The best gift I was ever given didn’t cost a dime, and it changed my life.
When I was 17 years old I began to slow dance with an eating disorder. By the time I was 21, it had its lifeless clutches wrapped so tightly around my self worth that every waking moment was spent in its chilling embrace. The reasons had nothing to do with physical appearance; the fully internalized body dysmorphia ensured relentless, illogical, and permanent distortion in my prison mirror.
It was simply, at first, a way to assert control into a life for which I was only pretending to have read the user’s manual.
That eating disorder defined me, and everyone knew, but no one knew. It was the late-80s. Having an eating disorder didn’t make me remotely special. And being thin was far more socially acceptable than carting around my Freshman 15 (or, let’s face it, 25).
Except I was slowly killing myself, emotionally and physically. Until a friend decided he could take it no more.
One day he marched into my UT-Austin sorority house — yes, I was a sorority girl — and walked up the stairs (where men were not allowed, mind you) and slung me over his shoulder and carried me, against my will, outside. He plopped me in the front seat of my beaten up Nissan 200SX, got in the passenger seat, handed me my keys, and said, “Drive.”
We drove all the way to San Antonio before I would admit that I had a problem, and almost crossed the border before I would agree to get help. The next morning, he picked me up, only slightly less against my will, at 7am and held my hand while I talked to a counselor for the first time.
He saved me that day. He redefined me that day. Even moreso, he showed me that I could redefine myself that day.
the best gift
It was the best gift I was ever given.
And shortly after college — the busy-ness of grad school and thousands of miles and multitudes of time zones were the death knell of friendships in the days before the world wide web — we lost touch. And, I never got a chance to truly thank him because recovery was a long, slow road, the middle distance of which stretches eternally and never felt complete enough say, “You know, it’s now. It’s finally now. I’m better, and you are so central to the reason why.”
A few years ago, I decided I could abide no longer living rent free in the unshackled apartment he helped me to excavate in my psyche, and I tracked him down. (At last, the internet!) I called his office — “What is the nature of your call?,” surely his assistant thought me insane — and when I heard his familiar voice, I blurted out to him my gratitude for his strength, of which I had so little and he had so much, right when I needed it most.
He politely thanked me, we made some small talk about spouses and kids and jobs and thirty years of lost time, and he let me know he had to get back to work. We promised to talk again, but never did. Perhaps he thought me a little insane too? More likely he was just stunned that I had been carrying around this enormous burden of gratitude for something he had long forgotten even happened
To me, it was a definitional moment in my life; to him, it was a Thursday.
So often the gifts we give are valued by others far more than what they cost us. And while I will give the usual trinkets of consumerist adoration this holiday season, what I really intend to give — the wrapping and bow that truly delights — will be my focus, my attention, my love, and my presence.
I see you, I love you, and I am here for you.
