A 767 Workshop Short Story: Of Mending, The Question

I remember clambering up the stairs at 11 years old, having been asked by my father to check the scale for my weight. I had gone up with pride and a smile nearly bursting my cheeks, for he had often called me 'the tank,' I had no idea...

Half way down the stairs he asked, 'what's the number,' I politely in a very shy manner informed him and those in the kitchen below, '181 lbs.' Whatever pride or self confidence I had was marred that day, for my father's cheerful smile diminished into a frown, but he chuckled through it saying 'I didn't weigh that much till I was a grown man, an adult.'

Despite his attempt to mask displeasure the unmistakable cringe in his eye brows and forehead reflected his disdain at his eldest son, even if its flash was but a mere second. Ever since then, due to a myriad of reasons beyond my control including being over fed and thus overweight, bullying in school, which I could go on endlessly about, a lack of friends, no one that understood me and thus no one ever accepted me.

There was no perception of any form of mental illness until I was 29 years old when someone, a friend mind you someone I trusted the opinions of, called me 'an anorexic skeletal holocaust victim,' though there had been times as a teenager that I was depressed, but never for long periods of time.

It was at that point that I entered a new phase in my life, I left my job and the big city to move back to my home town, to be close to my family. I went into recovery and mended, mostly alone, through art therapy.

  Now I live to share what healed me, it was a question, but not the one that is most often imposed upon those who suffer from mental illness, that being 'what's wrong with you.' No, there was something different about those who cared for and treated me, they wanted to know 'what had happened to me.'

It was this fundamental believe that I was not broken or had something drastically wrong with me, but what trauma(s) had happened to me, so that I might be in need of mending. I thank those people dearly and wish to inspire others who suffer as I once suffered to hope and a smile, along with their families and those that care for them.

Ask not what is wrong with them, but what has happened to them... If you are unwilling to ask this question, maybe, just maybe, you are part of the cause. You might be a symptom, if you think this is true, even subconsciously, step back, maybe you need mending too, just like they do.

In earnest anticipation of,
J