Ah, the American mantra... the toddleresque phrase filled with innocence, stubbornness, and entitlement, with a touch of hope that simply saying it means you don’t have to do it. “I don’t want to” is not to be confused with “I cannot” or “I refuse to” or even just “No.” “I don’t want to” smacks of selfishness. It protects us from the things we should do that we are not strong enough to make happen.
Put the phrase “I don’t want to” in the hands of a food addict and you get things like...
I don’t want to give up anything.
I don’t want to think about what I’m eating for the rest of my life.
I don’t want to change my habits.
I don’t want to worry about eating at a friend’s house or what I’ll do at family gatherings on holidays.
I don’t want to face the reasons behind my eating disorder by doing something that might actually make me healthy and take away the protective armor that is excess weight.
I don’t want to admit that I can’t do it.
I don’t want to fail.
The “I don’t want tos” are so powerful that they can completely drown out the opposing invitations of...
I want to be healthy.
I want to feel good in my own skin.
I want to have energy.
I want to be confident.
I want to wear skinny jeans without feeling like I’m redefining the term.
Of course, there are “I don’t want tos” that are positive, in a roundabout way given that “don’t” is fundamentally negative in nature. However, there are...
I don’t want to be embarrassed.
I don’t want to be uncomfortable.
I don’t want to feel bad.
I don’t want to get diabetes.
I don’t want to worry about whether or not I will fit in the airplane seat, stadium seat, restaurant seat, theater seat, dentist’s chair...
I don’t want to be the butt of jokes that continue to be popular and acceptable despite the taboos on so many other stereotype-based jokes.
Here’s what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to still be having this conversation in ten years because I’m still 130 pounds overweight, eating entire pints of ice cream in one sitting, ordering pizza instead of eating the fresh produce that’s rotting in my fridge from neglect, staring at my Wii Fit, treadmill, and hand weights and wishing I had the energy to use them, and worrying about what I can and cannot fit into. I don’t want to be self-conscious when I go to the doctor and fear that the answer to whatever ailment I’m battling will be “lose weight” (especially when the two are totally unrelated, but idiot doctors are a whole different topic). I don’t want to feel like, or be subjected to others’ opinions that, I’m a bad person because I’m fat.
Change is hard, especially when it’s change that makes you different from those around you. Change is scary, because the new and the unknown are daunting and unfamiliar, because we like to have ruts in the road that our wheels fit into and can guide us. Fuck Robert Frost and his road less traveled. I don’t want to go that way. I want easy and familiar and comfortable and fast. I want my cake. I want to eat it. And I want it to miraculously take off extra pounds instead of adding them. I know the answer is to work hard, exercise, overhaul my diet and my attitude, face my fears, and conquer the obstacles in my way. But I don’t want to.
