diet coke blog pt. 1

Today little sister cracks open a second egg and mom’s eyes dart across the kitchen. 'You are not supposed to eat more than one egg a day you know that is far too much cholesterol.’ The first meal I ate at the hospital was a two-egged omelette drenched in cheese. My mother sat across from me while the nurses and social workers retaught her how to feed me. They told her I was not allowed to hide cheese under my plate, or pick off the tortilla shell and avoid the egg yolk. They told her there were new rules, now 3000 to 5000 calories a day, every day no more sugar-free jello egg whites and tea That night we went to the grocery store and felt the world tilt upside down We walked passed the low fat, no cholesterol sugar-free Until we hit the goldmine: poppyseed muffins, ice cream bars whole milk full fat butter. Foods that would make my heart beat regularly again and put life back in my eyes. Today I tell my mother I think it is fine for little sister to eat two eggs, cholesterol be damned. But she looks me in the eye and says “It’s different for you.” This is the same phrase she repeats when I ask her why she does not want us to cook noodles for mother’s day dinner or why she is not eating sugar this week. It is a phrase which means: because you showed so much control that you grew out of control You are Hereby Exempt from the Dieting Culture It is a phrase which means, ‘I am drawing a firm line between the South Beach diet The No-Carb diet The No-Sugar diet The Atkins diet The You Are Inherently Flawed and in Need of Fixing Diet and illness.’ Because nobody likes to think about the fact that perhaps we are all playing with fire that perhaps The American Dream (and by this I mean weight loss) is nothing but a smokescreen. That perhaps shrinking oneself successfully does not actually move mountains, paint your soul in bright gold, or part the seas. That perhaps making ourselves disappear won’t fix the real problems our good intentions will never pave the path to heaven. Tomorrow when I wake up I am going to breathe in the morning air and thank the universe for poppyseed muffins, ice cream bars whole milk full fat butter I am going to change the world and fry two eggs for breakfast.

One thing that I am noticing is that people use Michelle Obama as a sort of scapegoat. If you compare Michelle’s treatment vs how Laura Bush was treated, Laura Bush was never painted as responsible for the acts of the Presidency.