onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Life”

28 Apr 2012

Looking God in the eye and rememberin​g what’s none of my business, which is almost everything

So a friend read my blog for the first time the other day. He read “How the Kate got her stripes”. The one about my stretch marks. He texted me shortly afterwards and said that reading it made him feel like an intruder in my life. And that made me feel bad. It embarrassed me. I had to ask myself if I have been saying too much. Or too graphically. It made me wonder if I have crossed the line from intimacy to exhibitionism. TMI, if you will. Because making someone feel like an intruder is hardly warm and fuzzy. And it is definitely not the purpose of this blog.

It felt empowering for me to write openly and honestly about my body. It felt good to say that my body is not perfect, and that I love it anyway. It felt like a gift to write that, as beautiful and sexy as I am, I do not look like an underwear model. Because you probably don’t look like an underwear model either. Because as you probably know, if you don’t live under a rock, even underwear models don’t look like underwear models. (Even I know that and I practically do live under a rock. I am pathetically under-informed about most things cultural.)

But hearing from a friend, and maybe more significantly, a man, that this blog gave him an unpleasant feeling, jarred me. I write a blog about living with eating disorders because I want to feel like I’m giving honor to the truth. It is powerful for me because I hope it empowers others. I want to believe that sharing my experiences has some meaning for you, as well as for me.

And maybe it upset me because admitting that my body is flawed, flawed because I abused it, was hard for me. I was already worried that you would judge me. That you would think, “Ew. Gross.” And that “Ew. Gross.” would not be about a body. But about my body. That yucky feeling, that judgment, would be about me.

What I try to remember every day is that what other people think is none of my business. Not even what they think about me. The only thing that is my business is my relationship with God. And my relationship with God is solely based on my personal integrity. I have a phrase for it. Looking God in the eye.

When someone doesn’t like me, or is angry at me, or feels yucky because of me, I try to make a point of knowing why. Being the human that I am, I can, on occasion, be an asshole. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes unwittingly. If someone doesn’t like me because I behaved badly, crossed a boundary, made a mess of things, well then that’s a personal integrity issue. That’s between me and God. And I do my best to clean it up with that person. Because making my wrongs right with someone is actually between me and God as much as it is between me and them.

But plenty of times a person doesn’t like me (or something I did, or my blog) for reasons that have nothing to do with my integrity. And that’s between them and God. (Or them and life, or them and themselves, or however they choose to see it.) Some people don’t like me because I honor my own life first. Some people don’t like me because I’m happy. Some people don’t like my personality or my sense of humor. Some people don’t like me because I have boundaries around my food that I don’t cross for any person, place or thing. (That last one makes me laugh, because if you think you don’t like me with my food under control, you obviously don’t realize what an asshole I would be if I were eating compulsively again.) But I can’t be worried about those people. If I can look God in the eye, I’m golden.

I went back and read “How the Kate got her stripes”. It was honest. It came from a place of love and honor. It was not written to shock. I was not trying to shake you up, or make you uncomfortable. There was no agenda other than healing. If it did shake you up, or make you uncomfortable, I’m sorry. Because I do my best every day to bring love and happiness and peace into the world. But also, if it did, I can’t be responsible for that. That’s not between me and God. And frankly, like almost everything else in the entire world, it’s none of my business. When I ask myself if I can look God in the eye after posting it, I know I can.

So let’s get back to my friend. Because this works both ways, right? All he did was tell me the truth about how my post made him feel. And I didn’t like it. I got scared. I started to worry about the fact that I’m doing something that leaves me open to being judged. (Um…duh, Kate. You’re writing an intimate yet public blog about a divisive issue.) And those worries and fears are not between my friend and God. They are not his responsibility. That stuff is all mine.

Do I want you to like me? Of course I do. Do I want you to like this blog? I can’t even tell you how much. But I have to remember that I don’t write this blog to be liked. I write it because I feel called to tell the truth about my experiences as a woman with eating and body image disorders. And I can’t start catering to individual readers because their reaction made me feel ashamed or embarrassed. I have to keep telling my truth to the best of my ability. Because that’s between me and God too.

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21 Apr 2012

How the Kate got her stripes

Since I told you all about my irrational body image issues in my last post, I decided it’s time to write about my rational ones. I decided to talk about “what is so” about my body, so it seemed like a good idea to mention the things I am embarrassed about. Still. At least sometimes. Even after going from 300 lbs to 133ish.

Let’s start with my knock-knees. This is not a genetic trait. It is something I did to myself. First, and nobody’s “fault”, I was born with a club foot. To remedy this, doctors put me in various hip-to-toe casts as a baby. They were changed regularly, of course. But this still stunted the growth of my right leg, which is now an inch shorter than my left. Then, growing up fat, my thighs were so big that they kept my feet and knees from ever meeting. Walking and standing while carrying so much excess weight as I was growing made my longer, left leg grow crooked. The femur has a slight bend to the right, the tibia and fibula an exaggerated bend to the left. When I lost my weight, and my thighs got thin, it turned out that when my knees touch, my feet are still six inches apart. When I bring my feet together, my left knee overlaps my right. This embarrasses me. I don’t know why. Maybe because I did it to myself. I wear heels to make it less obvious. And I have a modified “supermodel” walk so that my knees don’t bang together.

