Note: I wrote this, all stream-of-consciousness like, on my phone in the backseat on the way home from Fancy Restaurant last Saturday night, prompted by my indignant fellow diners to write something and post it that very night. After re-reading it, and still raw from the encounter, I decided to sit on it until I was sure I wouldn’t regret posting it. But I’ve seen and heard one too many “bitch needs to eat a sandwich” and/or “real women have curves”  floating about lately, so I decided to go for it. A few adjectives have been toned down, a few obscenities removed, and basic grammatical errors corrected (I hope?) but otherwise, from my tums-tossing fingers to your eyes…

You may or may not remember me. I actually really hope that you do. I was the, ahem, petite twenty-something brunette with the navy lace top, long mint-and-gold necklaces, skinny jeans and patent mint ballet flats, and streaked mascara.

If the outfit doesn’t jog your memory, perhaps this will: I was the stranger you insulted for throwing up. 

You see, I’ve just spent the better part of the summer dealing with a series of complications due to freakishly stubborn kidney stones. The whole ordeal was made that much more complicated by the fact that I have Cystic Fibrosis, and so the lack of appetite caused by the pain of the stones and their treatments has done quite the number on my already difficult-to-maintain body weight. I’m OK with this; I know that once everything is said and done, one way or another my appetite will return, and with it, a healthier, more physically and socially comfortable body. For now, I’m grateful that kids’ clothes are as cute as they are, and super excited that they’re so cheap. (Those jeans I was wearing were a ‘back to school’ steal!).

Enough about clothes (for now). See, the night you met me was the first “fun” night out I my family and I had been able to have in several weeks. We were having a great evening, talking and laughing like we haven’t in a while, over a series of courses of really, really good food. I had already been to the restroom three times – kidney stones make you pee, or think you have to pee, a lot – before I had the unfortunate last trip in which I met you. I was just about to dive in to my dessert when a wave of nausea overcame me, a rare one that I knew there was no point in trying to suppress.

Not that it’s any of your business, but I had a surgery when I was a baby that has made it literally, physically impossible for me to throw up. Even in the occasional instances that I really, really need to (Pro tip: discounted sushi night is not to be trusted). Thankfully, the times that I have needed to toss my tuna have been rare; but when they do occur, they’re pretty violent. After 20+ years of dealing with this, even rarer is the time that I can’t zen out, pop some tums, and suppress it until I’m home, or at least in the car. The fact that one such rarity was happening here, of all places, sucked.

Knowing what was coming that night, I had to psych myself up as I quickly shuffled through the dining room towards what everyone knows can only be the bathroom, yet again. I had to remind myself that this kind of gross unseemliness, while not a primary purpose, is in fact part of what public bathrooms are there for – yes, even the fancy ones. I’m mad I’ve had to worry my parents, casting a reminder of the omnipresence of this disease, and the general “curse” that has been this summer, over an otherwise delicious and lighthearted evening.  I’m trying not to allow space for the creeping worry as to why I’m continuing to have such trouble conjuring even the faintest appetite, and becoming so ill, so quickly when I can and indulge it.

As you’ll remember, I break in to the stall just in time to throw myself over the toilet and begin to heave. As usual for me, nothing but saliva, but the waves of attempts just keep coming. I know it’s not mistakable for a loud cough, and loud it is. I’m pretty sure they can hear me in the kitchen on the other side of the wall. I’m humiliated, but honestly, too grateful the bathroom is so isolated from general earshot, and in too much pain to care.

It finally relents, and I hesitantly stand back up, wait to make sure it’s really over, and quickly clean myself up – dabbing at the corners of my mouth, and precisely wiping to minimize streaking. I tell you this because I can only assume you’ve never suffered the first world indignity of faux-barfing in a fancy restaurant bathroom. Blink back a few times to make sure any errant tears have already fallen before I have to step out to the sink and pretend like nothing just happened.

I walk out, glancing quickly and awkwardly at you, my “sink buddy”. You’re standing at the sink, washing your hands, while alternately admiring your and furrowing your brow as you cut your eyes sideways in my direction. The way you are looking at me is freaking me out, honestly, but then I remember I was the one loudly wrenching not 90 seconds earlier, and not knowing the precise stage of the meal at which we were meeting,  gave you the benefit of the doubt. I intentionally catch your eye again, this time with a slight smile and a shrug, trying to silently say, “yes, that was me, but it’s no big deal; no worries, nothing to see here,” – but with no desire, intent or quite frankly, ability to discuss the whole mini-ordeal. I just need to wash up and get back to the table so I can get some water.

