Reflections© Tawny Marie Michels
(September 2008)
My thighs are too big, my eyes are too far apart, my ears are not symmetrical…
how can this be what I look like? My sister is gorgeous, my brothers are great-looking, at least that is what all my friends tell me;
how did I become this hideous freak of nature? Every time I look in the mirror it just gets worse. My brothers tell me I’m delusional, my parents say I am just being paranoid, but they have to say these things because they are family. I haven’t eaten in a week; maybe I should check and see how much weight I have lost—105,
that can’t be right! I look in the mirror and see this hippopotamus but step on a scale and am perfect;
how can that be? “Mom! This scare is broken!” I yell down the stairs to my mother. “MOM! Seriously, we need a new scale!”
“Brittyn, the scale is not broken,” my mother tries to reassure me as she climbs the winding staircase. “What’s the matter? Did you gain a pound or two? You look great, baby.”
“No, that’s not it. It actually says I lost 15 pounds but I don’t see it. I am huge!”
My mother rolls her eyes at me, “Sweetheart, you are not huge! You are perfect just the way you are.”
“Then how come when I look in the mirror I see a heifer? I get uglier every day, I swear it. Just look in the mirror with me.”
Soon after this conversation I am in my bed waking up to the sound of whispers outside my door. I can’t make out what is being said, but I can tell that the voices are my grandparents.
Why are my grandparents here?
I don’t have time to contemplate this thought, the door knob is turning and my door is slowly opening as my parents and grandparents come to an abrupt halt when they see that I am awake and sitting up in the bed. I look at them inquisitively.
“Grandma, Grandpa…why are you here? I thought that you weren’t going to be able to come until Christmas?” I know this can only mean one thing, there is bad news to come. I realize that this bad news has to do with me when my grandma comes over and takes my hand.
“Sweetheart, we are concerned about you and your health,” my grandmother’s sweet, honey voice fills the room, but it echoes almost as though we are in an auditorium and she is talking to me from far away. “Grandpa and I think that you should come and stay near us for awhile. There is a wonderful hospital there and they can help you.”
“A hospital—what are you talking about? I don’t need help; I am just fine! I can lose weight on my own!” I am screaming by this point and turn to my parents, “You want to send me away because I am getting fat?”
“Fat?!” My father looks shocked, “We are sending you away to get you help to gain weight, not lose it. You obviously have an eating disorder, sweetie.”
“We want you to see yourself the way others see you. You have lost so much weight and you barely eat. You look sick; we are concerned.” This is the first time my mother has ever said anything other than how beautiful she thinks I am. Maybe they have brainwashed her. This is my grandparents doing. They always stick their nose in where it does not belong.
They are just like the scale in our bathroom, broken and liars!
A week later I am riding in my brother’s Escalade to the hospital that is only 10 short minutes from my tyrant grandparents’ home, but a three day drive from my safe, beautiful home back in Michigan.
“Why are you so quiet Britt? Cheer up; you will be fine and everything will be good again.” I look into my brother’s dark brown eyes and am thinking how sweet he really is. He tries to act macho and tough because that’s what the girls like, but he really does care for me.
This is the first time I have felt that someone really cares and is trying to do what they believe is best for me. I start to think back to the past week of fighting, ignoring, acting like things are fine, and discussing how long I may be gone. I feel more like my parents are trying to get rid of me because they don’t want to deal with me anymore rather than what they claim about being concerned about my health.
“Here we are…” I blank out on what my brother says after that because I am too busy focusing on the large brick and stucco building that protrudes from the earth. It is almost a monstrosity when I think about it. This amazingly structured building surrounded by beautiful landscapes of rose bushes, flower beds filled with lilies and irises, fountains and man-made streams and waterfalls, and strategically placed benches is a work of art, but is taking away my happiness, my freedom.
Here I am, walking up a long, beautifully laid cobblestone path to the front door of a hospital that will be my home for God only knows how long. I remember being told as long as six months. I will continue to pray, as I have for the past week, that it doesn’t take that long. It would be torture, even worse than sitting at the reject table that one time I wore the same shirt twice in one week and my friends refused to sit with me. I remember how ashamed I was, but I am angry about this whole fiasco.