But even more embarrassing to me is my skin. I have a lot of it. A crap-load more than I need. It hangs. And it is covered with stretch marks. And there is nothing natural to do about it. The most noticeable places are my arms, breasts, belly, and upper thighs.

I was in a tank top at the playground the other day, and the 3-year-old I take care of said, “Kate, look!” And she pointed to my under-arm. “You have stripes!”

I said, “It’s true. I do.”

“Why?”

I said, “That’s a long story.”

She asked, “Do you have it at home?”

“Do I have what at home?”

She said, “The book. With the story of why you have stripes.”

I read a great analogy once about skin after a huge weight loss. It said that if you take a garbage bag, and stuff it too full of cans, when you take the cans out, the bag is still stretched out of shape. Even if you do it slowly, one can at a time. It is not that I lost my weight too fast. It is that I got so fat at all. I realize that skin is a living organ. That it’s different from a plastic bag. And, indeed, my skin is not still the skin of a 300 lb woman on a thin woman’s body. It has bounced back quite a bit, to be sure. But I still have plenty of extra. And after years of being thin, it is clear to me that it’s never going to go away entirely and leave me with a lean, smooth, tight body.

And I worry about what other people think of that. I would be lying if I said I didn’t. I am afraid of having my body judged. Partly because I’m very protective of it. It’s mine. It has been very good to me. And partly because I am ashamed of having done to it what I did. I scarred it. And I am afraid of owning that. And being reminded of that. Especially if it’s because someone else brought it up because they saw something they found unattractive. (No, I don’t mean the 3-year-old. She loves me just the way I am.)

I have worn a bathing suit in public maybe 4 times in the past 20 years. Always with my family at a hotel pool. Never comfortably. Not even since I got thin.

Being with a man, actually just the thought of being with a man, can bring up a lot of insecurity about my body. I have learned that if a man wants to see you naked, he’s never disappointed if he gets to. But knowing this has never made it easier to take off my clothes in front of one. And I have always wanted to apologize for my body. As if skin and stretch marks make me the booby prize. As if any man wouldn’t be damn lucky to be with a beautiful, intelligent, fascinating, and incredibly sexy woman. All of which I am. If I do say so myself…

But here’s the interesting part of it for me. The truth is that when I am alone with my naked body, I think it is positively beautiful. Saggy boobs, belly flap and all. It is certainly not “conventionally” pretty, but conventional has never occurred to me as all that pretty in the first place. My body is interesting. And womanly. It has a history. And I love it.

As I said, there is nothing natural to do about “fixing” my skin. But there is, of course, something to do about it. Plastic surgery. And I don’t want to. It’s not that I’ve never considered it. It’s not that I’ve never thought it would be nice to wear a bikini to the beach without worrying about the shape of my stomach. Or a backless dress, which can only be worn bra-less. (Which is just not a possibility when you’ve gone from a 44DDD to a 34D…and straight down…) And my step-mother even offered to help me pay for the plastic surgery if it was something I decided to do. But when it comes down to me and me, my relationship with my own body, I like it just the way it is. Flawed, weird, interesting, and beautiful as hell. It’s me. It is exactly who I am. And I don’t need to forget that, or deny it, or pretend that it’s not.

What I’d like more than surgery, is to wear my bikini in public. In my gorgeous, sexy, flawed body. Without shame or embarrassment. Baby steps, Kate…

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15 Apr 2012

Does this blog make me look fat?

I’ve been thinking a lot about my body image disorders lately. Body image has been coming up in the media quite a bit, of course. But for me it has a weird extra layer, because I was so fat for so many years. Not just fat by Hollywood standards (which I still am, by the way…at a size 6. To which I say eeewwww.) But fat by any standards.

I very often don’t know what I look like when I am not standing in front of a mirror. I mean that in all seriousness. (It might be why I like looking in the mirror so much. I am incredibly vain!) Sometimes I will catch a glimpse of myself in a store window as I am walking down the street, and it will take me by surprise. Wait! That’s me!?!? It happens less as the years go by with me living in a little body. But it still happens pretty regularly.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I still think I look like I weigh 300 lbs. But that’s part of why it’s so sick. It’s subtle. It’s sneaky. It’s an interesting look at the ways I’m still messed up in the head. And heart.

“That man thinks your ass looks huge in those pants.” “That woman thinks you shouldn’t be wearing that dress.” “Everyone is looking at your stomach.” “That cute guy would never talk to you. You’re too fat for him.”

These are the kinds of thoughts I think all the time. I’m 5′ 6 1/2″. I weigh between 131 and 135 lbs on any given day. And I have plenty of muscle. These thoughts are ridiculous and irrational. But they are a part of my daily life. And they are between me and me.

