Today, I wake up early for my annual physical exam before work. A joins me on a 7 AM subway ride to the Financial District. I get off on Wall Street & somewhat admire the men & women in button-downs & wrinkly pleated suit pants with backpacks & coffee. The pride of new money, the compromise & practicality of J Crew attire, & the angst of forever chasing time make up a fairly interesting portion of New York, & I walk through it with an antinomy of enjoyment & dread that I don’t belong here. Or more so, a fear that I’ve not put in the kind of effort to become one of them, & I didn’t make that decision from a place of wisdom & self-awareness.
At the doctor’s office, I anxiously list my family’s medical history to my physician. DIABETES & HIGH CHOLESTEROL, on both sides, yes… & LUNG CANCER… no, I don’t smoke anymore…. some sort of HEART ISSUES, on both sides, yes, my dad had a HEART ATTACK but didn’t die… my grandpa had a HEART ATTACK & HE DIED… DEPRESSED? well, no one ever saw a psychiatrist… I had a fallout with my therapist. no, NO! TOTALLY ORGANICALLY. She checked my heartbeat & blood pressure, & both came out slow/low, which is consistent with what A calls “the slow & steady heartbeat of a traumatized child” whenever he puts his head against my chest. I feel like a smart woman agreeing to STD tests after letting her know that I’m in a monogamous relationship. It’s like an elegant, roundabout way of saying I trust men as far as I can throw ‘em. The doctor makes me go on a scale, which I haven’t done in over a year. I ask her if I am overweight for my height & she tells me she doesn’t like the word & that my BMI is in the healthy range. I think about the video of Cardi B in court defending herself from an assault allegation. Batting her eyelashes & pouting her lips, she says she was only a hundred & thirty pounds back then, therefore couldn’t have possibly assaulted anyone. I never liked the Small & Dainty Defense, but the older I get, the more I realize how deeply embedded it is in the survival of women. Some women boss-babe their way through it, & some women take advantage of it to garner protection & sympathy. Both ways come with side effects. Stemming from my fear of having the diabetes gene & deep hatred towards my OVERWEIGHT & violent dad, I request a test for my blood sugar levels & she ends up signing me up for multiple panels. I tell the lab technician I’m not a fan of needles, & she tells me to take deep breaths, not in the hyper-ventilating way that I am. She pokes my left arm & takes what feels like buckets of blood. 15 minutes go by & she asks me to squeeze the ball & breathe slower. She tells me that my vein has given up, isn’t giving her any more blood & unfortunately, she has to poke my right arm & take some more. So I lose blood left & right, & I’m so traumatized that I leave my fly unzipped & belt unbuckled after the piss test– all the way from the bathroom to the front door of the building.
A rewards me with some bagels & I show him the symmetrical bandaids on both arms. When I arrive at work, I see a message from my doctor:
Hi Kieren Remember when you asked me about your weight being in the normal range….. I totally forgot to account for the fact that you are of Asian descent when I answered….. We actually can develop metabolic issues, like diabetes, at a lower BMI than non-Asians. So your calculated BMI of 23.9 is a tad high (…) We are already checking for the things we need to in your labs but I wanted to make sure I corrected the information I provided earlier!! (…)
I put the phone down & sit in my discomfort of not feeling the urge to throw up the bagel I had or to draft an 8-week plan to drop 40 pounds. I am actually hungry for lunch & don’t feel the urgency to restrict what I eat. For mysterious reasons at this time, I don’t desire to change, so I go the hard route today of staying exactly where I am & eating my lunch like usual. I practice loving the flawed without lying to myself that there is no flaw or promising that I will love it once I fix it. A texts me that the BMI stuff is bullshit. B texts me that they shed so much weight without even trying while in Spain.