A seemingly nice lady, who introduces herself as Dr. Erica, shows me around the grounds before bringing me to my room.
I don’t even get my own room, I have to share. I try to hide my displeasure with this; judging by the look she is giving me I am assuming my facial expression has betrayed me once again. Dr. Erica left me to unpack with my roommate nowhere to be found. My brother is lying on her vacant bed and is starting to supervise me unpacking my things. My clothes, hygiene products, a diary, and a few pictures and photo albums—my dad practically had to beg them to allow me to bring the pictures since they are not considered necessities.
It has been twenty minutes or so since Dr. Erica left us and I am getting ready to plop down on my bed and relax. A short, plump girl with curly brown hair and cat-green eyes is bouncing into the room. She quickly comes to a screeching halt at the sight of me—and my brother lounging comfortably on her bed. At the sight of her my brother quickly gathers himself and gets up from her bed.
“Sorry about that. It has been a long few days. I am Micah and this is my sister, Brittyn, she will be your roommate for a while I suppose.” My brother always tries to be polite with girls, even with a girl like this that I can never picture him with. I start to wonder why he does this.
“Hi, I am Mercy,” the girl says cheerfully and she shakes my brother’s hand. She then comes to greet me. She seems very nice, not the type of girl I would normally befriend and have slumber parties with.
August 13
Here I am…three months later. I am progressing slowly, but this is mostly because I just tell them what I know they want to hear; no I’m not fat, I am beautiful, food is my friend…and all other sorts of wonderful mumbo-jumbo. Mercy and I, surprisingly, are great friends! We crawl into her bed and stuff out faces with Oreo’s that we sweet talk the handsome college guy who works in the café into giving us. We laugh hysterically at the stupidest things until late in the night. Micah visits often—more often than anyone else in my family—he seems enamored with Mercy. I am fascinated by this because he had never shown an interest in the type of girl that she is. He has always struck me as somewhat shallow and into physical image.
November 3
Micah and Mercy inspire me to try and get better, see things in a different light. If not for them, and their oddly fascinating love for one another, I would be a bitter, angry girl walking around like a dark cloud. They make me want to better myself and my life; maybe I have been sheltered and shallow all these years. I never even entertained the idea that maybe there is something wrong with me, not everyone else, until now. It only took me a little under six months to come to this realization that maybe I needed to change my point of view, not the doctors. I am grateful to the last few months I have spent here.
December 3
I can’t believe this will be my last night in Hope Hospital. I am sad to go, but am glad that Mercy is also returning home. She has lost 45lbs since she has been here, and I have gained 30. We have vowed to stay in touch, and as it turns out she lives the next city over from us so she and Micah can keep in contact!
We do our usual, wait for head count and then I crawl into Mercy’s bed. This night is different somehow, I think to myself. We are both laughing, but we are also becoming very serious. We start to go over what has happened over the past months. Until now we have never talked to one another about why either of us was here, although it has been quite apparent to us both.
“So, why exactly did you have to come here? I mean, I know they said you needed to eat more, but why?” I love this about Mercy, she always gets right to the point, none of the beating around the bush like my friends back in Michigan.
“Well, every time I looked in the mirror I saw this hideous cow that needed to lose weight and no matter how much I lost, I felt like I was gaining.”
“Huh…that’s funny, I had a similar issue, although when I looked in the mirror I thought I looked perfectly fine and that there was nothing wrong with me.”
“There isn’t anything wrong with you Mercy; you are absolutely beautiful just the way that you are! Beauty is on the inside, not the outside. All the physical beauty in the world, in the way society looks at it, couldn’t compare to the beauty you have within yourself.”
“If you truly believe that, then why can’t you see it in yourself?” This question shocks and amazes me.
How could I have been so naïve? How could I not have seen what my brother saw in her from the start, a heart of pure love and beauty?
For the first time in possibly my whole life, I understand. Beauty does come from within. Physical beauty fades, but the beauty of the heart lasts for all eternity and can beam out from a smile, or from a person’s eyes, for everyone who is truly willing to see. Suddenly my life thus far seems to have had no purpose or direction, and my time with my “friends” back home seems like wasted minutes, hours, days, years of my life where I could have been out doing what Mercy just did for me—spreading beauty and love to those who truly need to see it.
