Phagocyte Dynamite

I am trying not to let the feeling of forcing the universe to bow to my whims go to my head, but I am highly gratified by the fact that a mere three days after I posted about really wanting to know how Saint Abby on The Biggest Loser ends up getting to the other side of the active grieving process, I actually have an answer. Abby got a lot of screentime last night and appeared (via magic of reality television post-production, I know, I know) to have something of a breakthrough regarding how she was going to go about living the life she has left. She also filled in a few more of the details of her backstory, which should satisfy any viewer’s general feelings of loose ends, from morbid curiosity (she wasn’t in the car with her family at the time of The Wreck because she was in the hospital) to sense of justice (the guy who was driving the other car at 100 MPH also died in The Wreck). By the end of the episode Abby had fallen on her sword and requested that her team agree to eliminate her so the rest of them could stay in the competition, and they obliged. Should have seen that coming, really. The bonus for the viewer at home is that whenever a person gets eliminated there’s an epilogue segment showing how they are doing “today” (time being relative on non-live television), so we got to fast-forward some through Abby’s story and see her in a much better place. Again, massive grain of salt and all that, but at the ranch she always came across as someone who was determined to get back among the living but not quite there yet, really good at faking it until she made it but still faking it. In her epilogue she appeared to have made it, and to me, that was a relief. The show manipulated me from the get-go with Nightmare Scenario Omega and I fully admit I was shockingly over-invested in Abby’s well-being as a result. I suppose I really should have known that the higher-ups at the Sheinhardt Wig Company would never have allowed a bereaved widow to appear on their feel-good inspirational competition and then exit gracefully but ambiguously, the resolution of her grief in a state unknown. Reality tv is no place for such verisimilitude.

There may or may not have been any connection between Abby’s breakthrough and going on The Biggest Loser; maybe it was coincidental timing and would have happened just the same away from cameras and boom mikes. But I’d like to think TBL deserves a modicum of credit, that there’s always a physical, biological component to all of our mental and emotional experiences, because that would be a useful tool to have access to. So much well-intentioned advice for coping with extremes of anger or sadness or frustration comes down to a blithe suggestion to cheer up. We tell people to change what they’re mentally focusing on, to let things go, to choose one mood over another, all of which are tricks which I consider about on par with consciously slowing one’s heartbeat to the death-trance rate (i.e., incredibly difficult if in fact empirically possible at all outside of pulp stories). We have a hard enough time defining consciousness, let alone controlling its direction as easily as we flip a lightswitch. I don’t believe anybody can just decide to stop being angry or stop being afraid or stop being depressed. But I do believe that if you give your body reasons to feel good, your mind and heart can follow. I’m not positive that’s true, but I want it to be true. Of all the reasons I’ve ever given myself to haul my ass onto the treadmill one more time – from admitted vanity about my appearance to irrational fear of dropping dead – the fact that running can be a weapon against anxiety or sadness or quivering rage might be at the top of the list.

And speaking of physical well-being, the little one slept much better last night than the night before. Still some coughing, but this does in fact seem to be a brief interlude in his otherwise rosy-cheeked existence. His mother and I are also still trying to rally past ambiguous cold-like symptoms but more or less winning the struggle so far. Huzzah for health!


(The above image is the character Drix from the animated movie Osmosis Jones, which I personally have never seen but given the mind-bogglingly vast reserves of FAN ART the interwebs offered up when I inquired, I really wonder now what I’ve been missing …?)