Could Be Me

(I started writing this at the airport yesterday, then had to deal with a bunch of admin and non-writing-friendly delays...)

When I told a couple of friends I was in town unexpectedly, they invited me to their daughter's first birthday party – and (sweetly) tried to sweeten the offer by telling me who of our mutual friends also would be there.

The one person they didn't think to mention is perhaps the one about which I was most curious. C was the only person besides me in our circle of friends who was overweight – not a little overweight, but very overweight. I'm terrible at judging size relative to myself, but she was almost certainly heavier than I was, even at my heaviest – I have vague memories of a couple of the guys in our circle once making snide comments about her outfit at a party, and I forced a laugh but felt a jolt of pain in sympathy for her. C was the roommate of a not-very-close friend of mine so I didn't see her often, and we never struck up an independent friendship. Which is funny, actually, because I admired her for a lot of reasons – namely that she never apologized for herself or her weight (either directly or indirectly) and never put herself down, behaviours common to almost every other overweight woman I know (myself included).

When I returned from London for the wedding of friends in the summer of 2003, C was thin. I was at one of my heavier weights (and writing a book about weight loss, which made me feel like a big fat fraud). I was happy for her, but honestly? I was jealous – and nor was I happy about being the heaviest person in the room. It was sweltering in DC, and I felt huge and oily.

I had the only conversation about weight I've ever had with C that day – she told me she'd gone to a treatment center (I can't remember if it was Duke University or somewhere else) for a month and then had gone on to lose the rest. She didn't say how much, and I didn't ask. I congratulated her, (somewhat darkly) watched her flirt with a few guys at the wedding, and slinked off to go find a drink.

The next time I saw her, she'd put on some weight. And by the time I saw her a couple of years later, she'd put it all back on. Meanwhile I'd started losing weight again. She congratulated me but didn't – the way most overweight women I know would have done (frankly, even most not overweight women would have done, in my experience) -- ask any questions. Today she was at the party, heavier than I'd ever seen her, but still happy, sweet, and utterly unapologetic. In a conversation about her apartment she told me about driving to work, saying she missed the traffic because she went to the gym every morning and got ready there. I couldn't help thinking – well, remembering – that when I was her size, if I'd talked about the gym I would have needed to make some joke about how much I needed it, or some other acknowledgement of my extra pounds.

She asked, as every American friend of mine who actually lives in the US does, if and when I'm coming back to DC. I told her the truth: That if I did move – and I don't have any plans to just yet -- I always thought I'd move to New York, at least partly because every single one of my friends in DC is married.

"I'd have to make all new friends if I came back here," I said.

"You can start with me," she said, laughing. "I'm always looking for people to go out with. This" – she gestured toward the birthday girl – "is what it's like most of the time."

We laughed. She handed me her card and gave me a ride to the Metro so I could catch my flight.