[Trigger Warning: This piece includes discussions of body image, weight loss, and associated negative self-talk.]
I’m here to announce that I’ve been reading. Memoir, fiction, non-fiction, books are now my friends, and all I want to do is read them and talk about them and think about them.
I’ve always loved to read, but my book consumption has been in stops and starts. A Sally Rooney binge-read in a feverish 24 hours followed by a less-exciting slower-burn becomes months without a page turned.
But now, the reading is… regular. Regulated.
Consistency of any habit has always felt a bit challenging for me. Exhibit A: The infrequent, random cadence of this newsletter. Exhibit B: There are so many dishes in my sink right now. Exhibit C: I’m writing this at 4 a.m. because I can’t sleep.
To be clear, the above is… pretty normal, an insight that was the impetus for this blog’s loosely followed thematic framework.
And yet, my own perceived inability to be consistent, to follow through with all the things I want to do, has been a frequent source of self-criticism.
Among the activities for which I’ve wished to naturally fall into a routine, *reading* has long been at the top. As early as fifth grade, I felt badly for not reading enough.
As a grownup, it’s fallen into my “I’m bad at that” category, desperately wishing I could just be the girl who is reading on the subway instead of watching Instagram Stories.
And so it’s been surprising that, without warning, I’ve become an active reader.
It started over a month ago, when my mom and I went on a 10-day vacation to Spain. (Amazing, blessed, iconic, gorgeous.)
We spent most of the trip reading, each starting and finishing four books on the 10-day trip.
There was the day I finished Jeanette McCurdy’s memoir, and we went to a museum; the one time I went to the gym, spending an hour on the elliptical reading “Song of Achilles”; the afternoon by the pool reading Tess Gunty’s “The Rabbit Hutch.”
And ever since, I cannot stop.
I’m obsessed with updating Goodreads every 20 pages; placing books on hold on the New York Public Library app (I am No. 700-and-something on the wait list for Emma Cline, whom I haven’t yet read, and am very excited to form an opinion on); reading on the subway even when I get motion sickness.
It feels like I woke up one day and something was different, where it wasn’t that hard anymore. Now, I can do this thing I’ve always wanted to do.
Those who know me may recognize this explanation.
The most public such example was my “weight loss journey,” a part of my life that had its own dedicated Instagram account. Rach Getting Fit touted captions like “consistency is key!” and “#StrongNotSkinny.” I posted workout routines and low-calorie meal prep, shared how many pounds I’d lost and hoped to continue losing.
I was 18 when I started trying to lose weight. Just months before, I’d performed an elaborate bit for a new friend in the dining hall about eating pizza for lunch. I loved pizza, and even though people probably thought I was “fat” and should get salad instead, I didn’t care, because I loved myself, damn it!
It was 2014, and at my college, people I talked to didn’t realize how fatphobic and harmful that language was — of course, to those around me, but also to myself.
This had long been my favorite material for performing comedy in social interactions. It began in childhood, at some point between doctors warning that my obesity would cause diabetes, and boys I crushed on preferring girls with smaller bodies.
That mortification needed a place to go. It needed somewhere to hide.
But here I was, still alive in a world that could see me. The world told me, with its red, beady eyes, “You won’t fit into this top, that guy won’t like you, you’ll never look like her. This is all your fault, which makes you bad.”
And so I learned to protect myself with humor, to swat away insecurities by using them for self-debasement.
I made sure to hit the punchline of my appearance before they could. (In 2012, Rebel Wilson’s “Pitch Perfect” character — who was called “Fat Amy” — delivered a similar refrain.)
There was no punchline, though. The most vicious bully, the only vocal one, was me. I punished myself, ashamed by it all.
I later wrote a paper on the long history of audiences laughing at Wilson, Melissa McCarthy, and the decades of women who came before them, who degraded themselves for success in comedy. I started to realize that like these comedians, I desperately implored my audiences to laugh with me.
And then, suddenly, something changed. I decided I wanted to lose weight, and I did. For a long time I was “consistent” — I kept the weight off, I worked out a lot, I agonized over every morsel consumed.
And with that “consistency,” in the pursuit of inhabiting a smaller body, the shame only shifted in shape.
Of course, there was a poison in that consistency, which I’ll write about more (a lot more) one day. (In short, I’m grateful that this is all much different now, which I’m sure I’ll also write about more one day.)
The poison was always there, though, whether when falsely touting myself as confident in my body or telling the world how many more pounds until my goal weight.
It touched more than just my body and fitness. It found other cracks to poison.
Reading became one such opportunity, a type of negativity that was so quiet as to be almost imperceptible to the human ear.
If I listened closely, I could hear the conversations whispering at the surface of my consciousness, running like a script.
Why can't I be like my friends who read?
Why can’t I be better?
And an answer: I just can’t.
This story has a happy ending. I’ve been working very hard in the last year to feel better — about myself, about life, about everything. I am extremely lucky to have found a gifted therapist, to have friends and family who love me so much, and to be truly be able to feel that love now.
And I’ve learned that guilt and shame decay in sunlight.
We’re all doing our best, and one’s best is ever-changing. It’s a constant and sometimes automated calculation of opportunity cost: what we value, who we want to be, how we want to be.
But there’s also our capacity — our bandwidth for simply existing.
Self-hatred erodes more than just self-image. It’s a needy rot that requires constant attention, robbing you of true agency.
It clouds what “best” is, and what it can be.
There’s more work to be done, and I’ll continue to do it.
For now, each finished book is a reminder of the space cleared out, the room for new discoveries and joys and surprises that await.
<3
OK, so, let’s talk about the books now
I am currently into:
contemporary fiction about strange (“The Rabbit Hutch”) and sometimes unlikeable (“Big Swiss”) people, or normal people doing “bad” things (“Ordinary People”);
novels exploring gender, sexual, racial identity (“The Vanishing Half”);
a couple memoirs (“Crying in H Mart”);
contemporary non-fiction about social media/technology/culture (“Extremely Online”).
I wouldn’t be reading so much if I weren’t considering which books I enjoy, and why I like what I like/dislike what I don’t.
I hated “Seven Husbands” and can’t get 40 pages into anything by Colleen Hoover, and so I assume a lot of BookTok recommendations are not for me.
Still, I take my time reading Goodreads reviews from my friends and strangers, and try not to judge books by their cover(s).
Recent reads in the order I read them
“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin
“Ordinary People” by Diana Evans
“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett
“Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner
“I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy
“The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller
“The Rabbit Hutch” by Tess Gunty
“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Taylor Jenkins Reid
“Big Swiss” by Jen Beagin
“My Education” by Susan Choi
“Extremely Online” by Taylor Lorenz (pre-order it here!!!)
What I’m reading now
“The Mothers” by Brit Bennett
“Culture Warlords” by Talia Lavin
What I’m reading next
“We Should All Be Feminists” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“All This Could Be Different” by Sarah Thankam Matthews
“Republic of Lies” by Anna Merlan
“Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang
“Pineapple Street” by Jenny Jackson
“The Guest” by Emma Cline
(Unintentionally, there are no male authors referenced above, which is fun.)