The Year I Looked My Best

The year I looked my best was the worst year of my life. One of my last years in college. I was slender and petite, skinnier than I had ever been in my life. Initially, I lost weight by accident, through stress and a busy summer. But then I started to notice a change in the way I was treated directly correlating to my weight loss, and it stopped being an accident.

Every day there was a new compliment from an old friend, "Wow, you really look great." Or the wonderful but cliché, "Have you lost weight?" To which I would always modestly reply, "Oh, maybe a little." As though I hadn't put any effort into my transformation at all. When really, everything about me that year was carefully constructed.

My hair was cut into a short 1920's bob, dyed perfectly black. So black it looked blue. Shiny and straight. I was fitting into clothing sizes I couldn't even wear in high school. I spent my financial aid money on an all new wardrobe for my brand new body, lots of skirts and dresses. But keeping up appearances wasn't limited to personal grooming.

For the first time in my life, I was living alone. I found a cute little one-bedroom apartment on the trendy side of town and decorated it the way I always dreamed of decorating a cute little one bedroom apartment on the trendy side of town. Comic books framed and hung on the wall. Lace curtains. My very own plant. Everything was mine. Except or the furniture.

The furniture belonged to my fresh ex-boyfriend. We dated for over two years and were unofficially engaged, which meant we talked a lot about getting married, but he never proposed. We broke up the summer before I moved into my apartment. He had already planned to give me all of his furniture, assuming we were going to get married anyway. When we did break up, he said I could keep it, as a gesture of kindness, and perhaps something of a consolation prize. So I kept the furniture.

I always felt like it was staring at me, asking me for an explanation on why it didn't live with its father anymore. At first, I loved having it there, despite the furniture guilt. It was a piece of him, but slowly...I began to feel infiltrated. Spied upon. Surrounded by these things. His things. And they weren't happy with the custody agreement.

I did a lot to try and cheer myself up. I watched, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and, "Sweet Charity" over and over again. Movies about lonely girls made me feel brave. I did my homework and painted my nails. I cruised the Goodwill, went for lots of jogs and cried. A lot.

I started making a habit out of inviting large groups of people over to my house to socialize and then dramatically leaving my own parties to go sulk outside, secretly hoping someone would follow me and want to know all the details of my deep dark depression.

But I didn't look depressed. I looked my best. So nobody ever asked. Backfire. I wore red lipstick and colorful scarves and big earrings. I started smoking those long thin cigarettes, the ones that Audrey Hepburn did in, "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Only I didn't have the long black holder. I was the generic Holly Golightly.

The kitchen was also a controlled environment. I taped pictures of celebrities inside my cabinets. Not just any celebrities, the stick thin ones. The kind that would force me to make a choice when I wanted to eat. "Do you want to look like me or are you going to have lunch?"

Every once in a while, I'd slip up. There were, what I would consider to be, world famous bingeing sessions. I didn't keep anything too terrible in the house, just in case I snapped. A few caramels here, a jar of Amish peanut butter tucked away on a top shelf, like it was a fine liqueur. I should've kept it behind glass, with a hammer next to it.

One day, not even a particularly bad one, I took it down. And I ate the entire jar with a box of cheese crackers. When the peanut butter was gone, I dug out each individual caramel placed in different locations in various cabinets, like a dysfunctional Easter egg hunt. I unwrapped each little square from its clear plastic and melted them all in a bowl in the microwave. Dipping each remaining cracker into the melted tan ooze and relishing every bite. It took me over an hour to eat it all. (The box of crackers, the Amish peanut butter, which is half marshmallow cream, and the melted caramels.)

I have never been so sick.

In between meltdowns, I was always thinking of a way to make myself more marketable as a person. I learned guitar. I played David Bowie songs in my spare time. I went to the coffee house and hunched over a journal. I started painting abstract pictures with acrylics. I went to hip hop shows. I wanted to become diverse and eccentric. I wanted to prove to my ex-boyfriend that he was missing out. This is not how it works. But try telling that to a dysfunctional 22 year-old.

Sometimes, exhausted by all my own efforts, I spent long periods of time on my couch, on his couch, skipping days worth of classes. For the first time in my life, my freshly unattached state left me truly bored. I had never ever been alone and left with no strategy on how to deal, I would often just let the day happen around me. The sun would rise and fill the room with clear yellow light. Then it would set and surround me with dusty oranges and vibrant pinks. Then dusk, with its light blues and finally night, when the street lights would create slatted patterns on the floor created by my blinds. I knew my living room well.

I tossed and turned on the itchy wool couch, hot but too lazy to change into pajamas. Uncomfortable but unwilling to get up and go to bed. The flashing white lights of the television gone blank, the click click click of the ceiling fan chain.

My father showed up one day. Moms and Dads have radar for these kinds of things, I think. I had been smoking in my living room, and after a long bout of not eating, I suddenly decided that I wanted those miniature chocolate bars like you get at Halloween. Healthy, no?

I was broke, but I scrounged enough change to walk to a gas station and see if I could get something like the candy I craved. I left my cigarette smoldering in an ash tray on the coffee table.