I’m not a model, a dancer, or an actress. I don’t work in any industry where people are telling me I need to lose 5 pounds. Yes, I think that’s gross. Yes, it upsets all of my sensibilities. But it’s not the world I live in. In fact, I don’t even think about it terms of losing weight to “get thin”. In my mind, I both understand that I am thin, and conversely, that I will never get thin. There is a corner of my mind that holds the belief that I am fat. As a way of being. Not that Kate’s body is fat, but that Kate is fat. Like there’s nothing to do about it. It’s just the way it is.

It’s funny because I do know that I’m attractive. Ok, hot. (I should call it like I see it. False humility is ridiculous.) But, like many other aspects of my eating disorder brain, much of my thinking about my body and my self is warped. Knowing I’m thin and hot, and knowing I’m fat and unattractive live side by side. It doesn’t make rational sense. But it makes perfect sense to me.

I wore a path in my mind with thoughts about the inevitability of my fatness. The undeniable “truth” of it. And wearing a new path of thinking of myself as thin, even having a beautiful body, often means wandering untrodden territory in my head. But I do it. Even though it can be scary and uncomfortable. Because I believe in the power of thoughts. Because I don’t want to think myself back into compulsive eating.

I want to note that I do not live in fear of being fat again. I know it’s possible, because my eating disorders and my sugar sensitivity are irreversible. (You may disagree about the nature of such things, but please, keep it to yourself. I have no shame in my weakness/sickness. I have no need to become “normal”. It gives me peace to surrender to the “forever” of my disorders.) But I don’t clutch at keeping my food under control with white knuckles. I have every intention and expectation of keeping a handle on my eating. I have peace around food. I do the work I need to do daily. The practical part, the emotional part, and the spiritual part. And one aspect of that work is to start thinking new thoughts about what it means to be Kate.

I’m telling you this because since I’ve been writing this blog, a lot of emotional and spiritual wounds that I have written about have healed inside me. Or have at least begun to heal. And I would like to heal this too. I would like to honor my body exactly the way it is. So it is best to acknowledge what is so. What is so is that I am thin. And there is no honor in clinging to obsolete thoughts of self-deprecation.

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08 Apr 2012

Happy Easter! Now leave me alone.

I don’t do holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter are no longer a part of my life. I haven’t celebrated them since I got control of my eating.

Let’s be honest. Holidays, especially the family centered ones, are about food. You get together with as many of your relatives as you can pack into a home, people cook their most decadent dishes, and then you eat yourselves into oblivion.

First, I don’t eat like that anymore. Ever. I can’t afford to start if I won’t be able to stop. And second, I don’t like my family.

They are good people as individuals (with a few notable exceptions), but as a group, my family’s dynamic is one of passive-aggressiveness, and cruel humor. Yes, they are incredibly funny. But nearly always at someone else’s expense. And as the most sensitive member of the family, I was by far the easiest target.  And there are a lot of them. My mother is the second oldest of 11 kids. I have 23 cousins and a brother on that side. To be the girl with a bull’s-eye on her forehead in a room full of 30+ people was a horrible experience. I can remember being reprimanded regularly by my mother for being “too sensitive” when they made me cry. I never learned that lesson though. I’m sensitive. I don’t deal well with people being mean to me. Now I just surround myself with people who are nice to me. People who treat me like they like me. And that’s not my family.

The other thing is that I ate over feelings. Especially the kind of shame and humiliation that my family specializes in. And I come from a family of eaters. So any holiday will always have a ready supply of exactly the foods that can make me numb. And Aunt So-and-so saying something nasty about the way I look, or Uncle Whoever making an obnoxious remark about something stupid I did 15 years ago, is the kind of thing that makes me want to be numb. I can already hear the fat girl inside me: Oh, don’t mind them, Kate. Look! There are chocolate bunnies!

I’m strong. I’m committed to having my food under control. I’ve done it every day for over six years. But I have absolutely no desire to test that commitment by being surrounded by both sugar, and people who make me want to eat it. And for Easter? Well, that doesn’t seem like a particularly good reason to me. I don’t practice any religion anymore anyway.

And I don’t want to go to anybody else’s family either. Not to avoid being alone. Just because it’s a holiday. I don’t want to have to explain what I do with food. I don’t want to have to tell your grandmother why I can’t have any of her special cookies. No, not even just one. Not just a taste. I don’t want to be the ill-mannered guest, whom your family was kind enough to invite because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. I do have someplace to go. I just don’t want to go there. I don’t do holidays. And I don’t mind at all.

People expect that I’m lonely. They tell me I’m lonely. Because they would apparently be lonely without somewhere to go for a holiday. But the fact of the matter is that I like to be alone. Any time. And on holidays especially. Post childhood, the only thing I ever really liked about them was food. Not just food, but eating ridiculous amounts of food. And in the open. Because everyone was over-eating. In the open.  So much of my eating was done in hiding when I was eating compulsively. I was ashamed of it, so I did as little of it in front of people as I could. But holidays were when I could look around at everybody and see them being as gluttonous as I was. It was a relief. But not eating compulsively any time, for any reason, is a much bigger relief. I do not feel deprived. I promise, I had more than my share of chocolate bunnies for the first 28 years of my life. In fact, I had my share, your share, and the shares of 2 or 3 other people.

