onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

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.

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 , , ,

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