onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “integrity”

27 Jan 2013

No, I didn’t change my hair. I just got a view of myself through a hole in the space-time continuum

Just briefly I want to note that this coming Friday, I am going to have to weigh myself. And I am afraid. Of three things. Gaining weight. Being wrong about my metabolism kicking back in. And having to admit to you that I was wrong. I am afraid of being fat again. And that the idea of me starting to get smaller is all in my head. And what you will think of me if it is. And not just you. Everyone I have told. I worry a lot about being wrong. I always have. I used to lie and manipulate to make myself seem less wrong. Now I don’t. But it still makes me feel oogie.

The truth is that my metabolism may have kicked in and I still won’t have lost any weight. Rational Kate knows that after a person quits smoking, their metabolism slows way down. Then it speeds back up again. That it is simply a matter of time. And waiting. And for me that means waiting without crossing my food boundaries. But Rational Kate hasn’t been given the floor too often lately at the committee meetings in my head. So she just sits there. And occasionally makes an objection when Bulimic Girl, and Sugar Addict Girl start to get unruly and insist that it’s time to do something (drastic, most likely futile, and certainly unhealthy) before I get FAT! Rational Kate is biding her time. She knows this, too, shall pass. And that when it does she’ll get to be in charge again.

But what I really want to talk about today is change. Because I am different today. Different than I was just a few days ago.

When I was growing up, I believed in predestination. And I didn’t even know it. When, in High School, I was reading American Literature of the Puritanical variety, I would have told you that I believed in Free Will. That a person had the opportunity to make of their life whatever they chose. I would have told you that I believed in the American Dream. That if a person who lived in a free country was willing to work and strive, he or she could do or be or make anything.

But I didn’t really believe. I believed I was broken. I believed I was genetically, and irreversibly fat. I believed I would be “ok” without ever having to do much because I was born smart and capable. Born to smart, capable, middle-class people. I unwittingly believed that with some minor potential variations, my life was already set in stone.

There were so many things that seemed either inevitable or impossible. I believed my fear. I never thought anything was worth taking a risk. I “had to” eat compulsively. And I could never ever give up eating sugar.

But somewhere inside, there was the wish to be free from being fat. And even more importantly, to be free from not being able to stop eating. (Or at least it would eventually become clear that dealing with the uncontrollable eating was more important. I am sure at the time, I thought being fat was the bigger problem.)

It was such a conflict for me. To want so much to be able to eat in a way that was not embarrassing. To be able to manage my weight. But God, sugar was my best friend. Sugar made life bearable. (It also made it unbearable, but it made bearable in the short-term, what it ultimately made unbearable in the long-term. It was like paying off a credit card with another credit card. Needless to say, it was bad economics.)

And then I stopped eating sugar.

What I learned from quitting sugar is that my life seemed to be set in stone because I kept making the same sugar-induced, fear-based choices over and over. And that having this commitment to abstain from sugar, no matter what, changed the course of my life.

When I say it changed the course of my life, I mean that the path I chose was more than just “no sugar.” I chose to be present and honest and growing. Continually. So I have been constantly changing for the past seven years.

But sometimes that growth comes in a big spurt.

In the past four days, I have been told repeatedly that I am a different person all of a sudden. That my energy is different. That I am more free. But also that it has manifested physically. Not just that I am more beautiful. (Though that has come up. It really never gets old, people…Feel free to keep saying it.) But that my face is different. My skin. Did I change my hair? (No.) “Since I saw you last week.”

I’ll tell you what I think it may be. I think that maybe I am available to fall in love. Not just wanting and willing but able. In a way that I have never been before in my whole 35 years. Because for the first time ever, I can say my truth to men. I am willing to be rejected as a burden. I am willing to be disparaged for my intensity. I’m starting to understand that I have been afraid of scaring men with my big feelings and my big energy and my big heart. And I’m starting to understand that there are men in the world for whom my intensity, integrity, and power are a thrill, and a gift. An asset. That there will be men who think that these traits are what make me a catch. But no, it won’t be all of them. Some will indeed be scared away. And have opinions. And things to say.

But my job is not to win over men who think I’m too intense by being less intense.