Maybe if I have a family of my own someday, I will want to celebrate holidays again. Not with the gluttonous eating, of course. But with traditions and gatherings. I can imagine that Christmas or Easter might look different to me if I were looking at it through the lens of a family I made myself, rather than the one I was born into. But in the meantime, I will happily celebrate the holidays by spending time with the person whose company I enjoy the most. Me.

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27 Mar 2012
4 Comments

Why the f*** do you care so much about how I eat?

I just got back from a weekend with my great-aunt. She’s my late grandmother’s sister. My dad’s mom and I were incredibly close. Losing her was losing one of the great loves of my life. And having her sister is definitely comforting. Plus, this aunt is so much fun to hang out with, not to mention side-splittingly funny. But going to visit her this weekend turned out to be stressful for me. Because she doesn’t understand about my food issues. And worse, she cares about what I do with my food. And not in a supportive way. I spent my weekend defending myself, justifying the way I eat, and protecting my control over the food.

In case you don’t know, how I keep a handle on my food looks extreme to the outside observer. To me, it is not so extreme. It is not nearly as extreme as the obsession that it alleviates. My eating and body image disorders are grotesque. The things they compelled me to do created misery and insanity. So sure, I no longer get to participate in society’s food rituals. But participating in the society’s rituals in public had me creating my own sick, crazy rituals behind closed doors. When I was fat, I would eat an entire box of cookies and a pint of ice cream in one sitting. Not a day. A sitting. And then go out for more food when that was done. (Yes! More food. No! I was not full. No! I was not sick. Except in the head and heart.) And then I had more scary and destructive rituals when I was a normal weight but still eating compulsively. Drinking castor oil. Abusing laxatives. Making myself throw up. Running 7 miles in the morning and 7 at night, and binge eating in between. So much that I was still gaining weight. Running to the point that I was injuring myself. And then refusing to rest because I had to run off the food that I ate. Or was going to eat. And that’s not the whole list. That’s just a sample of how I harmed and tormented myself, just so you know. I could not stop eating. But I had lost so much weight and I never wanted to be fat again. I cared more about food than I did about my body or my life. Food was my life.

What I have noticed is that the people who have the strongest negative opinions about what I do with my food are the people who have food issues themselves. This aunt had been big when she was younger, and then lost 90 lbs on a well known commercial diet program. She never got “thin” on this program. Or not what I would consider thin. (She got down to a size 12.) But she was able to keep that 90 lbs off through her life. And, as she explained to me, she could still eat anything and do the things that everybody else does.

But here’s the other part. My aunt just got through cancer. Thank God! And after the chemo and radiation, she is now a size 8. And to hear her tell it, being an 8 is the greatest thing that ever happened to her. So why she can’t understand why I do what I do, if only for the sake of having a body I love, is frustrating for me. Of course, I don’t do what I do for the body alone. I do it for my sanity more than anything. But I would be lying if I said the body didn’t have anything to do with it. Having a body that I love, that I’m proud of, rather than ashamed of, is part of staying sane for me.

I kept control of my food while I was with my aunt. I maintained my rigid boundaries no matter what she said or how much of a “pain in the ass” she told me I was. That control is more important than anything else in my life. Literally anything. Since I found my solution, it has always been more important than any person, place or thing. So it is even more important than a 78-year-old, cancer-surviving, generous and hospitable family member’s feelings. Yes! That important! But having to protect myself against someone I love…well, it fucking sucks.

Since I started doing what I do with food, there is a litany of things I commonly hear. Why don’t you just have one? (Because I can’t stop after one.) That’s so inconvenient! I could never do what you do. (That’s ok. You don’t have to.) Don’t you ever wish you could eat like a regular/normal person? (Wishing won’t make it a reality.) Don’t you ever cheat a little? (No.) Don’t you ever take a day off? (No.) Not even for Christmas? (No.) Not even for your birthday? (No.) You’re going to eat all that?!?! (Yes. I eat between a pound and a pound and a half of vegetables at both lunch and dinner.) And my personal favorite…Don’t you have any willpower? The answer to that last one is a resounding NO! No, I have zero power over food.

Writing this right now is making me cry. Because most people don’t understand. They can’t. I’m sick in the extreme. I have no right to expect anyone else to comprehend it. But there is something I have come to expect. And I don’t always get it. Respect. Respect for the deeply personal choices I make about what I put into my body. And when. And how. And how much. And what I can handle. And what I need. For myself!

As I’ve said before, if I lose control of the food to accommodate someone else, they are not going to come into the bathroom with me and hold my hair back while I stick the toothbrush down my throat. They are not going to gain 165 lbs from my inability to stop eating. So I have to admit that, while I love my aunt so much, I dread the thought of going back to visit her. Because I will never bow to her ideas of what I “should” do. And standing my ground to take care of myself is exhausting. And painful. But it’s my own responsibility. And thank God. Because if I left it up to the rest of the world, I would weigh over 300 lbs. And be shamed regularly for not being able to eat just one.

