onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “peace”

14 Mar 2021

Happy to be wherever here is

I am not a person who likes change. Or surprises. Or being unprepared. So this week was not my favorite.

My husband and I were set to head to a job in Connecticut. So we did all the things we do when we head out to a job. We found an apartment, and set up utilities. We went into the garage and packed up our second “traveling” home with another set of dishes and small appliances, and sheets and towels, and all of the things that make our home ours when we are working on the road. We even have a traveling Alexa device and a traveling meat grinder. We are not messing around.

My husband had to be there a few days before me, and it was going to take 2 days to drive,  so we picked up his truck and he left on Tuesday. He drove all day Tuesday and then woke up on Wednesday and got half way through the day’s drive, just a few hours away from the apartment we would be renting, when he got a call. The job was canceled. Turn around and go home. 

That is correct. Canceled. Not postponed. Not delayed. Just plain canceled. 

I was kind of devastated. I have friends in that area. Some in Connecticut. Many in New York City. I was looking forward to being driving distance from them. And with the vaccines getting distributed, I was looking forward to getting hugs and in-person laughs. At least at some point in the year. 

And we had made lots of plans for the money we’d make there. Fix up the outside of our house. Have new concrete porches poured in both the front and the back, have the driveway redone, and have the siding on our house replaced. We counted our chickens before they were hatched.

I was also really stressed about money. We had already signed a lease on an apartment. I did not know what that would mean for us financially.

But the apartment complex terminated the lease and it only cost us the security deposit, which was the best case scenario. So all that I really had to do was mourn the lost expectations of living back on the east coast near my friends and the money I had already spent in my dreams. And I did have to mourn those things. So I did.

But a lot of really good things came out of this as well. For example, in a row, we had some little things go wrong right before we left. Our plumbing was wonky because roots sometimes grow in our pipes, so we had some plumbers come over and snake our outside drain. My husband would normally do this himself. But we were busy packing and getting ready to move, so we hired someone and in terms of both time and money, it was the best thing to do. It cost less than it would have for my husband to rent the machine and do it himself. And we are kind of procrastinators, so if we had not been on our way out, we might have left it longer. And then our furnace stopped working so we had someone come out to look at it. Thankfully it was an easy fix. Both of these turned out to be easy fixes and we took care of them quickly, and now they are done.

And then, since he was on his way back to our house, my husband looked to see if he could get a PlayStation 5 and they had one at the store just a few blocks from our house. So because he had to come back, he got the thing he has been wanting most for the past 6 months. Not the worst consolation prize.

But maybe most importantly, my husband and I were both working on a project that was causing us a lot of stress and frustration and we are now in the process of getting out of that job. Today we are writing a letter together to say that we cannot go back to that job. That in leaving it, we realized how it had been affecting us detrimentally, both individually and as a unit, over the past several months.

I will tell you that one reason I know I cannot go back to that job is because I know what it feels like to give up poison, and to know that I cannot go back to feeling like that. I did it with sugar.

I know that some people think I am crazy for keeping my eating boundaries. They think it’s extreme. They think I must be suffering because they believe they would suffer to give up cake. I need to express to you that I could not do what I do every day for over 15 years if I did not get one hell of a payoff. That payoff is not feeling toxic or poisoned or trapped. I felt all of those things when I was eating compulsively. Now I feel free and light and able to take life as it comes. Like when a job I was really looking forward to falls through at the very last minute.

Leaving this job feels a lot like giving up sugar. I feel sort of disoriented. I am afraid of what I just gave up and what I will lose because of it. Money security in this case. And potentially the good will of certain people in the company we work for. But also, when I even think of letting it back into my life, everything in me screams that I do not want to go back there ever again. I do not want to feel that way ever again.

And in general, I do not want to go backwards. I want to move forward all the time. I want to keep getting better, and to keep getting a better life because of it. That is also a gift of having my eating boundaries. Growth.

We don’t know what is in store for us moving forward. We don’t know what our next job will be or where it will be, at home or on the road. But we did learn some things about ourselves. 1) That we miss the road. 2) That we can’t do that awful job that we may have ended up stuck in for years if this canceled job had not come up. 3) That we are resilient. 4) That we are excellent at packing quickly at a moment’s notice. (Actually, we already knew that but this was a nice reminder.)

