onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Relationships”

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.

Posted in Life, Relationships and tagged , ,
09 Feb 2012

I am my own best frienemy

So after my last blog post, my friend recommended I have a sit down talk with fat Kate. Not the fat girl who lives inside me (I already know about her. She still wants her cake back), but with the Kate who had to live in a fat body. Ask her what she wanted and needed. Apologize to her. Ask her how I wronged her and make amends.

I learned a long time ago, that when we wrong others, we have to diminish them in our minds in order to live with our own cruelty. We have to be able to justify it. And we will go to great lengths to justify it. Unless we clean it up. That’s part of the human condition. Sometimes…ok, often…hell, usually, the people we have wronged have, indeed, done something wrong to us as well. Something that hurts us. Maybe they wronged us first. Maybe even maliciously and intentionally.

But there is a person I want to be. It is the kind of person whose highest priority is peace. And peace does not come from revenge or blame. Peace comes from doing what you think is right. Peace comes from being able to look God in the eye and say that you did your best for love and from a place of love for the whole world. (This is not the Good Girl talking, by the way. She didn’t have peace. This is not about being a doormat. This is about being responsible for the ways that I do wrong, regardless of how I have been treated. Boundaries are important. They should be tended to. But the way I treat others and the way I am treated are not connected! I only have control over my own actions.)

So I want to clean up the messes I make. Even if it’s with someone who made a mess all over me.

And that includes fat Kate. She had to live in a shameful body too. And I have wronged her. I’ve been Peter at the crucifixion. Who her? She’s nobody. She’s just this girl I used to know. Don’t mind her. Let’s just go over here and you can check out how fabulous I am now…

But hating her was starting to hold me back and pull me down. Hating her was hurting me and stealing my peace. And not knowing why I hated her so much made it scary and murky and painful. So I took my friend’s advice and stopped to listen to fat Kate.

I didn’t know how! Really! You have to believe me! I was doing the best I could! I always did the best I could! And you became the woman I always wanted to be. I didn’t like me, but you are amazing and fabulous, and I honor you! I gave up sugar and eating and I felt all of that pain, was willing to feel all of that pain, because I wanted to be you. I wanted to do whatever it took to be someone I respected. So I did the work as much as you did. I did it because I didn’t like the life I was living. I got clean around the food and around life. But you pretended that you got a new life. You did not get a new life! We are still the same person. It’s just that I am eternally stuck with the body and the pain, and you get to move on. But you won’t fucking move on! You keep looking at me like I’m the definition of Kate. Like no matter what we’ve managed to do together I am Kate, and you are something else. Something not real. But we are both Kate. And I would appreciate it if you would feel about you the way I feel about you instead of feeling about you the way you feel about me. If I had looked and spoken and acted like you, I would never have considered myself unworthy. So stop living like you are unworthy now.

My life has been built around “begging the question”. It’s a logical fallacy. I have been surmising that nobody will value my love because my love has no value. The answer is the question. The question is the answer. This is little kid logic. But then, I have been using this logic since I was a little kid. My body looks different, but it is the same body. And in that body is the same brain. And my brain has been thinking these same thoughts about the worthlessness of my love for as long as I can remember.

I have been thinking these thoughts so long that I know them without putting words to them. But that’s the key. To name them. To distinguish them in words. See, I’m basically an avoider. Oh no! There’s something scary! Don’t look! So I don’t look. And it stays scary. And unknown. And undistinguished.

But when I distinguish it, I get information. Quality information. Information I can use to find a solution.

I wronged the girl I was by refusing to see that she was doing the best she could. And I refused to see it because I was using her as a scapegoat. I saddled her with all of my self-hatred and left her in the past, so I wouldn’t have to look at why I hated myself. Because it’s scary. Because I have been afraid that the things that caused me to eat myself to morbid obesity were not in my past, but a living part of my soul. And I wanted to hide them. I wanted to con the world into thinking that I am worthy and honorable. It doesn’t matter that this life I live now is not a lie. I have been living as if it is a lie. And that has the same psychological effect on me as if it were. It leads to the same kind of worry and hiding and shame.

What’s funny is that fat Kate could see it all along. Stuck there in a 300 pound body. Still hating herself. Still in immense pain. Eternally. Perhaps that is why she could see it. Because she looks at her and then at me and says “Hot damn! I turned out great!!!” But I didn’t want to listen to her. I didn’t want to look. Because it was scary. Because what if I looked, and I saw that I have an ugly heart and a broken soul? What if I found out that this life really is a lie?

