It Was Me All Along: A Memoir

by Andie Mitchell

“Can you do it today? Can you make it through today without bingeing? Just today, and tomorrow we’ll reconsider?” The writer was struck, as was I in reading it over. “Uh, yes. I mean, yeah—yes, I can get through today,” she stumbled out in concession. In that moment, she realized that this phrase would be her mantra. It would be the question she’d ask herself, day in and day out, when she felt herself falling back into old habits. Can you do it today? The notion of just trying to take each day as it came. The commitment to the present moment, and only the present moment, without worrying about the big and daunting picture of all the days that followed. The mustering of strength and dedication for now, if not later. That question stayed with me after having read her article. And at that moment, sitting in my car outside the YMCA at the beginning of my own weight loss journey, it floated into my head like a banner attached to a blimp in the sky. Can you exercise today, Andie? Not tomorrow, not the next day, not even a month from now. Today? Eat the best you can, work your plus-sized heart out … today? And, I found, I could.

Because, really, how we act when times are just peachy is nothing compared to how we act when times are rotten.

The further down I dug to uncover the roots of my relationship with food and overeating, the worse I began to feel. It was like taking every belonging I owned out of the cabinets and closets and drawers of my house and having to stare at the mess of it without ever being able to put it all away. There was no closure to the chaos.

“Taking a medication to adjust this imbalance is not taking the easy way out. You’re not taking drugs to feel amazing; you’re taking them to feel normal.” Her words calmed me. “The talk therapy is where you’re working through it all.”

And then I realized that these photographs were quite special. Because they captured the days I didn’t think to document. Those times that went unmentioned, seemingly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Somehow they spoke volumes about my identity. Random images taken throughout the last year. They didn’t have stories and archived memories; they were simply the in-betweens of my life. Each was weird but also revealing. What was most interesting about those photographs wasn’t that they were a sneak peek inside my daily life, but that Daniel found my life worth documenting. Not what I looked like or what I was doing in particular, but my zaniness. The quirks. The simple facts that I tuck my thermal pants into my socks and sit cross-legged in front of my oven door to watch my own baking projects. In not even one photo was I dressed well. What about that time I wore a dress? Each was just something he found special somehow. And now, looking through them all, I realized how lucky I was. He’d moved from Amherst to Cambridge to Philadelphia, and now to one forgettable town in Connecticut, just to be with me. And I loved him for it. Because even when that Connecticut movie crumbled, when the production was abruptly shut down in January and I lost my job because the studio and the director couldn’t come to an agreement on budget, Daniel smiled and offered reassuringly, “The bright side is that now you can start your blog.”

secure. There I was, twenty-five, having lost a lot in life: my front teeth on the seesaw, my first spelling bee, my dad, 135 pounds, multiple pairs of sunglasses, and, most often, my way.