The person speaking to me was the older man behind the register at the 7-11 where a friend and I were buying cheap alcohol for a party about five years ago.
He looked at my driver’s license, looked at me, looked back down at my I.D. and said, “This isn’t you.”
My friend looked merely baffled but I could feel myself turning bright pink. “It’s me,” I said.
The cashier remained unconvinced.
“It’s me,” I insisted, then blurted out, “It’s just that I got fat!”
A year or two earlier, when the driver’s license photo had been taken, I weighed fifty pounds less than I did standing there that night at the 7-11. Now apparently I was totally unrecognizable as that girl, the one hovering toward the upper end of a healthy weight; now, I was just plain obese. I wasn’t me.
I wasn’t just completely mortified; I was also shocked by the unexpected reminder of my fairly rapid weight gain, which had been spurred on by overeating and depressive habits. I may have been subconsciously hiding from myself, but there was no hiding from objective strangers.
How can I become myself again, I thought afterward. Obviously it has taken me years to finally make some real progress toward losing my extra weight. Now that I have begun to succeed at losing pounds, I think: Do I even want to resemble the admittedly thinner girl I was before? The girl in the driver’s license photo?
I’m thinking no, honestly. I’m thinking: I want to be stronger, healthier, and subsisting on more than 1000 calories a day. I want to lift weights. I want to learn to like protein. I want more for myself than I ever did before. More peace of mind, more confidence, more fulfillment.
At any rate, we can’t go backward, even if we want to; but we can always move forward.
13. January 2010 at 9:54 AM
and moving forward you are!
I have a little something on my blog for you. :-)
13. January 2010 at 10:38 AM
Woo hoo! I’m heading over to check it out :) .
13. January 2010 at 12:13 PM
You can look forward, then, to the moment I had about 3 months ago.
“That’s NOT you,” says the lady behind the counter.
“Yeah, actually, it is.”
“Wow.”
I stashed my driver’s license away and paid for my purchases, and prepared to leave.
“Wait,” she said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Seriously… how much weight did you lose?”
“87 pounds.”
“Wow.”
(as a note, I got a new driver’s license. Seemed easier.)
13. January 2010 at 3:39 PM
Lynn: I love this story. Thanks. I look forward to astonishing people in that totally opposite way when I hit my goal weight!
14. January 2010 at 1:35 PM
Two stories:
When I was a freshman in college I had a fake ID (a real ID but not mine). The girl looked a lot like me but listed her weight as 117 lbs. Well, for a while I could pass myself off as somewhere in that realm, but as I gained a little weight it was less and less believable. Then one night I was buying some hooch at the grocery store, and I got the dreaded “This isn’t your ID.” To which I said, “Excuse me?! Why do you think that?” and instead of asking me to list off the birthday/address/etc she said, “It says you weigh 117 lbs.” I feigned offense that maybe I had gained some weight but the *%^& wouldn’t sell me that booze because I was heavier than my ID said. Well, not MY ID, but still.
The happy story was when I went on my cruise in Nov 2008. I think the worst fat picture I had EVER taken was my passport photo (which I hate, but I guess it’s a 10 year reminder of what things look like when I get out of hand), but the port security almost didn’t recognize me, and when I told him how much weight I lost, he asked me for diet/exercise tips for him and his wife! Tee hee!