Now. Before I say anything further, I want to make something clear. I normally don’t pay much attention to the appearance of other women; if someone is wearing something I find interesting or flattering, I’ll usually say so – who can’t use a compliment from a stranger on a random Tuesday? – but you generally have to be pretty egregiously unattractive and unhygienic for me to even notice, and even if I do, particularly rude or hateful for me to care.

But you seem different, to be honest – like you very much want to be noticed, yet have an almost defensive disposition, like that of a scared but angry animal, or perhaps a teenage girl.

So,  I notice. You’re wearing multiple high-end labels prominently – as do many women in the general area around this particular restaurant – though to be honest, you’re wearing none particularly well, and all, too tight for your otherwise perfectly fine, neutrally unremarkable physique. You’re very blonde, and very tan, both very obviously from bottles and overdue for maintenance. No judgment here, honest to god. My roots could use a little attention themselves, and I’ve only quit bothering with the self-tan situation because I’m too lazy to maintain it as well as you are. I’m thinking, “Who cares? It’s summer.” And honestly, it’s all little more than passing observations; overall, I think, as I usually do about these things on other people, “who cares, period?”

I’m already refocused on my own reflection, debating whether to try to fix the mascara issue any further or leave well enough alone, when you spin on your heel and turn perpendicular to me, forcefully balling up and throwing away your towel. I jump and  look at you again – seriously startled by your abruptness – and given the intensity with which you’re sizing me up, I assume you must know me, or at least think you know me, from somewhere. I start mentally reeling through the catalogue of possible parents’ friends, friends’ parents, neighbors or other acquaintances you might be.

Turns out, there’s no need. Before I’ve even worked my way around my mental cul-de-sac, you scan me up and down, slowly inspecting me, but with a greater degree of predetermined contempt than someone simply trying to determine age, or style, or some other neutral curiosity. You meet my eyes, narrow your own, and growl, “why pay so much for your dinner if you’re just gonna come throw it all up, anyway?”

Wait, I’m sorry. What?

Normally when people make ignorant comments to (or more often, very loudly about) me – my weight; why I’m eating salad when I’m small; why I’m in public at all (even the pharmacy) when I clearly have the flu; why I’m buying x or y when I’m only 16, tsk tsk; how I should be so ashamed using “my grandma’s” handicapped parking pass – I cut them way too much slack, assuming the best or at least granting the benefit of the doubt, and also (I’m embarrassed to admit) way too concerned about my possibly curt or dismissive response being the only image of CF, or invisible illness, they may encounter – or even if it’s not, that it’ll be the one they chose to latch on to. And if they actually ask a question – a real one, for which they’d like an answer, not a snarky rhetorical one like yours – I’m so grateful for the chance to clear things up, and their restraint in judgment, that I’ll answer as kindly as I know how and as thoroughly as they’d like.

But yours was an unusually, undeniably clear cut instance of thoughtlessness at best, cruelty at worst. And so, to be honest? It was actually refreshingly clear cut an opportunity to speak my hurt in the moment, if not my heart writ large, with a surprising but welcome lack of internal pressure to “be a bigger person” or kindly explain to you your misconceptions while trying to spare your pride.

You weren’t interested in understanding, or learning. You were interested only in burdening  a stranger with shame in an attempt to deflect your own. And while I’ll do my best to come alongside and help another person bear their load when asked, strangers included, I’m finally to a point where I’ll be damned before I take it *all* on in addition to my own, simply because you feel entitled to drop it on me.

And so, for the first time ever in an instance like this, I just spoke, before my head could stop my heart. “Why do you bother to buy expensive clothes?”

