DO NOT BUY A SCALE says Angie (Wagaun, Baby Love?). You’ll just be miserable, she pointed out. You’ll just obsess over it and you’ll never be happy. Just DONT DO IT.

In pre-service literature, the Peace Corps will tell you that men will lose 15 pounds. Women will gain that amount. Something to do with the drastic change in protein (much less, usually) to starch (far, far greater) ratios. Something about muscle mass being lost, too, for the guys.

I’m not going into a discussion of the Jamaican diet. That would take far more energy then I can muster this Tuesday evening. Soon come, though. Trust.

I will tell you that in the past few weeks, I have heard “Miss Taylor, yuh a get fat” or “Miss Taylor, Jamaica look GOOD on yuh, girl.” Much is made of my burgeoning “bumpah”- booty.
My aunty Pat, who’s shop is the finish line for my runs, likes to check my (sweaty) hips and tummy and tell me “mind yuh no run it off”.

These observations are made with all the love in the world. Getting fat means that I am well looked after. It is doubtful, however, that I am actually getting fat. My clothes still fit fine. I intentionally brought my two “skinniest” pairs of jeans with me as a sort of love-handle litmus test. No problems there. But still, the scale would have been nice. I would know.

So, every time someone tells me how well the country sits on my hips, I am consumed with paranoia, which is compounded with that most cliched of coping mechanisms, Emotional Eating.

My friend Megan (Hey, girl!) once joked that “it’s like there’s a hole inside me and I can’t fill it.” Clearly, there are several Freudian jokes to made here. Maybe even a “thats what SHE said!”, but it’s true. A yawning chasm that drives you to the refrigerator again and again. Opening the door, closing it. Opening it 5 minutes later hoping that some magic miracle snack will be waiting and you will never feel lonely or frustrated or bored or homesick, or ugly Ever Again.

It knaws at you, this yearning to fill yourself, to obtain that coveted Jamaican state of “belly well full”. Except my belly is never well full. There is no contentment, no satiation. I just feel distended and gross. And lonely, and bored, and frustrated and homesick and ugly. All over again.