Posted in Life and tagged , , , , ,
16 Mar 2012
1 Comment

I can see you rolling your eyes at me…

When I was growing up fat, I wanted to be beautiful. (I can understand that to some people, size and beauty do not have anything to do with each other. But I never felt beautiful when I was fat. Nor was I ever treated like I was beautiful.) I thought that being beautiful would solve most, if not all, of my problems. But then, I thought that my problems arose from outside of myself. I thought God, and the world had done me wrong. God by giving me a broken body. The world by judging me for having that body.

When I got control of the food, I became beautiful. I’m pretty, by genetic luck. I sleep well and regularly. I’m present and aware because I’m not high on sugar anymore. I have a nice figure because I eat well, walk a lot, and again, got genetically lucky. Plus I’m confident, which makes me sexy. Basically, I got what I always wanted. And you know what? I still have most of the problems I had when I was eating compulsively. I’m just not fat or crazy anymore. And now I have a whole new problem. Unwanted attention.

This morning I was walking to the train on my way to work. A man coming toward me had been ogling me for a whole block. When he got to me, he literally said, “Damn, I would fuck the shit out of you.” I literally said “blehhhhhgh!” I kept walking. But I was upset. It made me feel gross. And unsafe. It was attention because I’m beautiful and sexy. And I didn’t want it.

The truth is that I love the way I look now. I look in the mirror (most days) and think I’m gorgeous! I love the way I feel now. I love loving my body. I love loving myself in general. I deal with food the way I do for myself. And that’s good. Because what happened to me this morning is exactly the kind of thing that would make me eat a chocolate cake if I did it for anyone else.

Living inside a fortress of fat made me invisible for most of my life. It meant that I didn’t have to know how to reject boys, and eventually men. They were the ones doing the rejecting. I didn’t really understand that girls/women were being liked and pursued by guys they had no interest in. And if you had explained it to me then, I probably would have scoffed at such a “problem”. Oh, poor baby! Too many men like you. Boo hoo. I didn’t know that fat made me feel protected until the fat went away and I was left vulnerable. Yes, being overlooked made me lonely. But there was a safety in that loneliness. No, I wasn’t getting attention from men I was interested in. But I didn’t have strangers making lewd comments about or at me at 8 in the morning either. I didn’t have strange men touch me when I walked down the street. (Yes. That happens to me now. Yes. I throw an unholy fit and publicly shame them. Grab my ass, and you’ll think twice before you do it to another woman. Just so you know.)

I know other women like me. Women who got control of their food, lost a lot of weight, and found out that they were beautiful. Some of them, like me, found strategies for dealing with this unwanted attention. We found a reason to keep the food at bay that had nothing to do with society or people outside of ourselves. But some of them couldn’t handle it. They would rather eat themselves to death. They would rather be eternally lonely. They would rather have the misery of fat and insanity, than the fear of unwanted attention.

For me, it is fear. Fear of not having my person, my body, and my life respected. And it’s a different kind of disrespect than I had for most of my life. Until I was in my late 20s, I was at best, ignored. At worst, humiliated for being unattractive. I am grateful now to be attractive to men I am attracted to. That part is fantastic! But before I got a handle on my eating, it had never occurred to me that if I were attractive in general, all sorts of men would be attracted to me. The ones I liked as well as the ones I didn’t.

With respectful men, it’s both easier and harder to deal with. Easier because I don’t feel threatened. Harder, because I don’t like rejecting people. Especially when they have been genuine and vulnerable. Especially if they’re nice guys. But I had to learn how to say no gently and sweetly. And I did learn how. Because the truth is, attention from any man I am not interested in is unwanted for me. I am not the kind of girl who likes attention for attention’s sake. I got used to being left alone. I had to learn how to be a beautiful woman in the world. And like most things that have to do with male-female relationships, I did not get my education growing up. I got a crash course around 30.

The other thing I don’t like about rejecting men is that there is a shamed fat girl living inside me. And she doesn’t think she’s good enough to reject anybody. She’s got a whole lot of who-do-you-think-you-are going on. It’s sometimes hard for me to remember that I’m not a fat, lying cheater anymore. That I’m kind of a catch now. And there’s also the irrational panic of scarcity. If I reject this one, maybe another one will never come along.  Though rational Kate thinks If you’re not interested, you’re not. You would still not be interested in this one, even if nobody else ever did come along. (I’ll say it helps that I like somebody at the moment. It keeps me from worrying about who is coming along.)

Maybe you’re reading this and scoffing, like I would have. Boo hoo. You’re beautiful now. Life is so hard. But I want to say that this is an actual issue for me. It’s something that I have to deal with day-to-day. Without cake. It’s something that fills me with anxiety. But every time I find myself getting attention I don’t want, that makes me uncomfortable, I have to choose it. I have to accept that it’s a part of my new life. It’s the trade-off. Because being beautiful is merely the byproduct of having a handle on my food. Which I do because it makes me happy. Beauty is the side effect of loving my life.

