onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “eating disorders”

27 Mar 2012
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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.

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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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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 , , ,
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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07 Jan 2012
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Because fear makes the wolf bigger than he is…

Just in case you don’t already know, I am the yellowest coward of them all. And since I’ve decided that I am going to go ahead and publicly document my experiences as a woman living with eating disorders, I thought the first thing I should do is share what scares the hell out of me about it.

First, I am afraid of not following through when it gets trying, or boring. That when it comes to the point of finding something about myself that I don’t want to acknowledge, instead of accepting my humanity, honoring my life, and sharing it with you like a gift, I will come down with a terminal case of the fuck-its. And worse, that the day someone asks “Are you still writing that blog?” I will make up some paltry excuse about how it didn’t work out, but it wasn’t my fault.

Second, I am afraid of boring you, annoying you, and/or being rejected by you. I worry that I will tell you about the gross, pathetic, and wicked parts of myself, and instead of gaining some insight for yourself, you will despise me. And it will be more evidence that I am broken. That my thoughts and feelings are grotesque and unnatural. That there really is something fundamentally wrong with me. I’m afraid that in order to avoid that humiliation, I will mince words, beat around the bush, soften, stretch, and smooth so as not to offend you or expose myself. In other words, that I will lie. See, I have discovered that the best way to save face is not to save face. It’s to admit, to honor, and if necessary, to apologize. It is to surrender to the truth. Yet that is never my first instinct. So I am afraid that to please you, I will dishonor myself.

But most of all, I am afraid of losing control of my food. And only slightly less, of doing so in front of you. I fear that this blog might some day include “relapse installations.” But that’s a ridiculous fear, really. Because if I lost control of the food, there would be no blog. There would be no examination of my soul. Hell, my bills wouldn’t even get paid. (No, that is not hyperbole.)

A friend warned me before I started this that I would get a lot of difficult feedback if I chose to write this blog. And she was right. I have already received a personal message (from someone I like, by the way) explaining that I don’t actually have eating disorders. I’m just eating the wrong foods. I just need to become a vegan! (She was more specific, but that was the general idea.) Now, I know that her message to me was an expression of love. And I am overjoyed for everyone who has a relationship with food that works for them (like I do now). But I do have eating disorders. And the body image disorders that come with them. Of course it is about my food choices and  how my body reacts to sugar. But it’s also about my head and my heart and thoughts that I have been thinking so long that I cannot even distinguish them as thoughts. This person also explained that if I ate her way, I could eat all day long and not gain weight. This is not welcome communication! It is DANGEROUS for me! I’m a fat girl. I could take up any excuse to quit the solution I have found and go off in search of something “better”. Something flexible that let’s me feel like I’m normal around food. But, hello! I weighed 300 pounds! Do you really think that if I am going to eat all day long, that I want plants and seeds? What I *want* is to get a pizza, a cake, a box of ice cream bars and a shit load of chocolate. I want to lock myself in my house, and binge eat myself into a food coma so I’m too fucked up on sugar to feel the pain and discomfort of my life, where I am constantly making mistakes, saying stupid things, and embarrassing myself.

My fat girl does not like being human. She is not good at it. She would jump through hoops for the chance to get her cake back. (She could get real agile for cake.) What has worked for me is rigid structure. Incredibly inconvenient and worth every single obstacle I have had to maneuver in the past six years.  I do not want people to explain to me that they have the answer to my food issues. I’ve found the answer to my own food issues. That is not why I’m here; to talk about diet, food, or weight loss. Nor am I here to promote my way of eating. I am writing this blog to find some peace around my heart and soul issues. I am writing to tell the truth and get the poison out. I am doing this, terrified as I am, because I don’t want to have secrets anymore. I want to stop feeling ashamed of myself all the time. Secrets and shame have been feeding each other all my life. And it’s me they have been eating.

Posted in Life and tagged , , , , ,
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!

Posted in Life, Relationships and tagged , , , ,

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