In one 24 hour period this week, I was given a powerful opportunity to communicate with 3 significant men from my past. One from my fat and food addicted childhood when I was invisible and believed that I was destined to be alone. One from when I was hot and sexy, all face and body, but everything substantial was unavailable and protected by my invisible fortress (as opposed to my fortress of fat). And the one that made me realize for the first time that I wanted something more than to be a face and body in a fortress. That I wanted to do the work to dismantle my fortress and be intimate. (I would venture that he’s also one who would probably like me more if I weren’t so intense…)

In that 24 hours, I said things that I was afraid to say. Things that six months ago I would have refrained from saying. For fear of being considered selfish or obnoxious. Or just too much. But I think that’s why it all happened at once. Like God ripped some sort hole in space-time for me so I could get a composite view of my life with men up until now. And understand that it was time to start using my voice to let them know who I am. And know that it is not just ok to express myself, but necessary if what I want is love. I got to say what I needed to say, without regard to how it was received. I got to experience the importance of speaking. Not just talking. The kind of offering that is vulnerable and intimate.

After I gave up sugar and got control of my eating, it took about a year and a half to get clear-headed and confident. And to believe that I was not actually born to be fat. That it was possible for me to reach and maintain a healthy weight that made me feel good about myself. And to know that I don’t have to be out of control with food as long as I don’t put sugar in my body. And to realize that I am really beautiful. But it took seven years to get here. Ready to take a look at love. But really it’s bigger than that. I believe…No, I trust that God would not have given me so much love if He never expected to give me the opportunity to use it. Maybe He’s been waiting for me to get out of my own way. Or maybe He hasn’t been waiting at all. Maybe God thinks seven years is warp speed in human terms and while it has felt like an eternity to me, maybe God thinks I’m right on time…

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12 Jan 2013
1 Comment

Knock knock. Who’s there? Dopamine and metabolism. Thank God!

I have had an exciting couple of weeks! I got my dopamine back! To tell you the truth, it didn’t occur to me that it went anywhere. But now that it’s back, it’s obvious. And my metabolism started back up again!

It’s funny. I knew that quitting smoking was affecting me. And it was clear from the weight gain that it was affecting me physically. But it didn’t exactly register that it was affecting me chemically.

I knew that I was not quite right. That I was having a hard time. I think I thought about it as a “spiritual” problem. Or a “mental” problem. I knew that I had to readjust the way I dealt with things. I knew I had to learn new coping mechanisms. And I definitely learned a lot about my feelings. And how to deal with them. And (one baby step at a time) how to honor my own life without regard to how I would be judged by others. And how to make decisions that honor my heart even if they seem unreasonable, or foolish. Or scary. But I didn’t understand that my brain had stopped producing happiness chemicals. That just like my body was going to have to heal, my brain was going to have to heal. I think I thought about it as mind over matter.

In practical terms, I suppose it is just mind over matter. At least in terms of waiting out the withdrawal. It’s the actions I take and don’t take in the end that make up my life. My self-respect. My character.

I don’t smoke. I don’t eat compulsively. I don’t eat sugar. I don’t take laxatives. I don’t make myself throw up. I don’t take any drastic actions. I don’t act out. I just live with the fact that it sucks until it stops sucking. It doesn’t matter how I feel. It doesn’t matter how much weight I gain. It doesn’t matter what thoughts I have. The promises I made to myself matter. Commitment matters. Everything else is vapor and ego.

What I have learned is that these commitments end up culminating as my self-respect. They are my self-esteem. They are my dignity. And I don’t need a substance to get high. I don’t need to eat sugars, grains or starches to numb out. Or create enough crazy to escape reality. I could skip a meal. And lie about it. And I would be just as high and sick and screwed up as if I ate a chocolate cake.

But I was keeping my commitments these past seven months, and still having dark thoughts. I was unhappy. And I couldn’t seem to “bright side and gratitude” myself out of it. On a good day, the best I could do was change the channel in my head and not obsess about how much I hated my body. Or what a loser I felt like. Or how I was certain that I’m unlovable and destined for loneliness. And on a bad day, all I could do was cry. And manage to not hurt or numb myself. All I could do was keep my promises to myself and live in pain.

And now that I can feel the relief, I can see how scary that time was. How it’s kind of a miracle that I came out on the other side with my integrity. I wrote in this blog that I was unhappy, but that I was not depressed. But I was wrong. I was absolutely depressed. But it was exactly that integrity that kept me from despair. My brain was incapable of producing happy without cigarettes. My dopamine levels dropped severely. But it was nothing like the horror of 28 years of sugar addiction and self hatred.

What is interesting to me is that I knew that it would pass, because I know that’s how life works. All things pass in time. But I didn’t expect it to pass all at once. I didn’t expect it to turn on a dime. I didn’t realize that my brain would just start producing dopamine again. I didn’t even know that my dopamine levels had dropped until this week when I realized I was happy again and googled “quit smoking depression”.