But here’s where it balances out. When I have my food under control, I can deal with life. I can find peace inside myself. I can get through a difficult situation. I can deal with an uncomfortable feeling. I can manage feeling unsafe. It’s not that I hate being beautiful. Like I said, parts of it are fabulous. I just don’t like everything that comes with it. And it sure as hell is not the magical answer to all my troubles I thought it would be when I was eating compulsively. What I love is being sane and capable. And being able to deal with whatever comes my way. And having the ability to say, “No. You cannot have my number. You cannot walk with me. But I’m flattered. Have a nice day.”

Posted in beauty, Life and tagged , , ,
11 Mar 2012
2 Comments

Let’s walla walla down by the mango tree (or not…)

There is an interesting thing that I have noticed in my life. I noticed it before I got control of my food. But since then, it has become more obvious. The more I grow and change in my life, the more the cast of characters in my life changes. People come in. People fall away. And who comes and who goes is hard to predict.

When I was in college, I had a best friend. She was one of my four best friends at the time. But after I left school, she was the only one I stuck with. She and I were incredibly close. Even when we both left Chicago, (her for St. Louis and eventually Charleston, me for New York City), we still kept in close touch. Sometimes she would go off on a long adventure to The Balkans or Africa and we would not be in communication. But when she got back to the US, we always got back in touch. We talked on the phone at least once a week. We did a writing project together. We visited at least once a year. I was the maid of honor in her wedding. I thought we would be together forever. But when I got control of the food, she disappeared. After a long separation, I found her on Facebook and she accepted my friend request. But when I wrote her personal messages, she ignored them. I didn’t understand why. But the longer I have my food under control, the more clear it becomes.

We humans are mirrors for each other. When we look at each other, we see ourselves. The good and the bad. The ugly and the beautiful. If we cannot handle what we see, we have to stop looking. I don’t know what my friend saw that made her look at me differently.  But I had just made a huge commitment to change my life. And clearly something about my new life didn’t work in hers.

There is another friend that I love. She has a beautiful soul and a heart that is filled with incredible love. But I had to stop being in touch with her. When I looked at her I saw her letting people be cruel to her and abuse her. I saw her letting people take advantage of her loving heart and bright, beautiful soul. I had to separate myself from her, because it was too close to the kind of abuse I subjected myself to for years. I had finally started to honor my own life first. And watching her let herself be hurt because she loved people made me angry and uncomfortable. I still love her. But I could not look into that mirror anymore.

This is not about morality. It’s not about being better than or worse than. It’s about what I want in my life and how I want to see the world and myself. It’s about the lessons I have learned and the ones I have yet to learn. Sometimes I have to let go of people. And sometimes people have to let go of me. I’m on my journey. They’re on theirs. It’s not about loving or not loving. It’s not about judgment. It’s about honoring ourselves. It’s about relationships that work, and are workable. Or don’t and aren’t.

I used to think that people came into my life and “raised the bar”. That these people showed up and taught me to be the person I wanted to be. But what I eventually came to understand was that I raised the bar. I made decisions and choices about what worked in my life. Or what didn’t. And people fit into that new vision of my life. Or they didn’t. I am the most important person in my life. And I like it that way. I am the one person in my life I can’t walk away from. No matter where I go, there I am, if you will.

I used to have a lot of judgment around people falling away. I was offended if they left my life. Or I would create some offense in my mind to justify why I had to let someone go. Because how could a person walk away from someone they loved? Wasn’t that wicked and wrong? Wasn’t that a moral issue? But now I can see that it’s not a moral issue. It’s about what works. Or what doesn’t. If your car doesn’t have wheels, it’s not going to work. But that doesn’t make the car evil.

Since my food has been under control, I can see more and more clearly what works for my life. And what doesn’t. But I can also see more and more clearly that we are all just people in the world doing the best we can. My wish for everyone is that they live the best life they can. That they figure out what works for them. And if I don’t fit into that plan, even if I love them, I want to honor that. And I hope that my decisions about what works in my life can be honored. Even if it’s sad. Even if it hurts. Even if it just plain sucks.

So in the immortal words of Bill Murray (or rather, the words of Bruce Ley and Len Blum, as immortalized by Bill Murray)
I love you, and you love me
But you love you, and I love me
So let’s walla walla down by the mango tree.
…Or maybe let’s not.
Posted in Life, Relationships and tagged , ,
04 Mar 2012

The God exchange; because the first one didn’t fit

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”  – Susan B. Anthony

This Susan B. Anthony quote is pretty well known. I understand her point. I don’t disagree with it as a social or political commentary. But I have to say, what my God wants me to do rarely coincides with my personal desires. “You have to stop eating sugar,” was not on the top 10 list of things I wanted to be told at 28 years old. But it’s my own fault. I had asked to be saved from misery. (I did not know at the time that I was asking God. I was asking anyone and anything.) But He did not come down and whisk me away to paradise with a new body. (Yes, I refer to God in the masculine. No, I do not believe God is “male”. It’s just easier that way.) He said, “Then stop eating yourself to death.” Followed shortly by “Stop lying.” “Respect other people’s boundaries.” “Honor your commitments.” “Grow the fuck up!” (Yes. God swears. My God does anyway. And has an excellent, and sometimes dark, sense of humor.)

