom drawer of that same Lady Buxton jewelry box that the six-year-old Callie found the five letters one day while she was playing dress-up. Since the kindergartener could not read cursive writing, she took the letters to her seventh-grade neighbor and asked her to read them aloud. Most of the contents of that correspondence went over the little girl's head. What she did understand, though, (with her neighbor's help) was that the life that lay ahead of her was a grim one.
Long years of school, an unhappy marriage, a bitter divorce, depression followed by insatiable hunger, uncontrollable eating and an extreme weight gain.
As the kindergartener crossed the yard that separated her house from her neighbor's, tottering unsteadily in her mother's high heels, she thought about the advice her much older self had given to her in the first letter: Don't grow up! Stay a child forever. Remain in your protected little world, that safe cocoon built by the hands of loving parents.
There was only one way she could avoid growing up. After removing her mother's shoes, she climbed two flights of stairs to the third-floor attic. Then she opened the window and jumped.
At the exact moment the child's last breath left her broken body, the four-hundred-twenty-eight-pound woman she would otherwise have become ceased to exist. With the last thirty-seven years of her life wiped out by a twist of fate and a mishap in time, all that remained behind was the sixth, unfinished letter on lavender Hallmark stationery.
While we're quoting Charles Dickens, here is one of Salem's favorite Dickens quotes: "What greater gift than the love of a cat?" [Yes, he really said that!]
