The Slow Way

What if I went on Ozempic? What if I could finally find out what it feels like to be thin?

I thought about going on GLP-1 medications for more than a year.

Friends of mine started using them. I watched their flesh shrink toward their bones. Cheekbones appeared. Hips hollowed out. Collarbones erupted from underneath their skin.

I wanted that.

I wanted that more than I realized.

My belly is plump and fell toward my thighs after giving birth to my daughter, 17 years ago. It's still there.

As much as I work with my mind, kindly, sometimes I still feel like this means I have failed.

I spent from the ages of 16 to 49 dieting, then stalling, then gaining it back. During that time, I excoriated my body, pummeled my body, tried to exit from my body, learned to make an uneasy peace with my body, tried to be positive about my body, tried to be neutral about my body, and came to some sort of tacit agreement with my body.

I’m glad I have a body. Most of the time, I forget my former enmity with this miracle of bones and flesh that help me walk around in the world.

I’m grateful to be here.

But a couple of years ago, when so many people began losing weight with Ozempic, all that shame came rushing back to me.

What would it be like?

To finally live in a body that matched the preset expectations of this society?

I started dreaming of the adventure of injecting myself with something that could make part of my body disappear.

End of October, 2024.

I opened the new message on MyChart and looked at the numbers.

Not great.

LDL — borderline high.

HDL — borderline low.

Triglycerides — borderline high.

A1C — elevated, borderline for prediabetes.

Blood pressure — elevated and tending toward hypertension

I could feel my breath pant and charge as I read the numbers.

But now that I had the health markers of someone who might need it, maybe I could start a GLP?

I noticed I felt a little glee when I thought about this.

Finally. Finally. I can be rid of this meddlesome flesh.

The resident nodded when I mentioned GLP-1s after I’d waited six months for the appointment.

We could try that. Of course, we’d have to see if your insurance would cover it. I could send you for a sleep apnea test. If you have that, we probably could get insurance to cover Zepbound. But if not, you’d have to pay for it yourself.

Always on the edge of terror of being out of money, I could not afford $499 a month.

I left the office disappointed. No easy pass to the highway that would take me to the promised land.

I walked into the elevator, brooding.

As the doors started to close, I noticed an older man pushing an older woman in a wheelchair.

“Would you hold that please?” he pleaded.

Of course.

He pushed her slowly into the elevator. Her head bobbed toward her chest. Her eyes fought the requirement to stay open.

He reached for her hand — her wrinkled, spotted hand — and I could see her squeeze back, weakly.

All the way down, I watched them from the corner of the elevator. He soothed her with words about what the doctor had said. And I could see his eyes fill up with tears. He didn’t have to hide them from her, since he stood behind her.

Watching them, my mind shifted to curiosity.

How long have they loved each other?

Does he ever wish her body was smaller?

Does she wish now that she had a flatter belly?

He patted her shoulder, rearranging her scarf a second time.

When the elevator reached the lobby, I held the door open as he negotiated her wheelchair through the door.

I stepped out of the elevator and watched them walk toward the main door, both of them frail.

Together. Who knows for how long?

I walked toward the bus and thought about them as it made stop after stop in downtown Seattle. I thought about that couple as the bus drove quickly across the West Seattle bridge. I thought about my husband, waiting for me at the bus stop across from Easy Street Records. The man who loved me with his entire, kind heart.

When the image of that man who has loved me steadfastly — the Samwise Gamgee to my Frodo — arose, I remembered a fragment of a quote from Joseph Campbell. I had to look it up.

And then I wrote it down in the big blue sketchbook I keep with me always:

“Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment — not discouragement — you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”

The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

We had been enduring an enormous, epic crisis in our family, trying to decipher what ailed our youngest child. Our lives had been blown apart by our move away from our quiet island home to West Seattle. I had been eating haphazardly, reaching for whatever processed snacks I kept in the trunk of the car, as we drove to the emergency room again.

There was no savoring what I tasted. No sit-down lunch. No long walks on the beach.

It had been a wreck of a year.

We were still in the dark of the forest.

Of course all my medical numbers had risen, precipitously.

Maybe this time I could see my own story clearly — still unraveling — instead of going back to the safety of fixating on losing weight.

I didn’t need to inject myself with something as a quick fix.

Frodo couldn’t take a helicopter to Mordor.

I needed to go the slow way.

The bus lurched to a stop. I pressed my feet into the floor to steady myself. Felt the full weight of my body — this plump belly, these sturdy thighs — holding me upright as the bus swayed.

I put my hand on my chest. Felt my heart beating underneath my palm.

Still alive. Still walking through the forest.

Time to begin.

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