I should maybe explain that the God I have now is not the God I grew up with. The God I grew up with was a mean, spiteful God who required that I give worship by being miserable. If I was enjoying it, whatever it was, God disapproved. He was scary. I was evil. Life was cruel. And that was the way the world worked.

As I got older, God became less frightening, but there was still an unsatisfying disconnection between us. I didn’t know what He wanted from me or for me. I didn’t think that God wanted me to be happy. I thought He wanted me to be “good”. And I wasn’t even sure I knew what that looked like. Plus, “good” never seemed all that appealing. What God wanted for me seemed at worst painful, and at best boring.

I didn’t know how to listen to God growing up. But at that time in my life, I was living in a sugar fog. Sugar is a drug for me. It literally gets me high. And I spent my life copping. I was high all the time. I do not remember most of my childhood and early adult years. I was blackout eating daily. And I was obsessed with food. Thoughts of food took up 90% of my mind 100% of the time. And the other 10% was for trying to navigate my life moment to moment. This involved a lot of lying, cheating and stealing to get by. Mostly to avoid getting into trouble with other people or to get my next fix. I knew I didn’t want to be dishonest, but I didn’t know how to stop. What I didn’t understand was that there was a baseline for all of my dishonesty. It was sugar (and food in general).  Food and dishonesty were inextricably linked. I had never been honest about food. In order to get some integrity, I had to stop lying about my eating.

When I would do something dishonest in my life, it filled me with feelings of guilt. I would numb these feelings with sugar. But I was ashamed of how I ate. And how it made me fat. And how I couldn’t hide how I was eating because it made me fat. But I couldn’t stop. And I didn’t want to admit it. So I would lie about it. (Of course, my body always told on me. But I was so fucked up on sugar all the time, that I always managed to “not know” this.) And dishonesty around food made all other forms of dishonesty seem workable. Even normal. But then I would feel guilty. And ashamed. So I would numb those feelings with more sugar. It was a vicious cycle.

What saved my life at 28 was choosing to put strict boundaries around my eating and then be 100% honest about it. This rigorous honesty about my eating made integrity in my life possible. Integrity in my life made it possible to stay within my food boundaries. It was a virtuous cycle.

So how did I manage to find my way into this virtuous cycle? Well, frankly, it was a miracle. It was a gift from God. I really believe that. But there was work involved. So the practical answer is that I did it by being honest one meal at a time. And by adhering to the rules I had around food one meal at a time. And every meal made the next meal easier. Every time I told the truth about food, it made it easier to tell the truth in my life.

And the other thing that made it easier, was that every time I kept integrity around my food, I felt like God was proud of me. I knew that I was doing the right thing. When I was eating sugar, there was no room in my head for God. There was no room for listening for divine inspiration. There was no room for hope or dreams or love. But when I stopped eating sugar, and got control of my compulsive eating, I found that I had all of this room in my head. First, it took about a year and a half of no sugar for my mind to clear. (Yes. It took that long.) But then I looked up and found that I had all this life in my life. And “good” finally had a meaning. It was not boring at all. Or painful. It was just about integrity. It was just about being honest.

Then all of a sudden, I started to realize that God wanted me to have a great life. Not an ok life. A fantastic one! That once I had a clear head, I could hear God. And He wants me to be happy. Really happy. And free. He wants me to have all of the things I thought the God of my childhood didn’t want me to have. My God wants me to have fun! And love! He wants me to love my body. And my mind. And my life. He wants me to laugh and sing. No, He doesn’t tell me what I want to hear. He tells me what I need to know to have a beautiful life. I’m starting to realize that God wants a better life for me than I want for myself. And I’m interested in taking Him up on that.

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27 Feb 2012

Damn! I’ve got a great body!

I realized about 10 years ago that my body is the only thing in the world that I own outright.

Bodies are interesting phenomena. They are the vehicles for life. No body, no life. At least not in the scientific sense. (I won’t speculate about metaphysical matters here.) But when I was eating compulsively, especially when I was fat, I believed that I was not my body. Like somehow I could separate my life from my body. My life was my thoughts, feelings, and desires, and my body was…I don’t know what I thought my body was. I tried not to think about my body.

When you are abusing your body, it helps to separate from it. If I thought of it as “me”, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. The brain is a fantastic and fascinating organ. It can make anything occur as “normal”. Survival instincts are incredibly powerful. Human beings have had to learn how to live through atrocities. My own personal atrocities have been self-inflicted. But they were still atrocious. And somehow I had to make them “ok”.

But the reason I am writing about my body today, is that I feel completely out of control of it. I still have the food under control. Thank God. That’s not what I mean. But I haven’t been able to stop crying for days now. The muscles in my legs keep tightening up. I’m having chest pains. I have been waking up in the middle of the night. I have been feeling nauseous. My menstrual cycle is all messed up. (No. I’m not pregnant. Getting pregnant requires having sex. And trust me, no sex going on over here…)

My life has gone through one big upheaval. My mentor did decide to move on (as referred to in my last post, The Rolling Stones were right.) I’m mourning our relationship. And life has thrown me some stressful situations on top of that. Things I had no choice but to deal with.
But actually, that’s not true. I could have eaten a chocolate cake. I could have decided to “not deal” with them. Of course that wouldn’t have made them go away. It wouldn’t have made them easier. But it would have made me numb. And these emotions would not be manifesting themselves in my body. Or at least not as physical pain. They would be manifesting themselves as fat. And insanity.

