Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
2014 was my Annus Horribilis. Disease, emergency surgeries, sexual assault and resulting court appearance, unplanned pregnancy, genetic diagnoses, forced house relocation, and near bankruptcy. The only trauma we weren’t touched by was death, and we came very close to that when my car was destroyed (with my husband in it) when another vehicle ran a red light at 120kph.
My husband and I decided to head off on a three day cruise as a circuit breaker. Just the two of us; our first time away together without kids since our honeymoon. It was an opportunity to take a rest from all the drama at home, spend some quality time together, and reinforce our strength as a team.
On the second night of the cruise there was a formal dinner. Portrait stands were set up along the main hallways for guests to have their photo taken while dressed up for the dinner. I didn’t want to participate because of my weight (I was over 100kg and big in the thighs, bum and upper arms), and my husband is very self conscious of his baldness and severe rosacea (caused by autoimmune issues), so we walked past most of the stands on our way to dinner.
Just before the dining room I noticed an older lady and her daughter at one of the portrait stands. The lady was in a wheelchair and was very thin and frail. She was also missing more than half of her face, to the extent that what was left of her teeth and jaw were visible through a giant hole that had once been her cheek. One eye was barely in place above a sunken cheekbone, and much of her nose was missing. She’d clearly had some kind of face, skin or mouth cancer and was most likely terminally ill. Yet she was sitting in her wheelchair, her daughter holding her hand by her side, having her portrait taken.
I was initially confused and repulsed by what I saw. And then it hit me. This was probably the last cruise the mother and daughter would ever take together before the mother’s death, and it was also probably the last opportunity for them to be in a portrait together. It didn’t matter what either of them looked like. What mattered was how they felt about each other, how they were sharing the mother’s last days, how they wanted to capture their limited time together photographically, and how they were still celebrating life and love no matter how much tragedy had befallen them.
After they had finished I spoke to the photographer and asked if we could organise a private portrait sitting for the next day. I wanted to get my hair and makeup done properly, pick out a flattering outfit, and steel myself mentally for the process. I also wanted to be able to relax in front of the camera with my husband and without a crowd of onlookers. Plus I knew that I would probably cry at some point; not just about how I looked and how alien my body felt, but about everything that we had endured that year. I truly was emotionally overwhelmed at that point.
So we turned up the next day and had a private portrait session. I actually hated every second of it, and I did cry at the end, but I pushed myself through for two reasons….
– My husband and I had no portraits of ourselves as a couple, apart from our wedding photos, and I was seven months pregnant in those (it’s a long story). Our history together in pictorial form was completely missing.
– Our kids had no photos of us at all; we were both so pre-occupied with our physical inadequacies that we either avoided photos with the kids, cropped ourselves out of them, or deleted them. Had my husband died in the car accident that day, the kids and I wouldn’t have had a single photo of him that was younger than six years old.
So we had the portraits taken, and also had very mixed feelings when we received the proofs. I looked chubby in the face (and not how I see myself in my mind’s eye) but I was glad that my thunder thighs and upper arms were tastefully concealed. My hubby hated his face and we agreed to opt for black and white prints to help tone down the rosacea (in colour he looks like he fell asleep in a solarium wearing sunglasses). Out of 50-60 proofs we agreed on five that we felt were OK.
Those five prints cost a lot of money and when we got home we put them in a cupboard because I didn’t want them mounted publicly in my house. I wasn’t ready at that point to combat the shame of my diseased body.
I pulled the prints out the other day because I regularly think of the old lady with most of her face missing, and I wanted to remind myself of how far I’ve come in the last year after finally sorting out my health issues and transforming my life. The photos actually look more flattering than I remembered; this is partly because I went to a lot of trouble to select the most flattering proofs that made me look slimmer than I was, and also partly because I’m looking at things through different eyes now that I’ve learned that health conditions were the cause of my body blow-out.
Where once I looked at my obese body with shame, I now see it completely differently. I see it as the body of a warrior, someone whose spirit and determination are not tied to her outward appearance. In those pictures I see a woman who fought incredibly hard to hold her family together through tragedy, who battled the medical establishment and its belittling and ignorant attitudes to get real answers for herself and her family, and who kept getting back up each day and moving forward, no matter how much adversity life threw at her.
I think my eight year old son summed things up pretty well this week when he said “You know Mum, you look really different now that you’re skinny. But I actually didn’t ever notice that you were fat before. You were always my beautiful Mum.”