Losing a lot of weight takes a lot of time. And the changes may be drastic, but they come slowly and subtly. Actions and behaviors can be changed. But that happens slowly too. It happened so slowly for me that I never had to stop hating the person I was. Until life held it up to my face and refused to put it down.

No, I will not stop thinking of my love as worthless by tomorrow. It will take time, and more importantly, practice to change my thinking about myself. But in listening to fat Kate, I got information that I can use.

So this is what fat Kate wants me to understand: I am my words and actions. By being a woman who tells the truth, honors her word, and works for peace, I am being a good person. Being a good person means I am a good person. That the circular reasoning going on in my head leaves no room for value. The question and the answer both rely on my lack there of. And that she did not go through hell so that the world would think I was beautiful. She did it so that we, she and I, would think I was beautiful. Inside and out. She wants me to stop trying to bamboozle the world into thinking there is nothing wrong with me. She wants me to start seeing that there truly is nothing wrong with my heart and soul. That there was never anything wrong with hers. She just wasn’t good at life.

She really was doing her best all those years. She really didn’t know how to do any better. I know that. I was there. And when the opportunity presented itself, she really did do whatever it took to get her shit together. I know. I was there for that too. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was too afraid to look and listen. I’m sorry I was too selfish to honor her. I’m sorry I treated her like an obstacle I overcame, instead of a sad and scared little girl. I’m sorry I looked at her like she had an ugly heart and a broken soul. And I am grateful that she could see me when I could not. Thank you, Kate. You did a really great job.

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04 Feb 2012
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Telling the ugly truth and letting the chips fall where they may

This blog has surfaced an inner conflict in me. It’s hard to put words to. It has me confused and hurt and ashamed. It is about how I see obesity in general, and the way I was treated when I was fat, the way I saw being fat when I was fat, and the way I see it from this body. They are all jumbled and mashed together. I am full of fear and anger. And I am sad.

Being fat in America is not fun. It is associated with being lazy and a slob. It is associated with not caring about yourself. With a total lack of will power. With being pathetic. It is associated with many things that are not true. Some of the go-gettiest go-getters I know are overweight. Some of the most meticulous house-keepers. Some of the best dressed/coiffed people I’ve ever met.

But living in a 300 pound body was a horrible experience for me. It was exhausting. And shameful. To huff and pant my way up a flight of stairs. To dread the thought of tying my shoes. To live in abject terror of having to hurry, God forbid, run anywhere. And most especially, to have to do any of those things in front of other people.

Because I also remember the looks, and the comments and the cruel ways that I was treated by others. And it hurt. I was so sensitive. I was fair game. Except it was not fair. Everyone was allowed to express an opinion about my body. Everyone! Heroin addicts living in boxes on the street were allowed to comment on my size. Society told them so. Too much cake, it seemed, was my waiver of any claim on common courtesy.

But I hated being fat too! I thought it was shameful too! How could I disagree? How could I stand up for myself? How could I separate being treated disrespectfully from the reason it was happening? I couldn’t then. And I am not sure I can right now. I know that belittling and shaming me was gross behavior, but who punished me more than me!?

I do not lack willpower. I can be the most stubborn mule on the planet. But I was never ever ever able to control my eating with willpower. Because my eating disorders are bigger than will. I’m sick. I treat them now, but they are chronic. They will never go away. I will never be able to eat sugar again. At least not if I want to be happy and peaceful. Not if I don’t want to kill myself with diabetes or other obesity related illnesses. Not if I want to like myself and my body. Not if I don’t want to be fat. And I don’t.

For the first 25ish years of my life, I thought there was something wrong with my body. That it was fat. That it was broken. That by the luck of the draw, I got a bad one. And then somebody said to me. “Sweetie, there’s nothing wrong with you! Calories in calories out. Do the math.” And I was skeptical. But it turned out she was mostly right. There is, actually, something wrong with my body. It can’t handle sugar. When I eat it, I can’t stop eating it. But my body is not naturally fat, as I believed for so many years. The problem I had/have has a solution. There was and is something to do about it. And doing something about it was literally the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. If that woman hadn’t said that to me, “Do the math, Kate”, I may have gone through my whole life hating myself because God cursed me with a fat body. But I’m not cursed. I’m blessed! I’m so incredibly grateful!

So here’s where is starts to get sticky and muddled and painful. I promised myself (and you) that I would be honest in this blog. And I am afraid of the things I am about to write. They are not what is known as “tactful”. And I am afraid of hurting people. People I genuinely like and love.

