Ever since I was little I've always loved writing in my diaries.
I have a stack of them, from childhood through college. Boys, school, boys, music, moving, hopes, dreams, boys and a healthy obsession with Mick Jagger fill the pages that tell the story of me. I'm grateful for these books with all these secrets told through childhood scrawl and bubbly teenage girl handwriting.
My first diary was probably my favorite, my most cherished of them all. My Hello Kitty Friendly Diary which I wrote in as if it was not a book but another person, referring to it as "you" and telling it "By Bye Diary!" at the end of each entry.
But my very first entry in my very first diary is not my favorite to look back on.
Again, I was seven years old. A year younger than my youngest son. A second grader? A little kid. I couldn't even spell the word "weight" yet.
I don't blame my mother and I doubt that the "fight" we got into was actually a fight. I'm sure she had tried to give me incentive to drop a few pounds to win the prize that was the diary. She was trying to do what the doctor had told her.
I mostly blame the doctor who put me on the first of the hundreds of diets of my lifetime. For introducing me to the word as a little kid. Diet. It was the 1970s and things were different? I guess? Little kids were obsessed with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, went roller skating and were on diets? I don't know. It doesn't seem right.
I've read this entry over and over and it always makes me wonder, what a lifetime of no diets might have looked like.
What if certain foods weren't off limits? Or hidden away just waiting for me to find them? Would I then be able to handle having a candy drawer in my house today? Probably not -- I swear I'm so good at Jenga today because as a kid I could rearrange the candies in the living room candy bowl to make it appear as if I hadn't eaten every single the caramel out of the Brach's Pick-a-Mix.
But what if I was allowed ice cream rather than given ice milk (blech) along with everyone else? Would not being put on a diet at such a young age have eliminated the countless weight obsessed diary entries to follow?
Would it have eliminated the negative self-talk that I consistently did (and still do sometimes) when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror? Would it wipe away that feeling in bed at the end of the day, whether it was a good day or a bad one based on what I had eaten?
Maybe. Probably. Who knows.
I still struggle. I've gained and lost the same forty pounds countless times. I still lie in bed and go through what I ate that day. I still often say not-so-nice things to myself when I look in the mirror. It's stupid. And exhausting.
So yeah, I still have work to do -- all I can do is take it day by day. And try and write a new chapter for myself, one that has a much better start to it. Maybe I'll be like Susie and get a Coca Cola necklace, from what I remember, that was pretty sweet.
I'll keep working on it. And today was a good day, regardless of what I ate.
Lori's website, Drawn to the 80s, is where her 5 year old drew the music hits of the 1980s. She has a blog, Once Upon a Product, where she writes about beauty products, food and Mick Jagger.