I will tell you what this feels like. It feels like a fresh start. It feels like someone hit the reset button. It feels like exactly what I need and where I want to be, even if I am not sure where, exactly, I am.

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07 Mar 2021

Anxiety All Along

On this coming Tuesday, my husband packs up his truck heads out to Connecticut. I will pack up my own car and follow on Thursday.

And I’m anxious. I’m not anxious about the move itself. I have already secured the apartment, set up the utilities, scheduled the internet tech, all of the little annoying parts of moving. When I first started this lifestyle, the moving did make me anxious. I was not used to things like credit checks and calling utility companies. But in the past 8 years since my husband and I have been living mostly on the road, the world has changed in ways that make all of these things easier. It moved from scanning and emailing and printing PDF copies of documents and leases, to all electronic interactions, including digital signatures and internet portals, paperless billing and autopay.

But the job I will be doing this time is not the job I have been doing. Or at least not most of it. I am not running this job. I am not tracking cost on this job. I am not responsible for every little thing on this job. You would think that would make me less anxious. You would be wrong.

I have a lot of anxiety. Or you know what? Maybe I don’t. Perhaps I have about the same anxiety as everybody else. Or perhaps I even have less. But it affects me in big ways. It gives me nagging thoughts and prickly fears. And in retrospect, after 15 years of having my eating under control, I know that it is a big part of why I ate sugar and ate compulsively. 

They say that if you want to know why you eat compulsively (or smoke, or drink alcohol, or gamble, or whatever your poison is) stop. You’ll figure it out real quick. When eating was an option for me, I never had to notice the anxiety. As soon as I got even the slightest whiff of it, I could put something in my mouth. At that point, it was all happening in my subconscious. I never had to let it see the light of day.

But when I stopped eating compulsively, and started to eat within my boundaries, when there was nothing to numb me or get me high, I started to really experience my own anxiety. 

The deal is that once I started to really sit in it and with it, my anxiety started to affect me less. Do I have less of it? I don’t know. But it doesn’t hurt the way it used to. I am not itchy in my skin the way I once was. Now it’s background noise. 

But here I am going to a new place with new work colleagues doing a new job I haven’t done before. And I am worried. 

WHAT IF I AM NOT EXCELLENT AT IT?!?!??

When I put it like that, it sounds ridiculous, even to me. I may not be excellent. But of course, I may. The point is, that people do all levels of work, from down right bad, to spectacular. And I will do the best I can and even in a worst case scenario, that will probably still be pretty good. And if it is not, well, then I will see what I can do to make it better.

For someone who has changed cities, and jobs, and lifestyles as often as I have, you would think I would be much calmer about it. But maybe the point is that I don’t have to be calm about it to do it. I don’t have to like the way it feels to get things done. And every time I get things done, even when I don’t want to, and every time I do it without eating a chocolate cake, I realize that it can be done. And without eating a chocolate cake! That I can do it. And that the way I feel about it doesn’t really matter.

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28 Feb 2021

To be filed under: This too shall pass.

Remember a few weeks ago when I lost my shit on a work superior? (Oh, me too…) Well, this week I was told that my husband and I are leaving that job and going on to another. And I could not be happier.

We are going back on the road. This time we head to Connecticut. (Amazon distribution centers aren’t going to build themselves.) And I am so excited for a lot of reasons!

First, people! I will be an hour away from one very close friend, and 2-3 hours away from my friends in NYC. Now, I don’t know what socializing will look like. I have been taking COVID very seriously for the past year. And that means that I have done precious little socializing since March, and none at all since about September. But at least some of my friends have gotten their vaccinations, and my husband and I are eligible for them because of the work we do. (Though currently we have not been able to get an appointment.) So I have high hopes for safe hugs with friends while we are there.

But also, I didn’t want to be on a job for over 2 years working under someone whom I don’t respect and who clearly does not respect me. One of the blessings/curses of having my eating under control is that I see things so clearly. I cannot fail to see them clearly, even if I want to. And my emotions are also front and center, and they are also clear sign posts. That job was either frustrating me with the bureaucracy, angering me with the lack of accountability and leadership, or filling me with dread over the general expectation that we (my husband and I) would turn a bad job good. 