But I hate seeing fat people. It hurts my heart. It makes me feel ashamed. It brings up a lot of guilt and bad feelings I don’t even know how to name at this moment. And that is confusing in this body. Because even at 5′ 6 1/2″, 134 pounds, I see me in them. I am them. And I hated myself in a big body. I felt ugly and grotesque. I felt less than. Totally unworthy. And when I look back at her/me, I still feel like she/I was totally unworthy. Seeing another person living in a fat body brings up my own self hatred. It makes me look at the person that I was, whom I don’t like. Whom I’ve never liked. I did not like her then. I do not like her now. She is the part of me that I wish I could wish away.

It’s funny. I learned to reconcile with the liar in me, and the drama queen, and the good girl. I learned to reconcile by stopping those behaviors. But now it seems I have to reconcile with the body itself. And right now I don’t know how to do that. It is not enough to just not be fat anymore. I am not fat. I have not been for years. But that has not eliminated the icky feelings I have around obesity.

So the honest-to-God truth is, I do not know how to honor another person’s choice to be fat. I can live and let live. I can be respectful. But I do not know how to not care. I do not know how to see someone live in a fat body and not relive my own pain and self-loathing. I do not know how to reconcile the body I have with the body I had. I never want that life again. But, good Lord, I never want that body again.

And it’s fucking possible! It will always be possible. Like I said, my condition is chronic. The possibility of a fat body lives inside this little body. It wouldn’t take long for me to reach 300 pounds (and then some) if I lost control of the food. Seriously. A year. Maybe less. So how do I honor someone’s choice to live in a body that I fear?

Of course I have fat people in my life. Yes I love them. Yes I do understand intellectually that not everybody who is overweight has eating disorders. But when I hear overweight people say that they are comfortable with themselves, I cannot imagine it. I have a fantastic imagination. I can grasp many foreign concepts. But I have lived this “concept” of being fat, and it was nothing but torment. So in all honesty, I do not know how to not judge it. It’s personal. It’s raw. It is not fair, but it is what is so. And I am ashamed of my own judgment.

I don’t know how to wrap this up. I don’t know how to give you the moral of the story and an eloquently executed insight to take with you for the day. I do not know what to do except tell you, and pray to God for a solution to my own judgment. So now I have told you and I am praying about it. And it’s time to let the chips fall where they may.

Posted in Life, Relationships and tagged , , ,
28 Jan 2012

Blessings of the curse

So I’m getting nervous. About what you think of me. Wondering if you’re feeling sorry for me. Think I’m a Debbie Downer. I feel like I’ve been giving you rather melancholy stories. All deep, and emotional. So I want to say, I swear to God, I’m a lot of fun at parties! (Not that I go to that many parties…But when I do – super fun!) I do, in fact, know how to tell light, funny stories. I’m quick, and I love to laugh. I am not all gloom and doom all the time. (Plus, I’m a fantastic dancer!)

The truth is, having the first 28 years of my life be difficult, and painful, and having eating disorders was perhaps the best thing to ever happen to me. If I had simply been mildly maladjusted, I may have been able to live with that. I may have had a “fine” life. (Of course, who knows?) What I can tell you, is that I was a miserable wretch with some serious food issues, and some serious behavior issues, and they were tied together. So to deal with one part, I had to deal with the other. And that offered me two beautiful gifts. The first is to know the glory of honesty, self-respect, and peace because I know the ugliness of dishonesty, shame, and desperation. To see that without the distinction of one set of experiences, I would not have either such a clear understanding of, or so much gratitude for the other. (I mean that going both ways.)

The second is the opportunity to live a life of deep, and ever-expanding integrity. Which is, by far, the most awe and peace inspiring experience I have ever had.

The truth is, I live with a relatively steady stream of low-level anxiety. I worry pretty much constantly. Sometimes, I’ll be getting a massage and I’ll be worrying about whether I silenced my phone. And what I will do if the phone rings in the middle of my massage. And if I should stop her now and make sure my phone is off. And sometimes I pray for it to ring so I know and I can turn it off. I worry about nonsense in the middle of the thing I do to relax!

But the worries I have now, are nothing like the worries I had when my eating was out of control. Now I worry about vagaries in the uncertain future. Nonsense, like my phone ringing at the massage place. Failure, like will I be able to get the 3-year-old I take care of to go to sleep.  And things I have no control over, like the MTA, or what you think of this blog. But none of these kinds of worries haunt me.

I used to worry about real things. Serious things. Things that eat at your heart. Lies I told. Ways I cheated. Things I stole. Broken promises. Lies told to hide broken promises. Things I said I would do and didn’t. Things I said I wouldn’t do and did. There was no relationship between what I said and what I did or how I felt. I did all of these things with the aim of making my life easier. And instead I made my life unbearable.