I wasn’t mocking your wardrobe choices. I actually really liked your shoes, in particular (I noticed them under the stalls while I was retching), and I think your whole outfit would have been pretty adorable, unto itself as well as on you specifically, if it fit a little more comfortably. I think you know this too; believe it or not, during bouts of steroid-munchies and related binging on tiny American portions, I’ve also been on that side of the fence, where suddenly nothing fits right even though it all did two weeks ago and you’ve got 10 minutes to get dressed and out the door.  I had no desire then or now to call you out or counter-shame you for it.  But I couldn’t help but think, “even if I did just yack it all up, on purpose, I enjoyed it going down; likewise,  you clearly enjoy wearing nice things, even if their most utilitarian purposes – to cover and ideally flatter ones’ body – are being ignored. Since when, and who says, we have to be in a state of deserving perfection to enjoy that which is meant to be enjoyed?”

I’m honestly not sure who was more shocked at first, me or you; but you were at least taken aback enough, and shut up long enough, that I kept going.

There was no need to justify myself, then or now, and I know that. Nor did I feel obliged or interested in rattling off my medical history to you in some futile attempt to “spread awareness” about my “orphan disease” in this moment. I didn’t want to be “the face of CF” to you. I didn’t want to be “the face of a ‘naturally’ thin woman” or “the face of millennial over-appeasers”. I was too tired, too pained, too nauseous, too weary to carry the mantle or be a token for any of these things.

Just once, when bluntly confronted by another woman about my stature or my diet or my fitness, in a way most people thankfully, finally consider wholly unacceptable to do to larger people,  I wanted to just be another human face.

A face that represented a history, and a thought life, and a depth of spirit, and a circle of loved ones of all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities. A face that contorts itself when the socially-sanctioned “girl talk” about our bodies and related dissatisfaction inevitably begins; unsure of how to tow the line between appearing sufficiently unhappy as to be considered humble, “real”, and therefore trustworthy; but not so much as to breed contempt as the “skinny girl who doesn’t get it” and is therefore, either damaged, unrelatable, or both. As a generic adult woman, period, I’m not allowed to make peace with and just function within my body, adorning it at my own will and discretion; as a generic thin adult woman, my insecurities and dissatisfactions with my body (yes, I legitimately have them) will never matter as much as anyone’s who is heavier than I, including the high school sophomores for whom I am routinely mistaken. 

Mostly, in this brief moment with you,  I wanted to be a face you remembered as an embodiment of the shared feminine experience of being reduced to my externality alone. If you remembered me, and this exchange, at all, I wanted it to be as a missed opportunity for support and connection, and a reminder of your choice to participate in the perpetuation of the very behavior that does have some women throwing up their expensive dinner in the bathroom of the fancy restaurant, until they finally can make themselves small enough to fit in to the boxes of everyone’s expectations for how they live their lives and how they look while they do so; and others, painting themselves in labels and other symbols of power to in an attempt to buy that which they do not feel, distract from that which they cannot accept, and control, control, control another’s judgment of that which they’re trying to hide.

And lastly, I wanted to clear any false assumptions you may have about people with ED I may have unwittingly solidified, as well as  jerk a thread on your clearly demonstrated prejudices against thin women generally. Your assumption about the intentionality of my thinness; the sense of superiority I must feel, strutting around all, I dunno, pixie-looking?; and most ironically, the security you must presume I gain from such (hypothetical and completely laughable) discipline and control over my body.

So I ball up my own towel, as forcefully and intimidatingly as one can…wad up paper, swing open the door, and before I walk through, turned on my own heel:

“And by the way, I have a genetic disorder that is the reason I just threw up, and the reason I’m having a hard time breathing standing here washing my hands. Statistically speaking, I’ve got a good three-to-five years left, so yeah, I’m going to eat well while I can, reflux and weak lungs be damned. Enjoy your evening.”

So. I hope you do remember me, middle-aged blonde in the fancy restaurant bathroom. And while I hope I made you think, and I really hope I made you stop a beat before kicking another woman while she’s metaphorically curled over a toilet, I sincerely hope I didn’t ruin your evening. I didn’t let you ruin mine.

And for future reference? If you dare come back to this particular fancy restaurant, try the brunch. I’ll be the small brunette by the window, likely coughing off and on, but otherwise laughing, talking, and sopping up the Worcestershire gravy on the shrimp and grits. Try them – life’s too short to wait for perfect to enjoy it, no? 

Thoughtfully,

The Tiny Puking Brunette in the Fancy Bathroom Restaurant