Weight and Glory

TW: Eating disorders, death, grief

Body heat doesn’t produce any benefits inside an anglican church on a balmy spring morning. The pews are packed with mourners, cladded in black felt, rocking in their seats with chill and grief. I’m unsure which emotion is stronger as I stuff a hand into my coat pocket, scraping it against the sharp paper folded inside. I try looking upwards to stop my spinning head from swandiving between my legs.

I am faint again. I am crashing again. I haven’t eaten anything again.

The outer corners of mouth feel tacky but the insides is dry. I slide the back of my sleeve across my face. And then remember that I’d applied lipstick before leaving for the service in an attempt to cover any stubborn residue leftover between my dehydrated lip grooves.

My raised eyes take in the expanse of the artwork, sprawling like an English garden, across the church ceiling. It’s beautiful.

I need a distraction from the thoughts thrashing between my throbbing temples. So I concentrate hard, fighting with the little energy I have left, against the clanging of the organ and whistling of the choir. I focus on gazing at the colours, the shapes and the figures immortalised above me. There’s an illustration of a lake, and then I see a formidable fruit tree, perhaps THE formidable tree, branches heavy with deep red apples. The shiny white accents of paint grace each curve to show the fruit's lusciousness and vitality. They say that you’re truly hungry if you start to crave apples.

Do you want an apple, Marie? A voice asks me.

I snap back down from my heavenly hallucination to the mundane earthly pew and swing my stiffened neck, searching for the speaker. But no one is looking at me. Faces are buried in tissues, flowers and hands, too absorbed in their own thoughts and grievances to share in mine. The organ drones on, the voices strain at the higher notes and I bite down hard to stop the pangs from within force dry vomit up my throat. But there’s really nothing inside of me to throw up. I am empty. Completely empty.

I try to push away the images of the apples. But now that I’ve seen it, gazed upon it, I cannot stop seeing it. I cannot stop feeling it. I cannot stop wanting it.

Yes, I want an apple. But equally: You may want it Marie, but you don’t need it. You can do without it. Snap out of it. It’s just one more day.

I recognise that it is Her voice inside my head. Spurring me on.

I want to cry. But maybe I am just weak?

My teeth start chattering when a door somewhere opens and sweeps the space with a breeze. I was ushered to sit in the back when I arrived. Most people would have been offended or embarrassed to discover they had no reservation at the front besides the other contributors. But I was relieved to just be another sardine in the can, slotting in amongst the strays and unknowns for a little while. I could sit in relative obscurity to compose myself and get a grip of the nausea that had bound me to the porcelain bowl that morning.

There is a respectable gap in my pew between me and a group of four; two young parents and two children. We are not acquainted. The distance between us says, ‘We’re collectively grieving someone who was known and (apparently) loved by both of us”. But the distance also says,"Who the heck are you?”. We try to avoid each other’s eyes but I catch the woman stealing a glance at me. Her mouth is upturned. I wonder, with a slight panic, if she can smell me.

*

I noticed the odour a few weeks back. I can’t quite describe the smell, but it’s unique and nothing like I've ever experienced before. It clings to the surface of my clammy pimpled limbs and the hollows of my clavicle and pits. Is it pungent, stale, rotten like overripe fruit? (The apples reappear in my mind. You don’t need it, Greedy. You don’t need anything.) I mentioned it to Her one day, just after our weekly “check in”.

She was excited. We'd just reached a new milestone. We'd finally entered the Winners Circle and both crossed into the Under 50s club, despite her hereditary heavyset curves.

I told her I was concerned and that maybe the smell was a sign.

“Yes, to celebrate!” she interjected, popped another pink pearly pill and recorded it as her third meal of the day.

“No,” I said, pulling the sagging joggers tighter around my waist, “that… perhaps we’re going too far? Maybe, maybe we should stop.”

But she just turned, sniffed the air around my pits and shook her head. She told me to just chill out and go with the flow. She insisted she couldn’t smell a thing and then added, in her free-spirited way, that even if there was an odour, it would be the scent of victory and it meant I was doing well. 

“No,” she squeezed my hand and beamed with pride at our joint endeavour, “we must keep going. We can't quit now. Look how many other girlies we've beaten.”

Producing her phone, she swiped up the leaderboard of her favourite social media app, zooming past multiple users hiding behind smiling idyllic avatars. As she reached the top of the list, she pressed the screen into my face to remind me of our reason. Our growing popularity and a pending reward of a virtual trophy, victory and of course notoriety.

“We’re gonna blow them all away. We're gonna go viral!” she sang and threw her arms around me. Her hip bones slammed against mine. Her hair scratched my face. Her breath, masked by sugar-free minty gum, heaved against my shoulder. We could barely hold onto each other without feeling dizzy from the effort of the embrace. When she pulled away, shafts of her once lush dark curls, now threadbare, pinged out from her scalp. It was an occurrence and a sight that didn’t phase her anymore. It's just hair, she shrugged, scooping up the death in balls to store in a glass jar memorial later.

And it's just food. It's just a little discomfort. It's just one more hour, day, week…

I managed a wobbly smile at her optimistic Cheshire Cat grin but couldn't stomach looking into her lifeless eyes. Because when I finally came around the next morning, it was the memory of her blackening gums and cold sweaty hands that haunted me more than my fainting spell…

*

I can tell the family besides me are Her relatives - the mother has the same black curls and sideburns. But maybe they are part of the distant and judgemental relatives that were only ever spoken of with bitterness.

I try to conceal my shaking body from them. I cocoon further inside my heavy coat, in an attempt to contain the condemnation leaching out of me. At the lowering of the organ, their little boy suddenly collides with my protruding kneecaps, which causes me great pain and I almost gag. He stares deadpan into my face, as if observing a feral and unkempt animal at a zoo. A tanned hand flaps at the edge of my vision, until they grasp his hood and yank him backwards.