I am not saying that I live a life of perfect integrity now. I don’t even believe that is possible. Life is messy. I have many many messes I have yet to clean up. I have a bajillion glaring breaches in my integrity that I have not dealt with. I make new ones all the time. (It helps that, for the most part, I clean as I go now.) But I no longer believe I have the right to use dishonesty to make my life “easier”. My word means something to me. I honor it. I try to follow three rules. Do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it. Be where you say you’re going to be when you say you’re going to be there. And tell the truth. This alone has eliminated an entire world of stress and upset for me. This has given me such a beautiful, easy, fun life!

No, seriously. I love my life! I look forward to waking up every day. I am regularly brimming with gratitude. All because I am not worried and haunted and filled with dread about all of the ways I dishonored myself and the people in my life. I love my life because I can look God in the eye.

There is a phrase I use that friends sometimes tease me about. A tag line, if you will. “I’m grateful.” I say it when someone holds a door for me. When someone gives me a compliment. When someone lets me pass them on a crowded sidewalk. When the barista hands me my americano. When the grocery store check-out person hands me my change. And I mean it! Truly and sincerely. I’m grateful.

I am grateful every day. I am a generally cheerful person. A bad start doesn’t mean a rotten day. A difficult situation doesn’t mean I can’t laugh about it. Or at least laugh about something. I have learned that when I don’t eat a bad feeling, it will pass. If I don’t eat a difficult situation, the answer will come. If I don’t eat to get through something, I will actually get through it. And what is on the other side is dignity. And self-respect. Which bring peace. What is on the other side is a really beautiful life!

So if you’ve been feeling sorry for me, don’t! Don’t feel sorry for me because I can’t eat chocolate anymore. Not because I was an unhappy kid. Not because I have a sensitive heart. I’m a joyful woman who is learning how to navigate life with peace, grace and gratitude. I am a woman who loves life! And I promise, I do not miss chocolate. Not even a little. Life is rich and sweet enough for me.

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23 Jan 2012

Pick a panic, any panic

There are only 2 feelings that I have ever been comfortable with. Since I got control of the food, I get whole washes of peace. Sometimes for days! I treasure those days. I can be with peace. Peace, I like. The other is resignation. It is the same resignation that I had when I was eating compulsively. It is the feeling that made it easy to lock myself in my room with boxes and bags of things to poison myself with. It is the feeling that let me keep my life as small as possible. Nothing good was ever going to happen to me. I should just enjoy my cake. (Of course, I didn’t enjoy my cake! I didn’t enjoy anything…) I can be with resignation. But I do not like it.

I have written quite a bit so far about how I ate my negative feelings. My shame and pain. But I also ate my good feelings. My joy and excitement. My happiness. This may not make sense to you. It doesn’t make sense to me either. I didn’t even know I did that until I stopped. But real joy is intense and confusing to me. And I have never been good at riding the waves. It is easier to be numb. And I am never numb anymore.

When my feelings get unmanageable, I have generally had three strategies. The first, which I no longer utilize, was to eat. Sugar. That would get me numb for a while and then make me feel bad about myself.  Problem with joy? Problem solved. The second, which I am doing less and less lately, is to make a rash decision and take a drastic action. Specifically, to make a big ol’ mess of things. Then there is no need to deal with that feeling. There are too many things to do in order to get my life square again. And the third is what a friend of mine calls Pick A Panic, Any Panic. (I can still get stuck in this one. Baby steps, Kate.)

Pick a panic has the advantage of providing all of the drama of making rash decisions, but without all that mess. I can keep it contained enough to only hurt and torment myself. This eliminates a lot of the guilt associated with lashing out at others. But it’s also harder to distinguish. My panic occurs to me as real, not like I fabricated it. Pick a panic is very close to the highs and lows of compulsive sugar eating. I’m guessing that’s actually where my brain learned it. And did it so often and so regularly that it doesn’t even need the sugar anymore. Pick a panic is useful if your goal is to get worked up enough to declare certain doom unto yourself, quit, and return the damp cocoon of resignation.

So let’s get to men (ok, just one man) and my heart. And happiness. I asked the man I like if he liked me. (See! I did take a risk with my heart!) And wow, did he give me a response! He positively touched me. I felt so incredibly honored and appreciated. The whole thing left me speechless. It made me really really happy!

Which makes me really really uncomfortable.

So I want to pick a panic. Any panic. About all of my faults and flaws. About not being pretty enough. About fucking up. About time and money. About logistics. About how many beautiful women there are in the world and where they are located. About the uncertainty of the future. Really. Any one will do.

While I am letting my panic blossom and flourish, I am never thinking about where it will ultimately lead. But panic is a straight line to resignation for me. It is the first step down the short, desperate road to…well, anywhere but here where I’m uncomfortable. Where I have to deal with life, and other human beings. Or, God forbid, joy!

