Otherwise Engaged

Email this morning from my best (male) friend from college: “I don’t have a Facebook page, so I just wanted to let you know that [Glitter Nail Polish Chick] and I got engaged.”

I guess I don’t have to tell you how I feel about Glitter Nail Polish Chick – the name says it all, doesn’t it?

A bit of history: For years I had a crush on this guy. He had a long-distance relationship with his high school girlfriend that was never quite right, and the two of us would spend hours together, often staying up all night talking. I spent my college years thinking we were perfect for each other -- and convinced if I were thinner he would figure it out.

I graduated; he didn’t. (He’s one of the smartest people I know, but he was a bigger procrastinator than I was and – I think the following didn’t help – his parents had much deeper pockets than mine. I struggled – both financially, and against my parents’ wishes – to attend the university I did.) The summer after graduation he came to see me in Washington DC. He’d broken up with the girlfriend; I’d lost a bit of weight. We walked around DC for hours and ended up in a bar in Georgetown, dancing and kissing. He left DC and we’d spend hours on the phone every day.

Things fell apart almost instantly.

I went with some friends to Homecoming that September. He was there, doing a fifth year and trying to graduate. I hadn’t told him I was coming – childishly, I wanted him to ask me to be there. He never did.

I called him when I arrived. I was the thinnest I’d ever been at that point – thanks to a starvation diet of peaches and running -- and I remember shivering in the pre-autumn upstate New York chill. He gave me his leather jacket; I loved feeling small in it.

We sat in a diner and he told me he’d had his first date with Glitter Nail Polish Chick that night. She worked at the college newspaper with us, and I remember his snide comments about her the previous year – including (don’t ask me why I remember this) the VPL she had with one spectacularly unfortunate pair of white trousers she wore.

For their date, they’d gone to a movie and for frozen yogurt, and then -- I can still hear his voice saying this -- "we kissed," he said. I think I pretended I didn’t care, but I’m sure I didn’t fool him. One of my good friends says I’m like a small child – you can see everything I’m feeling on my face, despite my best efforts to hide it.

This was almost 13 years ago. He’s gone on to be an enormously successful and well respected writer, and – with about a six-month blip about 10 years ago when we didn’t speak because I found it too painful -- we’ve stayed friends.

In recent years – except in moments when my life seems empty of prospect – I’ve stopped thinking about him as anything but my friend. The old feelings disappeared agonizingly slowly. He was like a disease for which I didn’t ever quite finish the antibiotics – a tiny bit of it would be left, and as soon as I thought it had all gone away, it would come back full-strength, and even harder to fight than before.

He came to London in December on assignment. Two weeks before I’d found out I was losing my job. We talked about his work and when he was going to get engaged – a subject we’d covered before. In some bar with a late license in Exmouth Market, I told him a little bit about BN2 and his eyes widened. “You can’t go back to him. Promise me you won’t go back to him.”

We talked all night until he had to leave for the airport. I went home, exhausted and hating what a sad wreck I felt like – no job, crappy boyfriend, far from home. I hated his feeling sorry for me.

When I read the engagement news, I didn’t feel great pain. I’ve spent a couple of years anticipating it, and I thought I’d feel sad at the thought of one door closed to me for good. I don’t, and in some ways, that’s a relief.

But again I feel this great sadness of watching someone else’s life move forward – a ship pulling out of the port while I’m waving forlornly from the pier.

I’m going to be 34 in three weeks. I’ve got to get out. I dread it and I fear it – actually doing it, and the aftermath. We’re supposed to take a trip to Venice for his mother’s 60th birthday at the end of May – a trip I ended up doing a lot of the organizing of, because I’ve been there so many times -- and I feel guilty at the thought of ruining that; guilty that I think she chose it because I knew it so well. I feel guilty about how much time I spend in BN2’s presence, thinking about how and when I’m going to leave. Whatever my feelings about what I owe him (and for some reason, I think I do), it is slowly sinking in that I don’t owe him being this unhappy.

* * *

BN2 hates my abrupt shifts of gear – especially when I, prattle on “like a teenager at a slumber party” (his words last week) -- and so would criticize me sharply for moving from weighty subjects to, erm, weight.

I got on the scale Wednesday or Thursday: 144 lbs. That’s 89 pounds down. 140 was always my don’t-even-dare-to-dream weight – my ideal weight on those miserable height-weight tables that taunted me as a child.

Reaching 150 was a shock to me, so I certainly never thought I’d get below it without starving (I’m not). Earlier this week I’d thought about writing a post about when it is one decides to stop losing weight, but I’m not quite sure I’m there yet – either in my head or in the number on the scale or how I look.

Because I love numbers and all things mathematical and symmetrical and perfect, my head is saying: Let’s go for an even 100 pounds lost. My head also knows this is an extremely bad idea. It’s easy and familiar for me to get caught up in weight loss goals when the rest of my life seems tough and like I’m not achieving much. A little cutting here; a little cutting there – this I know how to do. And a little cutting and suddenly you’re me, teleported back in time to the Summer of a Thousand Peaches, aka starvation. Which leads directly to bingeing.

I’m reasonably happy with the amount of food I can consume – I eat a good 2,000 calories per day (600 per meal plus two 200-calorie snacks, and I’ve reached the point where I don’t obsess too much about going slightly over). I exercise 5-6 days per week, hard, but not in excessive amounts. And mostly, I enjoy it.

Since I’m OK as I am – and because I hate change – I’m going to keep things as they are for now. I’m going to need this part of my life to be easy and familiar while I try to make changes in other parts. So it’s decided: I’ll keep things as they are until June 1 (arbitrary date) and then reevaluate. If I keep losing weight, great. If I don’t, that’s fine (I think). And if I start putting some on – well, that’s a whole other problem.

Thanks for listening. Leave a comment with your address and I’ll put your payment for therapy in the mail.*

* A joke, in case that wasn’t clear. Though feel free to comment!