When did you realize your child’s trauma wasn’t over?
The Weight of Cruelty
When my son Jake came home and threw his basketball off the balcony, I knew something was up. If I walked into his room and asked what was wrong, he would do that teenage boy thing where they tell you to f off. So instead, I waited until the next morning to wake him up with a fresh omelette.
Except he wasn’t there. That’s when I heard a grunting sound coming from the back garden. When I walked out to the shed there, he was on the ground doing push-ups with sweat dripping down his face. He had just counted number 65 when he finally noticed me standing there.
Dad, I need to talk to you about something, he said.
He told me what happened at practice. His lousy ho ex-girlfriend had given his favorite hoodie to her new boyfriend Trevor, the captain of the basketball team. When Jake asked for it back after practice, she looked him up and down and said, “It actually fits someone with muscles now.”
Trevor flexed while wearing it, and the whole team laughed. I stared into my son’s eyes, expecting to see some sort of sadness or heartbreak. But instead, I was met with a look of insanity.
I’m done being the pathetic fat kid everyone laughs at. I’m going to change everything about myself.
At first, I thought, “Okay, this might be good for him.” Exercise helps process emotions, and maybe he needed this push. But within two weeks, he’d lost 20 lbs,. His teacher, Miss Thompson, called saying he was sleeping through the first period.
When I asked him about it, he showed me his alarm history. He was getting up at 4:00 a.m. to run before his 5:00 a.m. gym session,.
Successful people sacrifice, he’d say with a straight face.
The changes came fast after that. I caught him doing 1,000 burpees at midnight because he accidentally ate a piece of birthday cake at school. Did you know she used to make me walk behind her at school so people wouldn’t know we were together?.
His voice cracked. I’m going to become someone she regrets losing.
When his grandmother visited and made her famous lasagna, he sat at the table clutching his Tupperware while she silently wiped away tears. I can’t afford cheap meals, he’d say while shoveling dry chicken down his throat.
One afternoon, I did something I’d sworn I’d never do. I went through his journal. The second page made my stomach drop. Right there were the words, “My mom knew I was fat and never told me the truth.”
You see, his mom died when Jake was 11 from an eating disorder. She’d make him huge meals while secretly starving herself. Jake found her collapsed in our kitchen.
Her last words to him were, “You’re perfect just the way you are, baby.”
Now, my son was culling himself in the same way, convinced those words were just another lie. That evening, I told him about a therapist that a family friend had recommended.
“No, Dad, I hate you.”
I expected him to yell, but instead, he just silently nodded like he knew it was coming. For weeks, Jake went without complaint. Dr. Liam said he was making excellent progress. Jake even started eating breakfast with me sometimes.
I thought we’d struck this thing until six months later when the police called. They told me my son was trying to drown himself in Miller Lake at 5:00 a.m.
But Jake wasn’t trying to die. He was doing Navy Seal training in 40° water, lips blue and hypothermic, still doing laps. When they pulled him out, he kept saying, “I’m not weak anymore. Tell Sarah, “I’m not weak.”
The paramedic said he asked them to check his body fat percentage in the ambulance. He was 119 lb and 5’8.
He was asleep at the hospital when Sarah showed up wearing his hoodie. She brought Trevor, who stood there smirking.
I didn’t mean for this to happen, she said, but then added, I was just being honest about the hoodie.
Jake woke up while she was talking. He saw the hoodie and started laughing. Not normal laughing. The disturbing kind.
Of course you’re wearing it, he said. Of course you are.
He wouldn’t stop laughing. The nurse called for a sedative while Sarah backed out of the room. But even after they left, Jake’s heart rate wouldn’t stabilize. The doctor pulled me aside and explained that his body was shutting down.
They started forth nutrition, but Jake kept pulling at the tubes.
“It’s making me fat,” he whispered.
That night, his heart stopped twice. They brought him back both times, but the doctor said the damage was extensive. He woke up once more.
“Dad, am I skinny enough now?” he asked.
I told him he was perfect, that he’d always been perfect.
He smiled and said, “Don’t lie to me like mom did.”
Jake died at 3:30 a.m. The official cause was cardiac arrest due to severe malnutrition and hypothermia. I didn’t say a word, not because I wasn’t extremely heartbroken, but because I knew I had to make Sarah pay.