So what’s the remedy for panic? Now. Here. This moment exactly as it is. Being still. Being quiet. Not panicking.

I am responsible for my thoughts. And I know what it takes to change my mind. And not just on a particular subject or issue. I know what it takes to change my thinking. Meditation. Standing still. Taking in. Being.

And it turns out I like these practices. They take the pressure off. They remind me that I am not in charge of the world or anyone in it but myself. That I have only one responsibility; to live. To be in the place and moment that I am in. To do the next right thing.

Basically, I think the cure for panic is surrender. And I believe that surrender is a grace. In other words, you don’t work at it, you receive it. I want to keep myself open. Eyes, ears, arms, heart, and mind. I want to be available for grace and peace. I want to be available for this moment. Whatever moment it is. And if it’s joy, intense and confusing, may I know how blessed I am.

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19 Jan 2012

No t(p)ag backs

There is a game that I used to be truly exceptional at. It is the passive-aggressive game – t(p)ag. No seriously. I could have been a contender. I was that good.

The most important rule of the passive-aggressive game is that nothing should ever be said outright. As soon as you say something outright, you bind yourself to the statement. Then, if the need came up, you could no longer feign prior ignorance. You might have to admit to the weakness of changing your mind. You might lose an opportunity to manipulate some person or relationship to your advantage.

Although, of course, it’s t(p)ag. There’s always a way to manipulate a situation to your advantage. even if you did lose a point for giving information to your t(p)ag opponent. The best strategy for winning is to lie and cheat. If you’re willing to do that, you’re sure to rack up plenty of points.

There is also a great advantage to obsessive and organized thought. Like chess, it takes a specific kind of mind to be exceptional at t(p)ag. (Though I suck at chess.) A certain kind of cataloging, ranking, and recalling of your opponents faults, weaknesses and triggers is of infinite use in play. A kind of cleverness in knowing how a situation can be used. And that certain something of creativity in directing how information is to be framed.

It is also important to have a good amount of muddled thinking and self doubt. Of course, these are the products of lying, and cheating so they come naturally if you play long enough. Being numb on sugar also helps keep the waters muddy. But however you do it, you should never be sure if your actions are above board. That eliminates most of the drama.

If this sounds like fun to you, then you must never have played. The whole game revolves around dishonesty, inauthenticity, and secrets. It’s a brutal, full-contact sport. Every player gets battered and bruised. Of course, every player is beating the crap out of themselves. Sometimes slapping, sometimes punching, sometimes gutting their own integrity. The opponent is simply there to encourage and bear witness. Perhaps create a little drama for fuel.

I have been playing t(p)ag my whole life. Like I said. I was a champ at it. I have had many opponents. We have chosen each other. You can’t play unless you choose the game. And you can’t play alone. Sometimes an opponent is an enemy. But usually they are friends, family, co-workers or employers. You have to be in a relationship to play t(p)ag with someone. You really have to know them.

But something happened when I got control of my eating six years ago. A kind of sports injury if you will. I broke my dishonesty. And a broken dishonesty leads to a distracting level of clarity and self-assurance. My heyday was over. My career was ruined. I’ve been playing with a handicap ever since.

My commitment to control my eating ruined some of my best t(p)ag maneuvers. Lying and cheating make me hungry now. Hungry for cake. When I was eating sugar compulsively, not all of the shame I ate came from outside of myself. Most of it came from my own abhorrent behavior. The ways that I was dishonest, spiteful, and cruel. The ways I manipulated. The ways that I used and abused myself and my t(p)ag opponents (and sometimes innocent bystanders). So the longer I have a handle on my food, the worse my game gets. I’m out of practice. I’m past my prime. I’m a total has-been.

Now I’m trying to get out of the game entirely. There are a few problems with getting out. First, you have to stop playing. That takes rational thinking and honesty. It takes a willingness to look at a situation without drama. It takes patience and responsibility. And it takes all of those things on the field, even while your opponent is in play. My opponents are still in the game. And they’re looking to me to attack myself with my own lies and manipulations. And they are waiting breathlessly for me to pour a bit of gasoline on their drama and righteous indignation fires.

But truly, I don’t want to play anymore.  I’m attempting to leave the field in the middle of the game. So I have started upping my un-training. And damn is it rigorous. There are regular workouts of my integrity. There is active listening. And lots of inward trekking.

I don’t expect myself to be un-trained over night. And if I ever lost control of the food, I’m sure I’d get back into the majors. But for now, one situation at a time, I’m calling no t(p)ag backs.

