T – Minus 5 years
“Hello. I’m Melanie.”
“Hi Melanie,” responded the bored chorus. The cramped meeting hall stunk like burnt coffee. Clutching the podium, I surveyed the 15 or so miserable-looking people in front of me. I opened my mouth to continue, but managed only a sob. I tried to take a deep breath, to compose myself. Eventually. I managed to say:
“I feel like, well, I feel like …I can’t get air in. I feel like there is always a monster sitting on my chest. I can’t concentrate, I can’t breathe. Anxiety feels like it’s compressing my rib cage, all day, everyday, right now, unless I’m chewing. Chewing makes the monster go away. But as soon as I stop chewing I need more. Hunger is the only feeling I know. I’m either hungry or chewing.”
T Minus 20 Years
Faith, I was taught, is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see. I memorized this definition from the New Testament, Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1. In fact, I memorized the entire chapter. And the one before it. Actually, I memorized the most of Hebrews. From the time I was in third grade to the time I graduated high school, I memorized over half of the New Testament. Because that’s what a high-achieving, rural midwest, wholesome, Jesus-loving, starving-for-recognition middle child does.
I had faith. I scrupulously followed the instructions of my pastor and the youth leader. I kept unfailingly to my daily “devotional” time of prayer, and studied scripture with intensity. I never smoked, drank, or did more than kiss a boy until well after high school.
Naturally, every Sunday found my family and me in church, and we attended a midweek service too. I always looked forward to the services because, as a homeschooled child, they provided an opportunity to play with kids other than my siblings. As a teenager, I played guitar in the church band along with all of my brothers and my Dad. Some Sundays, it was me on bass, my younger brother on drums, my older brother on guitar and my Dad, singing and playing harmonica. These were undoubtedly some of my Mom’s proudest moments.
But aside from the playing and the music, I invested myself in faith so fully and so blindly for one reason: I was promised by my Bible and my Sunday school teachers that this kind of devotion would guarantee me a mansion in heaven after I died and spare me from God’s righteous wrath–dealt by the flames of hell. Having blind faith in what I was taught, I spent my childhood “working out my faith with fear and trembling,” as the Bible puts it, terrified to screw anything up. Heaven would be mine one day–if I would just have faith.
On January 13, 1991, at the age of seven, I had my first powerful spiritual experience. Alone in the basement of my parents house, I was feeling sad and lonely. By then, I had already accepted such feelings as normal for me.
A presence overwhelmed me, surging through the room in a rush of energy. I began to vibrate… my very cells were shaking. The sensation was so powerful and tangible, I was overcome and wept uncontrollably. One of my brothers found me and attempted, through my heaving sobs, to extract an explanation of what had happened.
I struggled intensely to make sense of the event. Synapses fired, electrical currents lashing through my young brain, seeking familiar pathways to set in context this other-worldly event. The currents landed on the religious narrative I had consumed each week in children’s church. I pieced together the best explanation I could. I told my brother that I had asked Jesus into my heart and in that moment I had been born again. Indeed, I had been.
Around the same age, I remember my first feelings of “not being full,” wanting something more, someplace else. Although my Mom made huge dinners for us, she liked to use lunchtimes to teach my siblings and me some independence. So, we normally fended for ourselves at lunch, having finished homeschooling for the day.
Mom kept the freezer and pantry stocked with stuff we could make ourselves. Pizza rolls, mac’n’cheese, chicken nuggets–I clearly remember fighting over who got the last chicken nugget or the final scoop of noodles. There were five of us. It’s not cheap to feed five kids, and my mom was very conservative with money. Who knows? Two or three more pizza rolls and maybe I would have left the tables feeling satisfied. Of course, I would have needed only to speak up, letting Mom know I was still hungry. Still very hungry. But polite little Christian girls don’t ask for favors that might inconvenience someone else. The flesh was evil and needed to be controlled, I was taught. So I learned to suppress my desire.
The first time I remember feeling fat was around age 13, when I started to grow into my woman’s body. And I was a little fat, like most middle school girls who can’t get enough chicken nuggets and pizza rolls and affection. In the course of three years, my hips, thighs and butt went from a size 0 to a size 11. But my chest didn’t keep pace, growing from flat to a 32 AA, which is to say: I started wearing a bra only because my friends were wearing them, not because there was anything to hold up. This was in the mid-1990’s, when slender legs, a vanishing butt and huge boobs were preferred by men and media. With massive thighs and no boobs at all, my body escaped the attention of the boys. I would stew in twenty years of self-hatred before I figuring out that all bodies are different. Or more, that I was gifted with an athletic body, strong legs and a muscular butt–a big booty, deserving of pride.
Hunger became an enemy shortly after puberty. It would shadow me, constantly tapping on my shoulder. There was never enough, never enough attention, praise, affection, achievements, awards, recognition or food. I was, after all, a sinner, blemished from birth, a wretch in the eyes of God. I assumed I was hungry because I hadn’t earned the right to be recognized or fed. So I worked harder, earned more A’s and MVP’s. But nothing filled me up.
I won my first battle with hunger when I was 17. After having my wisdom teeth removed, I couldn’t eat for a few days. If you’ve ever fasted or starved yourself, you know that after a day or two it gets a lot easier. And so it did for me. For two days that I couldn’t eat due to pain. But for the two weeks that followed, I didn’t eat due to self-hatred.
It felt like victory. Over the next ten years, I repeated these two-week starvation episodes several times, typically hiding them, even from myself, by calling them “cleanses”. But it never seemed to matter whether I gained or lost 10 pounds; I still wasn’t enough.
