Writing for Fun
February 2016
The Vanishing Woman - Sue Barker
Jess stood sideway on to the full length mirror in her bedroom; initially she looked critically at her reflection in the mirror. Slowly she began to smile and bathed in the wonder at the sight before her. She could hardly believe her eyes, but it was true, she was actually disappearing. She looked rather good in her new skinny jeans and tight red top. For the first time for years she felt wonderful, but it hadn't always been like that.
Thinking back she realised that she had rarely looked at herself in a mirror. She didn't need to; she knew what she would see. A sad morbidly obese woman would have looked back at her. She had struggled with her weight since she was about ten years of age. Her mother had taken her to the doctors and as he struggled to lift the little fat child onto the table, he advised her mother to put her on a strict diet: no sweets, cakes or anything considered fattening at that time. And there began the lifelong cycle of Jess' life.
Jess could remember the weeks of longing for something sweet, all her friends ate chocolate and anything they wanted. In hindsight it would have probably been better for Jess if he had suggested she exercised more and cut down on the sugary things she so loved. Totally denying her them had only set the pattern for the years to come, of losing weight and then overeating followed by the awful guilt when her clothes inevitably got tight again. Yo-yo dieting wasn't a new thing for her, it was a way of life.
There were hardly any photo's of Jess as she had always tried to keep away from the camera, so it was hard for her to see how much of her had vanished, she had been a size 28 at her biggest but she had destroyed the rare images of this time – who wanted to be reminded of the rolls of blubber that she struggled to carry round with her.
She had tried every diet known to man, purchasing any magazine with a miracle diet in it, but it all came to nothing. Her mother had been hypnotised to stop smoking, and it worked. So Jess set off to see if the hypnotist could help her. The first thing he asked was, 'What did food do for you?' Jess explained that chocolate talked to her, if it was in the fridge she could hear it calling out to her. Obviously Jess didn't mean literally but the hypnotist looked a bit concerned at this. Anyway four sessions and £85 later, Jess finished with the hypnotism and celebrated with a big bar of chocolate! At least that listened to her!
More seriously she went to a slimming clinic, where she was given slimming pills (which later turned out to be amphetamines) and water tablets, told to only drink six teacups of water, to avoid bread, cereal and to only eat a tiny amount of vegetables, no salad at all but copious amounts of meat. After 3 months she was 3 stone lighter, with stinky breath and terrible constipation, but hey ho she had lost 3 stones. She stopped going to the clinic and gained the whole three stones in no time at all.
Finally Jess decided to live with the weight and enjoy herself; she did a very good job of hiding the humiliation she suffered at friend's harmless jokes about her size, often getting the jibe in first. Oh what fun she was, everyone said so, but they didn't see her cry herself to sleep, after yet another evening gorging on anything in the fridge. Often she didn't even taste it, so deep was her disgust in herself, she just shovelled it in, unable to stop herself, but secretly knowing it was her self-loathing that was driving her self destruction on.
Then one evening she had just left work when she passed a new slimming group sign, even now she didn't know what impelled her to go through the door, before she could chicken out she was getting weighed with a whole group of people. She found that surprisingly she wasn't the largest one there. Even better was the fact that the healthy eating regime was so much easier to follow than any diet she'd been on before.
So here she was eighteen months later and six stone thinner. Funnily enough her friends don't laugh at her anymore, in fact two of them have joined her at the slimming club. Jess has more confidence than ever before and tonight the consultant has asked her if she would like to start up her own slimming group. She is going to a seminar about it, she hoped she could find one photo for the before picture she would need. She couldn't sleep for her head is buzzing with excitement and possibilities. Who thought vanishing could be so much fun? And open up doors to so many possibilities, a new career and who knows what else?