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15 Jan 2012

You get what you get and you don’t get upset

My mom is “something” at me about this blog. I say mad. She says “not mad”. She won’t say what. But she’s something. She said I was blaming her for my difficult childhood. In case you think so too, let me be clear: I do not blame my mother for my difficult childhood. Everybody gets the life they get. Yes, I had a lot of pain growing up. But in case you hadn’t noticed, I turned out fucking great!

I also feel I should note that my mom is not insinuating anything about my personality that is particularly far-fetched based on her experience of me. There was a very long period in my life when I did blame her for most things, and everybody else for everything else. I had no concept of responsibility. I was a victim of life. Life hated me. And it was everybody’s fault but my own. I can see how she might come to the conclusion that I wanted to get righteous and lay blame. She has known me my whole life, after all. But she is mistaken about the point of this blog. I’m different than I was growing up. Inside and out. Not that I’m cured of my defects. But I don’t lead with them anymore. And I certainly don’t want to use this blog to foster them. I want to scrutinize them. I want what I write here to be an exploration of honor, not a manipulation of people and feelings. I want to expand my integrity, not make excuses.

The thing about blame is that it takes away responsibility. If I blame my mother for my life, I give up my power and freedom. Thankfully, I have already learned that this is a fallacy. That no other person can be responsible for my life. Even if I want them to. Even if they want to. Even if I don’t “take” responsibility for my own life, I can never escape its consequences. I guess that’s kind of what makes a life a life. It belongs to one person who is responsible for the whole thing.

I have a lot of emotions. I feel things very deeply. I didn’t know how to cope with that as a child. (I’m still figuring out how to cope with it now!) I can remember being about 4-years-old, in bed under the covers, having some overwhelming feeling that I couldn’t manage. I don’t even remember what it was, or what brought it up. I just remember that I said to God, “This has to get easier, or I’m not going to be able to do it.” I meant life. I meant feeling.

Who’s to blame for overwhelming feelings? Maybe it’s chemical. Maybe it’s my personality. I don’t know why I got this intensely sensitive heart. But I did. It makes me an excellent friend and a fabulous babysitter. It made me eat myself to 300 pounds. How I dealt with it, good and bad, was up to me. And no, I did not do a very good job of dealing with it for most of my life. But it’s my sensitive heart. They were my ill-judged coping mechanisms. And I paid the consequences for them with my life. Which, frankly, is exactly as it should be. Because then I got to change.

For years, I believed that I was fat and crazy, and that fat and crazy were me. But through some miracle, my understanding shifted. Yes, I was fat and crazy. But no, fat and crazy were not me. That was not my inescapable fate. My past did not have to be my future. I was going to have to change myself in extreme ways. But it was possible. And more importantly, it was up to me. Only me.

Now I want peace in my heart. Who’s to blame if I don’t have peace? Shall I blame my parents? Or my boss? Or my government? Shall I be angry and righteous? My heart will still be sensitive. And I will still have eating disorders. And life will still be life, with its million valid reasons to panic and cry and rage and hate and quit. And a million legitimate places to lay blame. But I’m pretty sure that all of the validity and legitimacy in the world will never make blame into peace. And I’d rather have peace.

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13 Jan 2012

In case of an emergency, please secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others.

So in case it has not been made clear yet, all of this searching and learning and general spiritual journeying has come out of getting a handle on the food. I did that first. It was my only goal for years. Literally years. I went through every day with the single mission of keeping my eating under control. Everything else that got done was gravy. I also trained myself to stop seeing foods I don’t eat when I pass them in the world. Now they don’t even register in my field of vision. But I got that ability through practice. I learned to distinguish what is not mine. I stopped making love to the thought of cake. Cake is not mine anymore.

And there were other things I had to do too. I had to stop being a good girl. “Good girl” is now a derogatory term in my lexicon. It goes hand in hand for me with being a fat girl. I had to stop giving a shit what other people thought of the way I ate. I had to protect my new relationship with food. I had to come to the conclusion that my family would not die if I didn’t accommodate them by eating at a restaurant that couldn’t accommodate me. That my friends could handle it if I brought my own food to their wedding. That the nice lady at the holiday party would get over it if I declined her homemade, pride and joy dessert.

Indeed, what other people thought about me became irrelevant around food when I realized that I was the one who was going to hate myself. And hurt myself. That nobody else was going to gain 150 pounds from my eating. That no one was going to come into the bathroom with me to hold my hair back while I stuck the toothbrush down my throat. I had to live in my own body. I had to look at myself in the mirror every day. And I don’t just mean at my fat body. The craziest and most out of control time of my life was the year before I found my solution to the food. And as numbers go, I was a normal weight. But I had never known more shame or unworthiness. I had never felt more hideous. The things I did to myself would disgust you. You don’t need the laundry list. And I’m guessing that if you don’t have an eating disorder yourself, you cannot imagine. But I promise, it was hell. So in order to make sure I never went back to that life, I had to get real indifferent to being judged for refusing to participate in the food culture.