When I returned, successful in my mission and ready for a binge, I saw my father's car in front of my apartment. He was already in my kitchen when I got to the front screen door, unpacking a wonderful array of comforting goods. A large canister of coffee, a huge supply of various muffins, boxes of cereal, I knew he had gone to the wholesale store. These were the things I never would've bought for myself, but things I desperately wanted. The muffins in particular really left me overjoyed.

In my fridge at the time I had a large bucket of plain yogurt, some spinach, frozen blueberries, and that was it. Those were the foods I allowed myself when I wasn't bingeing, and the thought of a muffin at the time...a cakey, good-tasting spongy muffin seemed like extravagance beyond anything I ever would've allowed myself to have. I thought this while holding my bag of off-season Halloween candy that I intended to eat in one sitting. My head was in a funny place.

My Dad stayed with me all day, he never chided me for smoking, and he tried to cheer me up. And he did. When he left, I tried to pull myself up by the bootstraps a little bit. Got back on track with classes, and made a concerted effort so spend more time with friends.

But I was still walking a thin line between functioning and non-functioning. One day, my ex called me and said he needed to come over and pick up a book. You know the way that property becomes community when you're in a relationship? He had lots of my stuff; I had lots of his, so we still spoke on a regular basis while trying to rebalance our lives and belongings, running into each other amongst mutual friends.

In the few minutes I had before he arrived, I worked on myself. I brushed my teeth, ran a flat iron through my hair and put on a small tank top, jeans and a belt. I posed with my guitar, sitting on my couch, with sheet music scattered around me. I put on some lip gloss and waited eagerly for him to show up at the door. Wondering if he would pay me a compliment, hoping today might be the day that he came to his senses. Maybe he didn't really need the book, maybe he wanted to talk. I felt pathetic, but I couldn't cork my own girlish hopes.

He knocked on the door, standing outside in the chilly air; I almost hadn't noticed that summer had turned to autumn while I was busy in my months-long fit of ennui. "Hey, can you get me that book?" he asked, seeming particularly cheerful. A car was idling in the street.

"Sure, do you want to come in for a minute while I find it?" I asked, knowing exactly where it was but effectively sounding like I didn't.

"Okay, but I can't stay. Someone's waiting for me." He came in and the screen door creaked shut behind him. I tried to get him to talk while I rummaged around, trying to look as convincing as possible. I noted while he was at the door that the person driving the car was an older man, so I didn't feel particularly worried that he was on a date.

We made small talk for what must've been a minute, two at the most. I found the book, handed it off, and couldn't keep the bubbling desperation down in my gut where it had been living. He was backing out, probably thinking he had escaped the wrath of a woman scorned. But I couldn't let an encounter go by without extracting some type of new information to cling to. I was looking for a little hope. A chance to get back to life the way that it used to be, a doorway out of this miserable new loneliness.

"Do you still think I'm pretty?" I blurted out. I knew it was a pathetic question, having nothing to do with anything we had talked about in our awkward two minutes. He paused and looked like he was giving it some genuine thought.

"Honestly, I think you look the best you've ever looked. You're beautiful. It's so cool that you're playing guitar." An awkward pause and he smiled as he trailed off, that smile that lets you know...that let me know, he was still interested. "Well, I gotta get going, you gonna be around next Sunday sometime?"

"Probably." I said, trying to contain myself over this new little ray of light.

"Okay," he smiled, "Maybe I'll come by, we can do something."

The door shut, he ran to the idling car with the book over his head. It had started to rain, very lightly. Funny how fast the weather can change. I watched from my front window, looking through the lace curtains. He looked at me from the car window, waved and smiled as the car sped off.

I sat down on the couch, next to my guitar and looked at the scene I had set so carefully, everything all laid out like props in a play. For the first time, I was angry at him. Who was this person who did this to me, who wouldn't let me go, who wouldn't make a clean break and why did I care? Why was I doing this to me over that person? Things seemed so abstract.

When did life become so strange, so empty...and why? Why did I fall apart just because a boy didn't want to be with me anymore? And this is where the truth kicked in, it's not him I was angry with, it was me.

For some reason, right there, right in that moment, I woke up from my haze of depression and self-loathing. At least, I was awake enough to realize that something had been very wrong with me for a while.

I walked to my bedroom and stood in front of my full length mirror. I investigated the way I could see my hip bones jutting out a little just above my jeans, the way my top rested on my sharp collar bones and how my head seemed comically too large for my neck. Why was this the best I ever looked? Why is that reflection the one that got me compliments and attention?

I didn't take any actions that night. It took me a long time to eat something again that wasn't just constructed out of one ingredient. It also took me several more months to cut off my dysfunctional friendship with my ex, that I blame myself for. Eventually, the magazine pictures in my cabinets came down. I even got a roommate.

Somewhere over the next few months, I stopped looking the best I ever looked, I stopped getting compliments from friends. Not that all of the sudden I was ugly. I was never ugly. But I just started looking normal. Like myself. And feeling really really good again.