Shrink much?

When I was a child I thought I was as big as a Bishop.
A Country Man at a Mart in Enniscorthy complimented my Mother on her first born by saying -
"She's a fine lump of a child, Missus, God bless her!"
And I pressed my cheek to the window pane and cried silently all the way home
What we were doing watching bullocks being auctioned by a man who appeared to be having a stroke is beyond me as we were and are Townies.
- from a town of narrow grey streets and soaring spires, of railway sleepers and misty quays, of fizzle sticks and Super Sers, where houses smelt of bacon and cabbage, Pledge and Vim, with candy striped sunshades on the doors for that one weekend in August when the paint might be ruined.
A time of 3 C's.
Confession. Communion. Céilís.
.
Ireland didn't do fat children in the 70's.
On one wage, with children to feed, dress and educate, cars to run - we were reared on Shepherds Pie, Roast Chicken, Ham Salads, Trifles, Tins of USA Assorted, Bottles of Lucozade and a Tin of Scots Clan.
We watched The Good Old Days and Live at the London Palladium and Larry Grayson.
We had to share.
The TV. The Couch. The Food.

- Ya Greedy Guzzler if you put the bottle to your head and drained the last tepid mouthful of Coke from a 2 litre bottle.
- Bessie Bunter is rooting in the biscuit tin again
I began buying bigger and bigger clothes to conceal what I thought was a body of Elephant Man proportions under a selection of bigger and bigger jumpers and coats.
And cultivated a wise cracking personality to deflect from my size.
I thought being larger than life was better than just being large.
Get in like Flynn. Make 'em laugh. I slagged myself off first and loudest.

Oh, how they laughed.

I began to hide food.
I smuggled chips upstairs and ate them lying on the bed reading "The Girl with Green eyes".
I made a production about the way I opened the 8 square bars of Cadburys chocolate that I hid around the house or in the bottom of my school bag.

"That Scourge is up there atin' chips in the bed again" mumbles Little Thomasina as the vinegar cuts the eyes out of his head on the stairs.

I am a Shrinks wet dream.

Fast forward to one day recently when looking for something entirely different I find photos of myself as a teenager.
And after the tears of realisation that I was in fact a normal girl and my exclamation of -
- JAZUS Christ, I had cheekbones!!
- I thought back to my past self.........
And looking at the eyes of the young woman in the photograph, her frailty and insecurity, her vulnerability, her defiant chin, her gleam of hope, I felt a sudden sadness at all she would have to endure .....
at her own hands.

My past self.

I began to fast.
Surviving all day on coffee and Marlboro and thus when typing at midnight wondering why I had a blinding headache.
And then consume an entire family size block of chocolate with a bottle of Lucozade.
Instead of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.

My present self began to store fat at a rate of knots.
To be dehydrated without my knowledge.
To recognise the cycle of starve and binge.
To compensate by seizing what it could and piling it up all over the kip.

First I loved the squashy comfort of it and became all Earth Mother , wearing a floral apron on Sunday afternoons, listening to ragtime jazz, baking apple pies, chocolate cakes and outrageous cookies that I couldn't give away despite making the kitchen look like Beirut with flour and butter up the walls, and on every implement and counter, including the dogs.

"Did you cut Ernie's hair???" asks my friend when she sees the Yorkshire Terrier who looks like a cross between a stringy Lion and The Chuckle Brothers.

Yes, yes I did.

I loved to bounce onto a skeletal mans lap, a man so thin he looks like a sweeping brush with an Adams Apple, a man so thin he looks like a Zip, a man so thin you could use his legs for readying a pipe and try and make him cuddle the giant tummy that I called my baby.
Ahem.
He never did, recoiling the same way as when a steak came with a marbling of fat that he would fussily cut off, and place to the side of the plate.

"The flavour is in the fat you absolute looder" I would laugh and grab it before he could throw it to a waiting dog, thinking how very Jack Spratt and his wife we were.

I am a Shrinks pension plan.

Fast forward to the day I am diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes.
(You can find Diabesity in the Search Bar > )
My weight that day was 91 kg
14 stone 9 lbs if you want it in feet and inches.

"Christ, and I only 5ft" I protest in disbelief.