Truth be told, all of this grieving and stress does not make me feel insane. It does not make me hate myself. It does not make me hate my life. It just hurts. Pain. Plain and simple. Excruciating. But just pain. And pain doesn’t last forever. Nothing lasts forever. That’s the way life works.

It’s funny that I lived my first 28 years with no control over my body. No control over my eating. No control over my weight. No control over my physical capability. And here I am, six or so years of being in control, and a few days of not feeling in control and I’m angry at my body. Like it has betrayed me.

My body has been so much better to me than I have been to it. It turned out strong and healthy. And beautiful. I had to start being nice to it. I had to honor and respect it. But it let bygones be bygones. It didn’t hold any grudges for having to carry around 165 extra pounds for years. (Please keep in mind that that’s an entire person. Bigger than me. Made entirely of fat.) It does not have diabetes, though I pushed it to the limits. My muscles and joints work. I can run and walk and jump and dance. I can do these things up a flight of stairs. Up multiple flights. I can keep up with a three-year-old for nine hours at a stretch. I can hang upside-down from the monkey bars at the playground to show off for her.

So obviously, my body is not betraying me. It is telling me I don’t feel safe. That I’m scared. It’s telling me I’m in mourning. That I need to get the poison out. That there are feelings inside me that will kill me if I don’t feel them. And it’s also trying to protect me. Because it knows I do not like to feel. My body knows I’m not good at that. It’s letting those feelings come out as physical pain, because it knows that emotional pain can make me turn off and shut down. It’s saying “Here’s some chest ache, instead of some heart ache. Here is a tight muscle instead of a choked soul. Here is some nausea so you can remember to get it out instead of stuffing it in through your mouth. Feel. Cry. It’s ok. You get it out and I’ll live so you can go on having your thoughts, feelings, and desires.”

Damn! I’ve got a great body!

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19 Feb 2012
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The Rolling Stones were right

A very important person in my life, a mentor and a good friend to me, is thinking about changing her life. She has not made this decision yet, as far as I know. But if she does choose to change her life, my life will also change. She will stop being my mentor. And our relationship will change. I will have to find a new mentor. I will have to bring a new energy into my daily life. And let go of our energy (hers and mine). If. It’s only if. But two days ago, there was no if. And today, change is on the table.

My first reaction when she told me was no reaction. But then the thought of it woke me up it the middle of the night that night. Repeatedly. Worry. Fear. Half formed memories of vague nightmares. Change. Loss. What kind of turn my life could take. Not knowing. Not feeling safe.

There are people that I like. A lot. People that, when we are together, create an experience I treasure. All relationships create something bigger than the sum of their participants. But sometimes that something is so beautiful and so powerful that it changes who you are in a way that makes you love your life. That makes you grateful for loving that person.

Potentially, I could have a beautiful relationship with any human being on the planet. But practically, I am cautious, and a loner, and I have this kind of relationship with very few people. I am available for it with very few people.

This friend, mentor, peaceful woman is someone I have this kind of relationship with. I love her. Exactly as she is. And I have no responsibility for her life decisions. I have no right to judge or make them. Even if they affect me directly. There are things that are none of my business. Everybody else’s choices are on that list.

But I want. I want to keep my mentor. I want things to stay the way they are. I want her to do for me what she has been doing for me. And what I have come to expect. I want. I want. I want. I grip and grasp. Can I will what I want into existence? Can I manipulate what I want into existence? How can I get what I WANT?

But this woman was brought into my life by God. And she taught me my greatest lessons and gave me my greatest gifts so far. And they are now mine. They live inside me. They will continue to live inside me, whatever our relationship may be from this moment. Because they were true lessons and real gifts.

Who my mentor has been for me is Peace. She has taught me how to be peaceful. Day to day, moment to moment. She has taught me so many valuable things: Life on life’s terms. More will be revealed. Take my time. Everything in its own time. Changes happen when we’re ready for them. All I have to do is show up. Remember what I have to be grateful for. Be grateful. That I am a miracle. And I am.

But here’s the most important thing my mentor taught me. Go with the flow. Life is always right. Trust life. Let go of wanting it my way. Let go of wanting. Let go.

I will continue on my journey, no matter what. There certainly are things that are my business and my responsibility. I have my own choices and commitments to attend to. I will find a new mentor, if it comes to that. I will be grateful if it doesn’t. I will figure out what to be grateful for if it does. My mentor taught me that too.

I am willing to trust life today. I am willing to trust that if my mentor does choose change for herself, and can no longer mentor me, that it will benefit me. And that if she continues as my mentor, that will benefit me as well. That God will send the lessons and the gifts exactly when and how I’m supposed to receive them. That life is always right. And I believe that life is always right. That when I stop resisting because I “want”, what ever it is that I’ve got, is just exactly what I need. My mentor taught me that.

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