Slowly, but surely, I also stopped caring what people thought of me in my daily life. I had to start saying no to people when I couldn’t afford to say yes. I had to get enough sleep. I had to eat before I was starving. I had to be responsible so I didn’t get resentful. Resentment makes me hungry.

So there I was, thinking I’m taking such good care of myself, when something happened at work the other day. I was talking to my boss about scheduling when she asked me what I wanted. I went slack-jawed. I didn’t even know what she meant.

Huh? What do I want?

I want to make you happy. I want to meet your needs. I want you to like me!

My answer was, “I want to do my job.” Her response was, “I don’t want your people pleasing. Can you just be with the question of what you want, and I’ll ask you again later?” (Yes. She really does talk like that. Yes. It’s pretty awesome.)

So I was left to ask myself what I wanted. I was expected to have an opinion about my own time. My own life. I was expected to be responsible for my own desires. I was expected to have desires.

When my eating was out of control, not caring about myself, or even asking myself what I wanted, was how I built up something that kinda feels like self-esteem to the fat girl. Kinda feels like, but is not. Putting myself last, if at all, was how I showed that I was nurturing. That I was kind. That I was worth something. It was how I apologized for existing. My value lay in how willing I was to devalue myself for the benefit of someone else. Look! Look! I’ll do anything to make you happy!

Of course I have made a lot of progress. I don’t want to diminish the work I’ve done. But obviously the good girl still lives inside me. She’s just another face of the fat girl. She can only be tamed and kept at bay. And I can only keep control of her when I’m in control of the food. But I am also incredibly grateful that there are people who care enough about me to help me keep her in check. I am honored by the people who want me to live my best life. I want to keep them close. I want relationships with people who like me because I like me.

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10 Jan 2012

Unburdened

I happen to be the product of a wildly unsuccessful marriage. Sometimes I look at each of my parents and wonder who the hell thought that union was a good idea. Of course, I didn’t know them through their youth and courtship. (They had known each other in highschool, and married in their early twenties.) But in my lifetime they have been as different as can be. My father is a Harvard Ph.D. and atheist who wears bow ties and thinks intellectual discourse and art are fun. My mom is a Catholic with a dirty sense of humor who thinks Disney World and midnight showings of blockbuster movies are fun. They were divorced, oh…about 15 minutes after I was born.

When I was 27, I had a conversation with each of them (separately) about why their marriage didn’t work out. My mother’s explanation was that my father didn’t want a family. (This is not an insight into my father, by the way. He has always been in my life. Always as a father.) This is an illustration of the context of my childhood. My father didn’t want a family meant my father didn’t want me. Of course, my mother never said this to me growing up. I certainly don’t think she ever considered his leaving my fault. Both of my parents are good people who love me. But my mother believed that he left because he didn’t want a family, and technically, I was that family. A context like that is insidious. It does not have to be distinguished to be lived. It does not have to be named and expressed to be understood. That my father didn’t want me is the water I have been swimming in my whole life. To the child in me, I chased the man away with my very existence.

34-year-old, intelligent, rational Kate knows that her parents’ marriage is between them. That their choices to communicate or stay silent, fight or make peace, stay or leave, had nothing to do with her. But baby Kate got the burden of being a burden. And she’s been carrying it dutifully her whole life.

I have never been available for love. I shut my heart down early. But the thing about a heart is that it will love if you let it. So I didn’t let it. I anesthetized it with food. I ate every feeling constantly for the majority of my life. I built myself a fortress of fat and I lived inside it.

So fast forward. I got control of the food. I got hot. I got some integrity. But I kept the fortress around my heart. And then I started dating. I mean a *lot*. I internet dated. I went out with my cab driver. With my waiter. Bankers, lawyers, architects, construction workers. Even a chef. I met men on the subway. In airports. On the street. In the park. Starbucks. (Starbucks, single ladies! You just have to go there and smile.) But it didn’t matter how many men I met or how many dates I went on. I was all surface. I was all face and body. I never let anyone into my fortress to get a glimpse of my heart.

What I am starting to see now is that cowardice begets cowardice. That grace is a muscle. I let mine atrophy for 28 years. Perhaps if I had faced my fear and shame, I would have found that it was a paper tiger. But there is no perhaps. My story is that I fed my shame with cake and I hid away from life.