You;re not 5ft says the Nurse straightening up from reading the scales and the Riot Act.
-You're 4ft 11" now.

Only I could get bigger AND smaller at the same time.

I think Irish people have the same relationship with food as we have with the land.
A famine and an exodus have shaped and genetically marked us so that both soil and sustenance are intertwined.

One take-away meal with sides could feed a 70's family.
We stock up, we eat 6 packs of things, we finish the entire packet of biscuits, we order extra, we order starters, we knock each other out of the way to shop, to fill trolleys and baskets, to overeat or waste.

The last straw was trying to walk up a steep hill, my joints aching, my chest wheezing from an infection, and the weight of another person on my bones. I juggled my shopping at the Art Gallery, and at the cross roads pretended to check my phone to have the strength to get across. I stifle a sob with temper and frustration. And haul ass up the hill.

It's not rocket science.
When people say "Eat less, move more" they are not randomly rolling the words around in their mouths to see how they sound. When people say "be active" ditto. In my instance my new thing was I only ate with people.
Before I began to move I had to learn what to eat, and when.
And of course there was the whole sugar thing ........
And the fact I couldn't eat or drink it.
And in a cruel twist of fate had to have it in case I needed it.

I ate fruit for breakfast, well a banana with coffee and a smoke.
Then I walked.

I walked in rain, hail and wind with a baseball hat on backwards.
I walked in freezing sunsplit Winters evenings when the Slaney was like an oily mirror,
when Useless Island was lit by a buttery sunset,
a line of white pigeons on its crumbling walls,
the blue water lapping at the Point of The Raven.

I walked alone, as a meditation.
Inhale. Exhale. Be in your body.
Be present.
Breathe.

And the cars full of strangers are beeping and waving.
And I'm looking in windows at the TV's blaring.

I know the house where the man sits alone
staring at the blue screen on his phone
as he digs in the big bag beside him
for what he throws in his mouth,
and I wonder why he doesn't close the curtains.

I know ALL the houses now..

I am a Shrinks NYT Best Seller

One evening when the road was deserted I ran.
I ran from the corner of the Green in Davitt to Wygram.

"Look at you, you crazy bitch, on your arthritic bones, with your belly bouncing, with your menopausal flushes, with your fizzing brain, and your diabetic blood, running on concrete in boots,in full make-up, you absolutely mental beautiful mad little bitch" pants my present self in my ear.

So I asked my Future self to help.
In the knowledge that I am over halfway in the journey, that my time is finite, that I made a choice - "Go big, or go home" I visualised myself whole, and healed, and slim.

Yesterday the Nurse weighed me again.
And measured me.
And I watched her fooster , scrolling onscreen and then re-check her markings on the sheet and she says
"How have you done this?"

And I say it's not Speed anyway rolling my eyes.

I am 11stone.
I have lost 14inches off what used to be a swimming ring around my middle.
I have lowered my BMI from 37 to 30.
In 16 weeks.

I'm not done.
Not by a long shot.

"that which is like unto itself is drawn"

This is not a vanity project as I couldn't give a shiny shite about appearances.
I do care about longevity and quality of life.
And nothing could remove me from the walking now, as it clears my fizzing synapses
and allows me to exhale.
Thanks to an App I can map my steps and am averaging 9km a day.
It's easy.

Once it becomes installed as a habit.

I might go the whole hog and get an ear cuff and a tattoo of a butterfly for my Mother.
I might let someone cut my hair and dye it purple, just for the craic
I might even get a rub of the relic.
I may be having on a full on mid life crisis or entering the best phase of my life.
Same, same. .
My choice as a middle aged spinster in my condition was to wrap myself in cardigans, and be sedated, and medicated.
To get fatter and needier.
To cry
.
Or to Go big, or go home

I am medication free.
I eat well.
My bloods are normal.
I meditate daily.
I sleep in a candle lit room burning Nag Champa listening to the sound of City Rain

I am Shrinking.

MDM Jan. 24th 2017

iMichelle Dooley Mahon is the Author of "Scourged"

www.shellshock.ie

Download "The Meaning of Life" Meditations from Playstore and follow the 30 days.
City Rain is on an App called Relax Rain.
Walk a minimum of 10,000 steps daily with an app called Pacer.
Drink Water before and after every meal and with coffee.