Contagious by Olivia Brochu

       George Bremer CC




Contagious


    Warm fluid slides across my belly. The lights are dim. Hulking machines hum all around me. I am nearly asleep when the ultrasound technician tells me it’s a boy. This happens on repeat, three times over five years. 

    This fourth time they don’t. When I hear “girl” for the first time, I smile, and then forget to breathe. There’s a tightness in my chest that was never there before. It constricts around a fear I’ve never had to face – that my sometimes-dangerous relationship with my body might somehow be contagious. 

    I can trace a line from one woman to the next who helped raise me. We are connected by love, genetics, and matching jawlines. We are connected too by the battles we have faced with our bodies. 

    I watched my grandmother hang her swimsuit up for good in her later years. This was a woman who once told me that she dove head first into the pool at a country club gala, high heels and all, because she just couldn’t resist the crystal-clear waters. At nearly 80, she could no longer bear the sight of her exposed legs and arms. 

    I watched my mother bounce from one diet to another my entire life. Her personal diet history traces every trend from the ‘80s to today – Fen-Phen, Weight Watchers, Atkins, Macros, Ozempic. She calls me weekly with updates on her weight loss. This time she’s committed to a doctor-approved plan where every “meal” is a protein shake. 

    I watched myself at 12 years old, skilled enough to recite the calorie count for every snack in the pantry, too innocent to know the later dangers that could pose. 

    I watched myself at 33 years old, shying away from family photos lakeside, letting my fears of what I might look like in a bathing suit get in the way of perfect summer memories. 

                                                                                                                                        ***

    “I’m not sure how you’re even standing up right now. I’ve never seen numbers this low.” My doctor checks my chart, his eyes round with disbelief. 

    My anemia is so severe, I may not be cleared to study abroad in France in a few weeks. I am a junior in college, and the years of binging and purging before this moment have finally caught up with me. My cheeks burn with shame. 

    It’s the same shame that kept my grandmother from the pool. The same one that tipped my mother back to the scale over and over. All three of us, connected yet again, by some belief that our bodies weren’t good enough, that they should be hidden or transformed. 

    Suddenly, our connection feels stifling, like a turtleneck closing in too tightly on my neck. I want to break out of it, to stop treating my body so poorly, to transform into the kind of person who would never again take such drastic measures. 

    So, I do. I take my iron pills and visit my therapist and slowly, slowly, slowly dig to the bottom of what caused these troubling behaviors. There I find me – like a beloved oatmeal crème pie, soft and sweet and delicately protected by a thin wrapping that grows thicker in every moment of my recovery. 

                                                                                                                                       ***

    Even now, my father can’t understand my diagnosis from years ago. He doesn’t realize that I learned my favorite binging tips from him – to eat alone, to eat for calm, to eat all of the cookies at once so they are out of the house. But he never purges. He never hides his round belly. There are so many more “acceptable” body types for men. 

    My sons’ beautiful eyes look up at me – two green, two hazel, two blue. They stare with adoration. They do not see the scars from long ago, faded across my knuckles. They do not see the work I do, even now, to be kind to myself, to nourish myself without punishment. 

    Perhaps I give them too much credit. It’s not like body image issues are for women only. I assume, though, that my sons are protected by their gender, the strong shield that maleness can be. I hope that’s enough to spare them from the constant desire to be smaller. 

                                                                                                                                      ***

    I keep my eyes pressed shut when I step on the scale. I’ve learned not to mention that the numbers haunt me. Nurses look at you like you’re crazy, as if those digits don’t get stuck inside every patient’s brain for days. 

    Instead, I take precautions my entire pregnancy to protect my sanity. I shrink away from information, like pounds, that weighs too heavily on me. 

    Is this what sanity looks like? 

    My baby girl flutters in my belly while I think – do I look fat? I wonder – can she hear my thoughts?

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Olivia Brochu's work has been featured by Motherly, Five Minute Lit, The Inquisitive Eater, and more. Her essay about her father's heart attack was a WOW Women on Writing contest finalist. She is a fan of gut-wrenching prose, rollercoasters, and baby feet. You can read more of her work at oliviabrochuwrites.com.

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