[rainbow_tears]

continued as the word count goblin was hungry and ate this part of the post!

At the same time, however, I had become the canvas of makeup artists, stylists, photographers and publicists. They weren't looking at my stomach. "Give me a hundred-watt smile," commanded a photographer whose censure I thought I'd seen when I walked in. I licked my teeth and flashed a grin only somewhat longer than her camera flare.
"Wow." She straightened up at the tripod. "That really is a hundred watts. These are gonna be great."
When I saw myself in the magazine, my smile was, in fact, the focal point. When I began dating, at the age of 45, my smile was an attribute men commented on, but I hadn't really seen it until it was emblazoned on glossy paper. It was bigger, it seemed, than my face itself. I'd been a size 8 in my author photo, taken as my food plan was wobbling but not yet in smithereens, in June 2003. I was surprised to see I still looked like myself, apparently.
The power of my smile fueled me through more publicity, giving me a sense of authentic attractiveness that allowed me to enjoy the process. When I had a couple of days in Santa Monica between readings, I had a chance to assess and absorb at my own pace. Walking along the Palisades, I admired the sea-twisted pines and pearly mist funneling out of Malibu Canyon. I felt as lucky as I had once felt by being hired, by being loved, and I felt worthy of my luck because I appreciated the prettiness of the place, the serendipity that brought me there and my particular grateful awareness that knitted the moment together. I'd tried to rob myself of that by punishing myself for the boss and the boyfriend. You should not have treated me that way, I thought. The emphasis was on "me," and just then I knew who that was.
I looked around carefully. There was a family reunion going on, or so I assumed until I got closer and realized it was a cookout hosted for the park's lost and unfound citizens. I smiled to myself. How California. No gritty, iron-shuttered Salvation Army outposts here, no soup and Jell-O punishment for being a bum. No siree Bob. In California, the homeless are just one more variant on the Beach Boys.
I laughed out loud. I'm here, I gloated. I like my own company.
I was tired of the games—with food, with hiding what I looked like under big clothes and my big smile, with waiting until I was a size 8 again to like myself.
I recommitted to chipping at my food addiction, but I let go of some of the rigidity I'd had in the first years of losing and maintaining my weight loss. "I want to be praised when I do things right, and I want to be forgiven when I mess up," I told the people closest to me. "And I want milk in my coffee."
It was a small list, but significant because it allowed me to fumble as I gained my momentum of eating sanely. Esteem, kindness, patience, forgiveness: By cloaking myself in these qualities, I could build a self that was not afraid of authority figures and charming men who have one eye on the door.
Maybe these attributes will curb the millions of things that make me want to eat, starting with seeing my parents or returning to Montana. I turn into the kid whose mother had to make her school uniform, whose big tummy stretched the plaid into an Escher cartoon; I become the sad, joking fat college student who was reading The Fairie Queene while her girlfriends were soaking up the half-naked wonder of being 20 years old. I think of my parents' kitchens, and my mouth waters for gingerbread and well-buttered toast.
I regress when I let people like Lanie, whose struggle is different, comment or take charge of what I eat.
"That's two entrees, Frances," Lanie pointed out when I said I wanted goat cheese salad and roast chicken for our first lunch together in Paris.
"Oh. Well, then, I'll have the salad I guess," I settled, grumpily. That's the way I eat, that's how I lost 188 pounds: vegetables and protein. I was allowing her to limit me to a smidgen of cheese, or insufficient vegetables, and allowing her supervision is how I got so mad—that fatal elixir of anger and crazed desire—that I bought all the chocolate in Charles De Gaulle for my untasting delectation.
I am the kid who, when told not to put beans up her nose, heads directly to the pantry.
"I have got to learn to tell people to stay out of my food," I reported to my therapist back in New York.
Then again, perhaps this is an evolutionary process rather than a one-time miracle cure. In 2003, I denned up for two months in Montana and ate. In 2004, I struggled again in Montana but I also did a lot of hiking, alone with my dog and with my niece. My slow pace didn't frustrate either of them. I went horseback riding and got a terrific tan while swimming every afternoon. My thighs did not chafe in the August heat along the Seine, and I was thrilled to cross the Appalachian Trail later that autumn. I had spells of disappointment and fear from the way I ate, but I was living in my body, on my body's terms.
It's a small world I've pulled from the wrappers, boxes and crumbs in the past two years, but a very human one. I've seen my family, close friends and therapists hold on to a stubborn belief that I would come through this. They loved me enough to countenance my mistakes and let me start over. Each day, I venture a little farther from the safety of food, and my courage comes from understanding that I am a lot like a lot of people—a family member, a friend, a dog owner, a recidivist, a middle-aged woman, a writer who got a good rhythm going and forgot to brush her hair. There is safety in numbers.
Depression and relapse would have to wait for a different excuse than my size.
I am ready to hope again.