Book: It Was Me All Along by Andie Mitchell

One of my friends from college studied "Communications" as her major. Early in my days, I also actually considered pursuing that major because I told some sort of counselor at the school my interests and it was suggested that it might be a good fit for me. Though I did not declare a major, I prepared to follow the path that was being recommended by going out with my mother and purchasing an expensive SLR camera. Though it was the cheapest camera of its type, a "Chinon", it still cost about $240. In 1982, that was an enormous amount of money to pay for anything, but my mother encouraged me to buy it because she took my student loan debt about as seriously as her own debts. That is, she saw it as essentially pennies from heaven.

That manual SLR camera stayed with me for many years and I never really learned to use it properly. Though I'd taken a photography class in high school and I'd been taught all about F-stops and lighting conditions, I had retained nearly none of the sophisticated information necessary to coax a great image out of such a camera. In fact, I couldn't even coax a focused image out of it. More than 20 years later, I gave it away to the boss at my job at the time. He actually knew what to do with such things and accepted it despite its antique nature.

The truth is that I never really understood what studying Communications was about. In the middle of my sophomore year, I chose psychology and have never looked back or regretted it. My friend who actually studied Communications seemed to mainly work at radio stations as a result of her choice. She spent some time at the college station and later had a part-time job at a Boston station while she worked full-time as a nanny. She could never really break into anything in media with her degree and worked for a time at a factory that makes medical equipment after finishing her nanny stint. Currently, she teaches immigrant children by distance methods and is preoccupied with grammar and writing. These are the only parts of her major which have factored into her current work.

I probably would have been a good fit for Communications based mainly on my love of writing. However, I have learned that people who study things like journalism or Communications are taught a particular way to write. My writing almost certainly would have been reshaped to fit certain parameters had I studied it. I think that there is an edge and a style that is filed off when you are taught to write for papers, magazines, or other media. My way of writing was once described as "crafty". That means that I sling words together in a somewhat artistic way, or at least in a way that shows more personality.

The reason that I'm talking about all of this in regards to the book I'm talking about today is that Andie Mitchell studied Communications and it shows in her writing style. She writes in a straightforward way that is easy to read and cogent. Unfortunately, she also writes without attitude or personality. This is counteracted in large part by the fact that she's generally very self-aware, self-reflective, and revealing. While her words do not betray intimacy, her content shows plenty.

My asserting that her writing is not stylized is not a criticism, but rather an observation. I've had some experiences with writers who are all style and no or little substance. They wow you with how they say things rather than what they're saying. Ms. Mitchell, by and large, is luring you with what she's saying rather than how she is saying it.

It Was Me All Along is mostly about Ms. Mitchell's short life and the role that weight plays in it. I have an incredible amount of overlap with her life in many ways (poverty, alcoholic father, obesity and weight struggles - losses and gains). She has some important things for people to know and understand about how distorted relationships with food evolve and the complexity of repairing them. In a world that loves nothing more than to talk about "will power" and views excess eating as overindulgence in pleasurable experience, she has an important point to share. That point is, and I know it well, that eating for those with serious problems don't eat out of a love of food, but suffering. They often eat to the point of pain. It's not, "This is so good that I can't stop," but rather "I don't feel good about my life so I can't stop."

The book is on the shorter side and is a quick and easy read. While Ms. Mitchell is talking about her pain, growth, and personal relationship difficulties, she breezes along. Things stall out a bit toward the end as she seems to run out of relevant material or fail to fashion what she has experienced to fit the overall theme of her book. There is a chapter in particular that feels out of place and it could have found a better position had it been shorter and more focused and a certain conclusion reached on her part that tied it into her self-image and weight talk. While not everything in a person's life has to be about a central theme in a memoir, you can't spend 90% of it that way and then joyride into other territory and expect the reader to wonder what you're doing taking that particular detour.

Though the book loses steam in the last three or so chapters, the fact that it does so is a good reflection of a fact of life. That fact is that we learn and grow a great deal more from struggling and suffering than we do through success and joy. The reason that the end of the book runs out of steam is that Ms. Mitchell is living in a "happy ending" at present. She's a successful food writer and blogger and has maintained her weight loss and health. I'm truly happy for her success, but this does make the end of her book feel more like she's twirling in front of the mirror showing how great she and her life are now that she's thin. The message starts to feel much more like she has found all the answers than continues to explore questions, though she asserts that she does not. The tone of her writing post-weight-loss comes across as the same dogmatic messages your read from many weight loss bloggers, though she is a lot less preachy.

This sense of completion in her life lessens both the impact of the majority of the book and undermines the depth of compassion with which the reader has been regarding her throughout the experience of sharing her life. My positive image of her went terribly south after she broke up with her depressed and unemployed long-term boyfriend who stood behind her (and financed her) when she was the one struggling. There is a part of the book where she says things between them often became about 'me, me, me'. It turned out in the end that it was still all about her and I could not help but speculate that the break-up would not have occurred had she stayed very fat or not found her dream job. I still think this is still a worthwhile read, but it's better to brace yourself for the hollow feeling you'll experience near the end.