And as if it couldn’t get any better, my clothes are getting looser. I bought a very sexy dress when I gained the bulk of my weight. It was sexy because it was tight. Now it’s not tight. And it’s not so sexy anymore. Now it’s just a cute dress. And I can’t tell you how happy I am about that! Plus for the first time in many months, I have been hungry between my meals. (Is that you metabolism? I’m so glad you’re here! Why don’t you stay a while…)

So hooray for going through hell and coming out on the other side! And thanks to you for being there while I got through it. I’m hoping that I am now back to my grateful, joyful self. And that I’ll get to stay here for a while.

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05 Jan 2013
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Grrr. I really thought I was smarter, braver and more empowered than that…

Something has shifted in me recently. I’m peaceful. I don’t hate my body. I can see that it’s not any smaller than it was 2 weeks ago. But I can also see that it’s pretty sexy. Beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong. It still looks big to me. Not grotesquely fat anymore. But chubby maybe? Soft? Smushy? Anyway, not the body I had that I loved. Because for a while there I was in love with my body. And proud of it. Not proud of myself for having that body. Proud of my body for managing to withstand 28 years of abuse and still end up gorgeous. I mean guh-ore-juh-us! (Good work, body!)

The honest-to-God-truth is that I still think this body is temporary. And that I want it to be temporary. But as long as it is temporary, I can allow that it is beautiful in its way. That being soft and womanly has some appeal. Though I don’t know what I would do if it turned out to be a permanent change. For example, would I start eating my vegetables steamed instead of sautéed in butter and olive oil? I don’t know. I love food. But do I love it as much as my size 6 body?

But when I ask myself what is so important about being a size 6, I do not like my answer. Because it seems I have bought into the image that I hate. I have taken on the impossible ideal. I am judging myself against bodies that don’t exist. It seems I am comparing myself to pictures of already thin women, Photoshopped to make them look even thinner and more symmetrical. As if they live without internal organs. Like their skin doesn’t pucker under a strap or a band. As if they are made of marble. And I am fascinated by how this could have happened! To me! I have been actively trying to avoid this kind of faulty concept of my own beauty. I don’t watch TV or go to the movies. I don’t read magazines. I spend my time with real human beings in real bodies. On the street and the subway. In shops and restaurants. I know what actual, real bodies look like. And yet somehow I am not seeing myself as a regular body in a sea of regular bodies. I am seeing myself as compared to underwear models as they appear in ads! Dammit!

It’s funny that when I was growing up, most of the beautiful women in movies and on TV were a size 8, the size I am now. And I was morbidly obese. Now famous women are 0s and 2s, and size 8 is considered overweight in movies and on TV. (Ok. It’s not that funny…)

And the other thing I don’t like is who I want to be a size 6 for. I am active and healthy and I have powerful integrity. In life and around my food. Who do I owe being 24 lbs thinner to? Some man I haven’t even met yet who would like me because I’m beautiful, smart, funny, sexy, have a profound relationship to my word, and being with me makes him happy, if only I were 24 lbs thinner?

The hardest part is that there is a little voice in my head that says, “Yes. That guy. So you’d better lose those 24 lbs before he shows up.”

I don’t know what to do about any of this. I don’t know if there is anything to do. But I feel like it’s important to note that I can have this philosophical discussion with myself because my self-hatred has lifted. I was paralyzed with my own irrational thinking. And I don’t know what changed. Perhaps my metabolism has started back up again. Or perhaps it’s hormonal. The one thing I will say is that I am so grateful that through that particularly long and difficult attack of body dismorphia, I kept my food boundaries and did not eat sugar. If I had, I am quite sure I would not have been able to get through such a dark period and find some peace. Here’s hoping it lasts!

So I’m curious. Tell me about your relationship with your body and body image. How much thinner “should” you be and what would you have if you were?

You can share my blog. You can follow me on twitter @onceafatgirl5

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11 Nov 2012

I’m sorry, I’m too busy to go out of my way to not give you the satisfaction

I have been unhappy lately. For a long time actually. Months now. On and off since I quit smoking in June. Pretty consistently since August. Generally blue. Occasionally in a lot of emotional pain. Occasionally just raw and irritable. And invariably thinking. Thinking and worrying and puzzling and solving and predicting and planning and scrapping and reformulating and worrying some more.