Being Seen
The rush that comes from being seen is like a drug. My heart pounds. My face glows. When I’m in front of people, doing something that not everyone can do at the level I am doing it, I feel like I matter. Being better than others at something gets me high every time. The more people I surpass, the more attention I receive, the bigger the high.
I am 9, and I am crying. It’s my birthday. My mom gathered me, my siblings, my cousins and a friend from church to go bumper bowling. But when we arrive at the lanes, we find out they don’t actually have bumpers. Everyone else seems to be bowling better than me. I keep throwing my ball in the gutter. My mom tries to give me a pointer, which only makes me hate her. I sulk off to go buy licorice. I still hate bowling to this day. If I can’t be the best, I can’t enjoy it.
I am 11, and I am rehearsing for an upcoming martial arts competition. For hours in my bedroom, I practice the kata. I am exhausted, pushing myself to try again and again until I can perform the entire routine of kicks, punches and blocks from memory, flawlessly, five times in a row. My cousin, April, is in my class. Two years older than me, she always places higher. No one has even suggested I practice. I am motivated by the medal that will be awarded for 1st place. When the performance arrives, I take first place. April takes second and receives a certificate. April’s Dad, my uncle, picks us up that evening and drives us to McDonald’s for celebratory ice cream sundaes. I proudly display my gold medal. Inspecting it, April points out that it isn’t made of gold at all, it is made of plastic. “Well, but it’s a special kind of plastic,” my uncle counters. Special plastic on a string. I still feel like a loser.
I’m in my 6th grade, pink-walled bedroom. I am bent over a thin booklet, barely forty pages. It is the gospel of Luke, from the New Testament. These are the pages I must memorize. I’m holding the book but my eyes are closed. I’m reciting it from memory, line by line, verse by verse. Sometimes I peek, ensuring I haven’t missed a word. Although I’ve been memorizing the Bible for years, trying to keep up with my older siblings, this is the first year I am officially old enough to complete on the Bible Quiz Team. My goal to become Rookie of the Year. I must answer more questions correctly, reciting more verses word-for-word than any other rookie that year across the state. And I do. When I receive this honor, in front of my parents and my peers, I beam as I accept my trophy and pose for a photo.
Around this time, I am certain that I became depressed. Something wasn’t right. I had all the faith you could ask for. I excelled in every endeavor, from sports to academics to performing arts. The words of well-meaning adults, painfully rang in my ears:
“You are going to change the world!”
“You are unique.”
“You are going places with your life.”
Even the Bible haunted me. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13. And the most ear piercing words of all came from my mother. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”
It was a backpack full of bricks. I couldn’t breathe under the weight of its responsibility. The terror of the idea that I might be infinitely powerful yet somehow choose the wrong path, that I might let the whole world down, created intense pressure on my chest. Anxiety plagued me. I couldn’t sleep at night, was unable to get up in the morning. I lay awake, writing in my journal about all the ways I was falling short and all my plans to fix my flaws. I prayed for God to fix me, since I’m was obviously screwing everything up.
My mom had installed wallpaper in my bedroom, a solid color on the bottom, a cute border in the middle and a print on top. Above the border I built a second border of my own. Most girls my age hung posters of Hanson or other teeny-bopper stars. But I hung every certificate and award I had ever received, a horizontal band of glory wrapped around my bedroom. I displayed trophies and medals on my dresser. But there weren’t enough. I wasn’t enough.
I remember walking through my grandparents’ front door one day around the age of 14. I anticipated a day of play on their farm, making hay forts in the barns, climbing trees, exploring fields of corn. That particular day, my grandmother remarked, “Wow Melanie, it is so good to see you smile…I haven’t seen that face in a long time.” I was taken aback. Had I been frowning for months? My Mom would much later reveal that she wished she had gotten my hormones levels checked, if only she had known about that sort of thing in those days. She was right. Something was off in my brain, chemically. But we didn’t know. I just learned to live with it.
In the 11th grade, my partner and I won the state division speech and debate league. We traveled to Santa Clara, California. Our families followed, to watch us debate at the national championship. My back sweated through the cheap polyester pantsuit my mom bought me on clearance at Kohl’s. My knees kept locking, and I reminded myself to bend them. My stomach churned–I’d had the runs all morning. I walked unsteadily to the podium and placed my note cards face down. They were there for moral support. I had already memorized my speech. I drew in a long, slow breath, and fixed the judges with my eyes:
“We, the affirmative team, stand resolved: the 16th amendment to the United States Constitution should be repealed!”
I continued for several minutes, expounding on the many reasons to replace the income tax with a national sales tax. Finished, I resumed my seat beside my partner, waiting for the opposing team to rip my argument to shreds. They tried. I returned to the podium again, steadier now, and spoke off the cuff as I rebutted their every argument. We took 11th place–in the country–and received an honorable mention. I was crestfallen. Had we won just one more round we would have received an award in front of thousands of people. My partner was simply relieved. He was sick of four, hour-and-a-half debate rounds per day, for 3 straight days. He was glad to be eliminated. His thinking baffled me. No one would ever remember our names.
At the age of 14, not 17, I took the ACT college entrance exam. My score was average. Not good, average. I hadn’t received any formal schooling, ever. It might as well have been the worst score ever achieved on a standardized test. It shattered my dream of going to the Air Force Academy; I knew I needed at least a 27 to be considered. I had scored a 23. I returned home that afternoon absolutely crushed. One by one, I removed each certificate of achievement that wrapped my bedroom walls, crumpling and throwing away every last one. I cracked my journal and solemnly penned yet another melancholy poem:
Papers on the wall
Special Plastic on a string
Four long points
Short of my dream
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