Some people, when they're losing a lot of weight, very responsibly and with great vigor and enthusiasm take progress pictures every month. They take pictures--from every side and every possible angle--of every body part they've got, and their hairline and their smile and their scale. They also take measurements, exactly like clockwork, every month. They measure their heads and their necks and their arms, their shoulders and their thighs and their toes. They mark every picture carefully with the month, the date, the year, and their measurements, and they line them all up in a row, and voilà, instantly and like magic you can see, there, in the procession of pictures, the amazing miraculous transformation, recorded in its entirety, for all of posterity.

These people, in their charming determination and admirable energy for everything the weight-loss process has to offer, have a record of the way their bodies changed, real and point-to-able and something that shows them where they've been, and where they're going to. I wanted to say "are lucky enough to have a record," but of course that is not quite right. They were smart enough, and I was afraid. Sometimes, I feel like I cheated myself, having never done that.

I borrowed a camera, and took pictures the night before my surgery. I wore black pajama bottoms, if I recall, and a pink tank top, and I tried to smile sarcastically and knowingly, all yeah, I know how lame this is, standing here being photographed. No matter how I smirked all self-consciously self-aware and hipster-ironic, I felt like a gigantic asshole, and I knew I wouldn't be doing this again. How could I keep taking these pictures, standing there feeling ridiculous? I couldn't imagine lining the pictures up next to one another and scrutinizing them for changes. How much different did I look, now? How about now? What if I hadn't changed quickly enough? Would that have ruined everything?

I knew I'd find myself yoked to those photos. I knew I would always spend my time despairing that I still looked like that, that I wouldn't actually be able to make out those differences, and if I did, it wouldn't matter at all. That every picture would be a picture of Fat. Hello I am fat, hello I am fat, hello I am fat.

So I looked at that first photo, me so sad and worried and scared, standing there in my pajamas and trying to look cool, but instead being the size of the moon and looking like I was about to burst into tears. Looking at those photos, I was about to burst into tears, because that wasn't me, and couldn't possibly be me, not ever, because who would have talked to me or liked me or loved me if I always went around looking like that? How was it possible no one had ever taken me aside and said, "Oh, honey. Really, honey." I haven't looked at those photos since, and I've spent a lot of time trying not to think of that division, that divergence, between the me in my head, who could function in life because she doesn't know the truth, and the me in pictures who made me so sad and ashamed, which felt like the truth of it.

No more photos, I said, and threw up my arms and rushed at the paparazzi and then beat them with my fists because I am hardcore, and I was scared to look. One night, I was seduced by friends telling me how thin I was, how much I've lost and how great I look. "Send me pictures," sweet Wendy said, and our friend Jen snapped a photo. I had been feeling cute, and sassy, in a shirt I hadn't worn for ages, in pants that fit after a long hiatus, and I was excited to see the photo, to see what I looked like, because didn't I deserve to see what everyone else was finally seeing?

Again, the dissonance. That was not what I looked like, and what was I thinking, wearing horizontal stripes and oh God, look at the lumps. I was covered in lumps. I wasn't covered in lumps, I was a lump. I was a lump in red shoes, making a ridiculous face when really I should have been wrapped up in a sheet with bricks and dropped to the bottom of the sea.

I do not hate myself on a regular basis--I do not think I really am an ugly, trollish girl, because really, I would have been lynched so long ago, if that were true--so it is always such a deep shock to have that visceral reaction to a photograph of me, to be struck by such deep...loathing. Loathing is the only word strong enough. Loathing of how I present myself to the world. It throws me for a loop, sends me staggering back and choking and wondering, in the rational parts of my brain, what the fuck is happening to me, that I can feel this way. Understanding why people think the camera that takes 10 pounds off you is supposed to be such a totally awesome idea.

Luckily, I have extremely good coping mechanisms (which mostly consist of determinedly not thinking about things until they go away, which is always very shortly, because--ooh, shiny!), and so I was able to deal with the Shock and Awe of my mental problems and move on.

But then, I went away. And I met up with a group of friends, all of whom own cameras and all of whom love to take photos. Many photos! From many angles! Documenting all of you at every moment when you breathe in and then also when you breathe out! My friends are all both beautiful and crazy. I tensed up every time there was a flash, and eventually said whatever the fuck, because I was there to Enjoy Life and not Be Anxious. I just would not look at these pictures as they were taken, and in that way, I would be happy.

"This is a cute one!" mo pie said, and she handed me the camera, and I found myself looking. "You look so skinny!" I had heard that before, and I braced and I poised, and I was there on the little LCD screen, smiling. When had my shoulders gotten so narrow? Where is my double chin? That is not my torso. But it looks like me. How is it possible I look like that? And it kept happening, that I would look at a picture of me, ready to cringe, and be amazed by that woman, there, on the screen, this record of a person who could not possibly be me.