 

I am purging a lot of old pain. It’s hard to squeeze out of my chest and throat area. It burns. Letting it go is interesting. I’m not used to it. It’s the kind of thing I’ve been holding in since I was 4. For the most part, it comes in a huge wave and dissipates. It sneaks up on me and it suddenly occurs to me that I’m going to cry. And then it occurs to me that I am holding it in. Holding it back. And I don’t want to do that anymore. Hold it in. Deny that I’m an emotional, cry-baby, wussy-girl. I am. I am not cool. I am not too hip to care. I care. So I cry. And my face gets all red and blotchy for a minute. Maybe two. And my eyes get glassy and wet. And then it’s done, passed. And maybe a person or two on the street or subway noticed. Maybe.

 

I have been humiliated a few times recently too. I was the butt of the joke for an entire bus full of people during the snowstorm this week. With my train not running and taking an unfamiliar route home, I waited for an hour in the snow for the wrong bus. In retrospect, a few of the buses that would have taken me home passed by. When I realized I was on the wrong bus, and asked the driver to let me off, everyone began to laugh. Tell other passengers who hadn’t heard. The hardest was the little old lady in the front cackling about how stupid I was not to have asked. I was shocked by how delighted people were by my difficulty. How they thoroughly enjoyed my pain.

 

But there is something that I have given up. Not letting them see me cry. Not giving people the satisfaction of seeing that they got to me. I don’t care if they see. I don’t care if they enjoy it. I don’t care if they get off on my hurt heart. If I need to cry I will cry. I’ll do it with dignity too. Because I do not cry because I am weak. I do not cry because I am pathetic. I cry because nobody gets to tell me how to deal with my feelings. Nobody gets to tell me not to be so sensitive. And if someone enjoys my tears, that’s none of my business. But I can pity them for that. More than I pity myself for feeling the pain.

 

I do not enjoy other people’s pain. I feel it too easily. It seems too real. I actually have to work every day at not taking on other people’s pain. I have to remind myself that just because there is suffering in the world does not mean I cannot have peace and joy and love. That just because the world does not have peace does not mean that I cannot have peace. I have to remind myself that peace begins with me. Inside.

 

I love my empathy. I am honored to be a compassionate woman with a big sensitive heart. I don’t love everything that comes with it, but I don’t see it as a weakness. And I don’t need to hide it because some people are jerks.

 

Because I used to have a surefire way of not being affected by the sadism of jerks. I smoked it. Or ate it. Or somehow got high enough that it couldn’t scrape at me. But here I am, right on the ground. Well within reach to be scraped and scratched. Too available to get by unscathed. Though, really, getting by unscathed because I was too effed up to be available wasn’t exactly the cat’s pajamas either. Or I wouldn’t have gone through all the pain I have to get here. Present. Available. Hurtable.

 

The other thing that has me unhappy is trying to acclimate to a new level of confidence and self-love. I have a new understanding of what I deserve. What I am worth. And here I am in a life built by a woman who liked herself less.

 

It’s even funny to think about how I am in so much pain because I went from being a woman who liked herself a lot, to a woman who likes herself even more. I was already so impressed by my honesty, integrity, honor. Was already overjoyed to wake up every day with such dignity and self-respect. Had already done so much incredible work on myself. And yet the gap between this new understanding of myself and my life, and the (still pretty fantastic) life I was living six months ago makes for heartache. And sadness.

 

So I’m unhappy. But let me tell you what I am not. Depressed. And that’s important to note. Because when I was eating compulsively and addictively eating sugar, I was depressed. Always. The level of self-hatred I lived with was staggering. I hated myself so consistently for so long that I didn’t even know I hated myself until it stopped when I quit sugar. I felt crazy on sugar. I was crazy. I had no hope. I lived in the depths of despair.

 

But today I am not in despair. I know that this will pass. It’s just a difficult stretch. A very long, difficult stretch of unhappiness. And yes, I wish it would hurry along. Because I miss being fun and funny and easy to be around. But everything in its own time.

 

I would love it if you would share my blog. Or follow me on twitter @onceafatgirl5

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19 May 2012

I need to take this…it’s my calling calling

My life eating compulsively was like an extended childhood. Not in a good way. I didn’t have a particularly enjoyable childhood. What I mean is that I didn’t really start growing up until I got my eating under control. Sugar made it possible for me to let my life slip through the cracks for the first 28 years. That was why I used it. Not because it tasted good. But because it made me not have to feel my overwhelming feelings. That was useful when I was small and too vulnerable to process them. But as I got older, it became a detriment. It inhibited me. It allowed me to be numb enough that I could refuse to look at issues and responsibilities that needed to be dealt with. That I needed to deal with. Until they became emergencies. And then I dealt with them by throwing them into someone else’s lap. Someone who loved me. Usually my mother. But anyone would do.