About two years ago, I was seeing this guy. (Starbucks. I’m telling you!) And wow, did I like him. I had had my food under control for a few years by then. I looked great and I was at a place in my life where I genuinely respected myself. So I got up all the courage I could muster, I found a little chink in the wall of my fortress and I told him that I liked him. (Like. Not love. I have never been in love.) He didn’t feel the same.

Now most girls can figure out how to deal with this kind of rejection by the time they are 14. But I was in my fortress at 14, cowering in the corner and stuffing my face. I did not know how to deal with it. I didn’t have that muscle. So I went back into my fortress and lamented my lot as the unwanted one. This guy is not a jerk. He was not cruel to me. He and I are still in touch occasionally. We exist somewhere between friends and acquaintances. He thinks I’m “really special”. (Ugh! I hate “really special”!) He says I’m his biggest cheerleader. He loves my honesty and seeks my opinion. And of course, he would still sleep with me if I were available for that. (Which I am not.) But what I have just come to realize, is that for the past two years, I have been feeling sorry for him. Sorry for having burdened him. Sorry for wanting what I don’t deserve. Sorry for making him look at my heart.

But now it’s been a couple of years. The food is still under control. And the longer it is, the more alert my heart gets. It wants out of the fortress. It woke up, looked around, and wanted to know who left the fat girl in charge!?!? It wants me to stop locking it up every time the fat girl and the baby and the burden in me get scared. It wants to get to work on building my grace muscle.

I hope that the next time I tell a man I like him, I will remember that whenever a person shows their heart to another person, it’s a gift. Even if that person is me.

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07 Jan 2012
1 Comment

…Always a fat girl

Origionally posted to Facebook 1/2/12

So I’ve decided to take risks in 2012. Wtf am I thinking? I do not like to take risks. I like my life comfortable. Who cares if it’s small?

Right. I care. I’m lonely. If you’ve seen me, you probably think that I’m a knockout. If you’ve met me, you probably think that I’m honest, graceful, generous and loving. And I’m single. I have always been single. I have love issues. I have fear issues. I have worthiness issues. In short, I’m a fat girl.

If you’ve met me in the past 5 or so years, you might not understand. Even if you’ve known me my whole life you might not understand. Because if you look at me and see my thin body, you might think that the way you see me and the way I see myself are the same. But you would be grossly mistaken.

At 19 I weighed 300lbs. I could not stop eating. I hated myself. I hated my body. I was filled with shame. But I could not stop.

For years now, (6 years today, as a matter of fact) I have had my eating under control. At 34, I live very happily. I have a normal body. But I have certain thoughts. Irrational thoughts. They are fat girl thoughts. And I understand that they will never go away. (Even if you don’t.) Seriously. Never.

I am unworthy of love, hence no one will ever love me. I should prepare for a life alone. I should resign myself to solitude. I am fundamentally broken. Who would chose the broken woman when he could have a whole one. A bright shiny new one. With a world full of women, who would choose me?

I am not stupid. I am just emotional. It’s not that I don’t know that this is false; that this is not how love works. But it lives inside me like a truth. This is *my* fat girl curse. I don’t claim that every fat girl has the same. But I know many women like me. Fat girls (thin or not) who have something similar. That shame and disgrace. That self punishment. That belief that if only they were better and more, they could deserve. Deserve whatever it is they don’t deserve. Love. Money. Peace. Joy.

I decided years ago to make friends with my fat girl. She was good for my life in some ways. I wasn’t pretty, so I had to cultivate a personality. I had to be smart. I had to be funny. I learned to be decidedly quick and devilishly clever. That was all her doing. I am grateful to her for that. And she got me through a difficult childhood. Sure she did it by getting fucked up on sugar and just not dealing with shit. But she got me through none the less. And I’m here now in a different place and a different life. The same body, of course, but God, how miraculously different.

But she is not dead or gone. She cannot die before I do. I can usually distinguish her voice in my head. Partly because she’s a total Debbie Downer. She reminds me not to think big. Not to dream at all. She reminds me that I will only be humiliated. But I know that she just wants her cake back.

So this year, I want to take some risks. Not subway surfing or tightrope walking. But risks with my heart. Risks of rejection and humiliation. I can hear her even now. “You’ll be sorry. It can only lead to suffering. Don’t you see? Chocolate cake will never reject you.” But I know that cake will never love me either. And that it will never let me love myself.

If I spend my life without ever being loved and in love, so be it. I have spent my first 34 years that way. But living in fear is heavy. And as time passes, it seems silly to have lost 165 lbs from my body, only to carry it in my heart.

Wishing you many blessings for 2012!

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