Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Rossi Portia de

Author:Rossi, Portia de [Rossi, Portia de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9781439177785
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 7841653
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2010-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

19

I SAT ON Suzanne’s couch. Seeing Suzanne had become a pretty exciting ritual for me as I got to show her how well this little student was doing with her homework. I had certainly lost weight on her program, even though I had to lie about how many calories I was eating. I never went back to 1,400 calories a day because I didn’t need to. After Ann’s visit, I actually never went back to 1,000. There was no point in increasing my daily calorie intake when 600 to 700 was working so well for me. My weight loss had slowed down slightly since going under 110 pounds, and that was even more reason to stick with the lower calorie consumption.

“How many calories are you eating, Portia?”

“Fourteen hundred.” I answered her with a slightly incredulous tone in my voice, hoping that the tone would convince her that I was telling the truth.

“Can I see your diary?”

I reached into my bag for the journal, careful to pull out the right one. There were two journals in my bag at all times, the real one and the one for Suzanne. Not only did the real one show my actual calorie consumption, it had notes and messages in it as incentive for me to stay on track. I used the same motivating techniques in my diary as I did when I was a kid striving for high honors in my ballet exams, but whereas I wrote, “You will not get honors” on a sheet of paper for the ballet exams, now I wrote “You are nothing,” on every page of my diary. I don’t know why, but that statement filled me with fear and then the desire to be “something.” I always used the thoughts of being nothing and going nowhere to help me achieve goals. When I was a teenager studying to get into law school, I would repeatedly listen to a Sonic Youth song called “Song for Karen” about Karen Carpenter, who died from anorexia. In the song, the phrase that Kim Gordon repeats, “You aren’t never going anywhere. I ain’t never going anywhere” was like a mantra for me and pushed me to study longer, to try harder.

But I knew my motivating techniques weren’t conventional and I couldn’t share them with Suzanne. Especially because in my diary I referred to my homosexuality, which was something she didn’t know about. I could imagine how horrified Suzanne would be if by accident I pulled out the real diary and she saw YOU ARE A FAT UGLY DYKE written all over it. She probably thought she’d never even met a lesbian. It made me smile just thinking about the expression on her face if she’d known there was one in her living room.

I handed her the fake journal. It was very time-consuming having to make up the “proper” amount of food with its weight and calories. Thank God for the calorie counter. But the most annoying thing was putting variation in my pretend diet.

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