Finding Lindsay

Lindsay walked down the corridor, meeting friendly staff and visitors at the center.

The happiness and well-being radiating from them made Lindsay want to disappear. Not out of envy, but rather out of pain and bitterness for herself and her life. The smiling, kind women she encountered seemed to look at her with thinly veiled pity, as if putting on their “friendly” smiles just for her, to support her, as if saying, “It’s okay, everything isn’t as bad as it seems, we’ll help you, things happen, and you’ll be fine.” “Yes, fine,” Lindsay seemed to reply to them, “look at you all. And look at me,” Lindsay wanted to cry.

Finally, she found the right office, knocked, and awkwardly squeezed through the door when invited to enter. She perched on the edge of a chair opposite a plump, apple-like woman in her forties and said “Hello,” feeling that she was about to burst into tears.

The woman gave her a warm smile and pushed a box of tissues toward her.

“Lindsay Morton? Hello, my name is Miss Corbinas. You can call me Bella. Lindsay, I want to assure you that this office is a completely safe place to talk about anything that worries you. Here at the Acceptance Center, we work with a wide range of women, and I assure you, we will definitely help you! Are you ready to talk?”

“Yes,” Lindsay said, taking a deep breath.

“Tell me, what worries you the most—your weight, eating habits, physical activity routine, or solely your self-image?”

“Everything! Everything you mentioned. Especially the self-image.”

“Don’t worry, just tell me about your lifestyle.”

“I can’t eat at all. I put food in my mouth and can’t chew or swallow. And when I can, even if I don’t want to, I try to eat fatty, sweet things, bread, ice cream, and meat, but everything seems to just go through me without staying.”

“Oh, yes, I understand. Have you tried the sumo diet? Consuming your entire intake in one meal a day?”

“I’ve tried everything possible, everything I could find about diets on the internet. I could probably give consultations myself, but my body burns everything that goes into it.”

“Okay, what about fitness?”

“If I don’t run on the treadmill for an hour, I’m depressed all day. Once a day, I absolutely need at least fifteen minutes with dumbbells, or I start seeing spots before my eyes. Bella, I have nightmares: that I’m lying in bed and trying to reach a dumbbell that keeps rolling away further and further, and I can’t reach it, so I just lie there all day. I wake up in a cold sweat and sometimes can’t fall back asleep until I’ve done fifteen push-ups.”

Bella looked at Lindsay with undisguised pity.

“Yes, this is quite a serious case, I admit, but don’t worry, serious doesn’t mean incurable! Tell me more about how you try to work on yourself internally.”

“I try, I constantly tell myself that my beauty is in my personality, that I don’t have to conform to standards and canons, that people can see me, not my body… But… Every time I step on the scale, I can’t look at those numbers, I feel sick. I weigh only 50 kilograms at 160 cm tall… Have you ever been like me?”

“I have, of course I have. Though I can’t say I did push-ups at night, I had my own thing: in moments of despair, I ran up and down the stairs. Up to the 15th floor and back. Sometimes I did three rounds. A couple of times four!”

Lindsay looked at Bella with wide, scared eyes.

“But you see, everything is under control now: at 160 cm, I weigh 93 kilograms and gain at least one and a half kilos every year! I eat wonderfully and can stay in bed for several days in a row!”

“I’ve tried everything, it seems, I’ll never be beautiful and desirable.”

“Oh, don’t get so upset! Look, here’s what we’ll do. First of all, you’ll have to take a very difficult but important step and get rid of all your exercise equipment. I know this will be hard. But to help you adapt more easily, replace it with very comfortable and soft chairs that you can both sit and lie in. Preferably with massage and heating, so you won’t want to get up.

“If you don’t have a TV in your bedroom—buy one! Even a small one, but HD. Better yet, a big one. At our vitamin department, buy—here’s the name of our exclusive blend—something that stimulates appetite and helps you get through tough moments without exercise.” Bella handed Lindsay a slip of paper with the name on it.

“But most importantly, hang photos of the most beautiful and sought-after actresses everywhere, so their shapes will motivate you to relax more, move less, eat more, and finally understand that it’s your mind that’s preventing you from accepting yourself as plump, soft, warm—as you really are inside. The one you’ve cornered with dumbbells and the treadmill, the one who wants to break free and shout, ‘Finally, I’m free, I’m fat and beautiful!’

“You need to find that voluptuous beauty within you, accept her, allow her to finally wake up and fill your body, which will soon take on magnificent, desirable forms. Acceptance, only acceptance. Very soon you will feel that food calls to you, and exercise is no longer necessary for you to feel happy.

“More joy! Your slenderness is not an obstacle to finding your true self and letting her out, to the refrigerator! Love yourself as you are inside, and as you will soon be in reality.”

Lindsay stepped outside and smiled at the spring sunshine. Something mysterious and magical was happening to her… She inhaled the warm air and looked around.

“Why not buy some ice cream?!” Lindsay said to herself, extremely surprised by her own question, and set off to buy some vanilla.