And the truth is that I would become so incapacitated by the time something positively had to be dealt with, that people would feel sorry for me.  They would feel compelled to help me. Not help. That’s not the word. Because I ask for help now. In a healthy, responsible way. I love help! I am grateful for help. I can accomplish so much with help. But when I was eating compulsively and burying my head in the sand (really more like burying my face in a chocolate cake) other people were assuming responsibility for my failures and ineptitudes. And letting me off the hook without my having to live with the consequences of my actions, or inactions. At the time, this was a relief. Or it seemed like a relief. It wasn’t, really. It fed the thoughts that told me I wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t capable. It reinforced my ideas about my worthlessness. But I didn’t have any other context. Neglecting my life until the looming consequences left me in a state of paralyzed terror, and then having my cookies hauled out of the fire by somebody else, was all I knew. It took the immediate pressure off, but it never made me wise. First, because I was selfish and couldn’t have cared less that someone else was being deprived of something (time, money, resources) for my benefit. And second because I was numb. Getting high on sugar made it possible for me to never feel the impact of my choices. Sugar made it so that I never had to feel anything.

There was a strange paradox to my life when I was eating compulsively. I was simultaneously disgustingly arrogant and pathetically low on self-esteem. I felt totally entitled without feeling like I should have to honor my word or my commitments. Because I “couldn’t”. Because that required being worthwhile and able. Which I “obviously” wasn’t.

When I got a handle on my food, it became a necessity to start dealing with my responsibilities. Not being numb from sugar meant actually feeling the pressure to maintain my integrity. It meant caring about my future. About my reputation. About my relationships. Having clarity made me feel bad about hurting and abusing the people in my life. It made me want to be someone I respected and liked, because feeling like the asshole I was being made me uncomfortable. And there was no more cake to numb the discomfort. And besides, being someone I liked was suddenly an option. And then I discovered that I loved it! It wasn’t just a relief. It was joy.

I am slow. Not intellectually. But personally. I change slowly. I need a lot of time to adapt to new things. I need to sit with things for a long time before I can integrate them into my thinking and actions. Before I can get acclimated to them. What to do in a situation is rarely obvious to me. Maybe this is the result of living in fear and stagnation for the vast majority of my life. But it doesn’t matter why, really. It’s what is so. And I have learned to accept this about myself. I am learning to be patient with myself. To be still and present and listen to my inner voice. With its long silences and pauses. With its string of I-don’t-know-yets. (How ’bout now? Nope, not yet.) I am learning not to rush, or to judge myself. Because when I look back at where I was, (not just at 19 when I weighed 300 lbs, or 7 years ago when I was bulimic and food obsessed, but even 3 years ago, or 1 year ago, or 6 months ago) I can see that I do change. That I am changing. And that it’s ok that it takes years. I have learned that there will never be a “done”. So what’s the rush?

When I started writing this blog, I did it for me. I wanted to let my crazy out. I wanted to get the poison out. I wanted to say, out loud, that there were things about my past and my thinking that kept me living in fear and shame. Even though there was nothing to be afraid or ashamed of anymore. But recently, I’ve found that my inner voice, the one that speaks to me when I’m still and quiet, is telling me it’s time to think bigger. After years of simply dealing with my responsibilities and my integrity, one situation at a time, one moment at a time, it’s telling me that just honoring my word is not enough. It’s important. It’s huge. But it’s not enough. That there’s work for me to do. That this is my work. My story. My learning to honor myself and my body. My life, honest and uncensored. The sad and the joyful and (hopefully) the inspiring, on the page for you. That it’s time to hustle a little. To take some initiative in sharing it with the world. And what’s more, just as my inner voice started telling me it was time to expand my horizons, as if right on cue, life sent opportunities. And help. Information. Advice. Encouragement. Support. Reinforcements. So much love! And right now, you are participating in my work. You are witnessing my calling. So thank you. I am honored. I feel so blessed. I’m so incredibly grateful. I’m scared shitless, by the way…But grateful…

I am not clear yet where this will lead or what it will end up looking like in the future. That’s still another I-don’t-know-yet. But I can be with the I-don’t-know-yet. I can trust it. And honor it. I can listen for the next thing I’m supposed to do. I can wait patiently to find out what that is. But if you’d like to help me share my work, feel free to share this blog. Or follow me on twitter @onceafatgirl5

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28 Apr 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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28 Jan 2012

Blessings of the curse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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