You don’t know that lady; I hear a female voice snap; so you must not bother that lady. Do you understand? Can’t you see she’s upset?

I feel instantly uncomfortable, aware now that there are probably several eyes on me from others, scowling at the noisy commotion. Eyes searching me, scrutinising me. Can they smell me? Can they feel my pain, hear my insides groaning? Do they know why I'm here, what I’m doing, what we were doing?

I bury my fists deep into my abdomen and squirm. I wish for the sombre priest to skip over the horrific hymns that I’m certain someone irrelevant requested and put us all, especially the deceased, out of our misery.

The service motors on, but everything feels stuffy and precarious. The singing, the blessing, the sea of black - all of the sentiments are right, but they are detached. Delivered out of duty (or guilt) rather than anything remotely genuine.

I notice I am beginning to fade again and need a quick distraction. Anything to stay awake until it is time to do what I promised to do.

I steal an abandoned programme, repurposed into a paper aeroplane by the little boy, and fumble through the scalloped edged pages of candid selfies and embarrassing childhood shots to find the order of service. It spans over three pages and my fluttering heart almost fails with weariness at the sight of the illegibly excessive cursive font. The grandeur brings acid to my throat. I don’t know these people, and they don’t know me, yet I am angry towards them. I am angry for Her sake.

An elderly lady, flanked by a tall younger man, gives a performance of tears from a motorised wheelchair decked out in fresh white flowers during another hymn interlude. Her accent is thick and passionate and she waves a gold-framed portrait, like a banner, of a little dark haired girl slurping spaghetti in a plastic highchair. My baby, oh my baby. Nonna will miss her baby; is all I can make out from the sobs.

But this is strange because She never once spoke about Nonna. As far as I knew, She had no grandparents. I assumed they had all died long before she was even born.

The duo stutter back down the aisle, touching outstretched hands. The Nonna almost loses her cover when she lays her silver eyes on me. She, possibly by accident, even salutes the other rejects in my pew. It’s as though she’s figured out who I am, what I’ve done, and how I got caught up in the sad but complicated puzzle of a vivacious life. A life cut tragically short by a simple desire to be loved and accepted.

"Thank you for coming," the tall man is unconvincing, speaking on the Nonna's behalf. But she only offers me pursed lips as she zips away, pressing dark shades back over her facade. Later, I catch the grieving grandmother dump the little girl in the gold frame into her aid's lap without a shed of emotion. Handing her responsibility back over to someone else to look after. Duty done. This act epitomizes everything She went through.

My nose and ears itch with heat, the stuffiness and pretence sucks the air away from my weakened body. I feel the urge to escape, to give up and free myself of this challenge. But for Her cause, I have to keep going.

It was never about beating the TikTok girlies on the social media leaderboard. I realised, when I found Her handwritten last wishes at the back of the tracking diary, it was about showing these shameless people, right here, that She was stronger than they knew and totally worthy of love.

I have to keep going, I am almost there. She was right. It's just a little discomfort. It's just one more hour…

-

Fifteen minutes later, an usher pokes me awake. My time has finally arrived.

"Marie?", He says grimacing at me, as I fright from my stupor. I can only imagine my sleepy appearance, but I'm beyond caring, "you have a tribute to make?".

The whole church creaks and swivels to watch me. The usher hesitates before helping me to stand to my feet. He politely holds my upper arm, but his grip is the same loose and detached sentiment I've sensed all morning. I realign and adjust my body of bones to straighten up; we've been seated for way too long.

He tries to direct me to the stage via the sidelines, but I know She would want me to fight, to not compile. So I find an ounce of strength to shrug him off and I stagger down the aisle. The power nap seems to have provided me with much needed boldness and just enough to propel me forwards.

I descend on another monotonous gathering of holier than thou tributants. At my approach, they part like the Red Sea, gaping and gasping at my dishevelled presence. 

"Scuse me," the priest is a little man with a shiny bald head. He mistakes me for a crasher but someone regretfully points out my name on the programme and the man retreats with disbelief.

I know, if they had their way, I'd have no place in their stainfree service. But it was Her wish. She wanted me there. It was stated in her last wishes, in black and white that I, Marie would deliver the final tribute at her funeral. That I, her closest and only friend, would have the last say on her behalf. That I would set the record straight and share her truth because I knew her better than her own blood.

I had been there for her when they weren't. When they should have shown her unfailing love, I stood in their place. If they had done their true duty, she wouldn't be lying here now, emaciated, stone cold in a box on its way into the ground.

I grasp, with one hand, the edges of the lectern to stabilise myself, and in the other, I clutch the paper with the speech She wanted me to make. My ears feel hot, my head is spinning. The church is a sea of black and red disapproving faces. But no one dares to move now, dares to come near me. I've made it. I'm here. And what I'm about to state will blow them all away.

I smile to myself at the memory of Her words, of Her fight, of Her life. And for the first time, I allow myself to slowly gaze down against vertigo and I find Her, facing upwards in the front row, waiting for Her ultimate reward. Justice, a cleared name and peace from those who made her suffer.

I promised Her that I'd fight with and for her. We joked about it at the start, but little did we know, little did we realise how poignant our “til death” quip would be.

Because as I lift my eyes again, to the ceiling where the tree of life hangs, I feel a sudden rush of euphoric lightness wash over me. I have kept my promise and finished this race. And now I can let go.

As I part my cracked lips to speak, a great sigh of relief escapes and I feel myself fold.

Before I lose consciousness for the very last time, it's not her blackening gums, cold sweaty hands or stifled cries that is my last memory. It's all the times we had together. In sickness and health, whether we were purging or not, she was my greatest reward.

My weight, but also my glory.