Look, my husband is pretty damn magical at what he does, and he can take something good and make it great. I have seen him do it over and over. But it’s a lot to ask, and an entirely different thing, to take something bad and make it good. And now we don’t have to attempt that anymore. 

A few years ago, I stopped meditating. It was too hard to sit quietly because I was constantly afraid for the future. It was too hard to trust that Life, or the universe, or God, or whatever you want to call it, really was looking out for me. I was terrified all the time. And that made me angry at Life/God.

For a whole decade before that, I had built a life of peace and joy around trusting that Life/God had my back and was giving me only the best. Even if the lesson was painful, I trusted it. I wasn’t afraid of pain anymore. I knew how to sit in it and work through it. But over the past several years, I didn’t trust the pain, or the lessons, or that Life/God was right. I managed my fear, but that was all I could do. 

In probably April of last year, I made a commitment to start meditating again. And it was hard. And I had a hard time being still and trusting. But I did it. Because meditation is meant to be a practice, not a solution. 

The past few months have been a slow release of pressure for me. Not because of meditation. But because of circumstances. And slowly but surely I feel like I am easing back into peace. And easing back into trust. After all, I learned a lot about myself in these past few years, and a lot about who I want to be. And I learned what I wanted to change about myself for myself. This time was a crucible. And I have come out on the other side with much of my past thinking burned away. In other words, Life/God was right. And was giving me the best all along.

And now, being taken off of this particular job is one more piece of the peace puzzle. But the truth is I should have known that peace would return. At least eventually. Because all things pass. And it would do me good to remember that that includes this new found peace. At least for a time.

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21 Feb 2021

I’m giving away social currency.

Over the past 9 years, this blog has been an excellent catalyst for my growth. It is a whole thing to not just have thoughts, but to also send them out into the world. When they rattle around in my head, they are a lot more like blunt objects. Imprecise. Doing a lot more harm than good.

The other day, I was writing a post for this blog about social currency. It was, if I do say so myself, an interesting topic. It’s one I think about a lot. I am a conventionally attractive, still young-ish (43) white woman in a socially acceptable sized body. That is a lot of social currency. 

The thing that made me put it down was that I was having a hard time saying that I want to devalue thinness. 

I am not skinny. I say this all the time in this blog. I am about a size 14 (US.) A L/XL. But I also need to point out that I have been a size 28 (US) and that is objectively fat. 

So at 33, when I was skinny and young and white and just plain gorgeous, I was socially rich in a way I had never experienced before. (Maybe when I was 4. I was a really beautiful little kid.) And now I am the equivalent to upper middle class social currency wise. Still beautiful and white and kind of young. But not skinny anymore. But also not fat.

So I guess what I want to call myself out on today is that so much of what is going on in my head is about my social currency. And how I want to keep what I have. And also how I do not want to be that girl. Because there is another girl, who is also me, who would have had an easier, better, more peaceful life if thinness were not of so much value. And I don’t want to throw 12 and 16 and 18 and 23-year-old Kate to the wolves so that 43-year-old Kate feels like she can keep some societal leverage before she is too old to be “attractive” anymore. And it’s not just young me that I want to protect. I don’t want to throw all of the current fats to the wolves either.

The last several years, but especially this past year has taught me a lot about who I want to be. It has made me ask if I want things at the expense of others. Or if, on the contrary, I am willing to have less than I currently have so that others can have a share. 

I don’t want wonderful things at the expense of others. That, in fact, if it comes at the expense of another person, it is not wonderful. Of the very many things I have learned from having my eating under control, one of the most important is that I have my journey, and everyone else has theirs. That not everything is for me. That life is not a zero sum game. That I don’t need to look at others as competitors. That there is plenty to go around. And that just because some will grasp and claw to get the biggest piece, doesn’t mean I will. Or that I want to. Or that the biggest piece will make me happy. The biggest piece will not, in and of itself, make me happy. That I am very clear on.

When I am thinking rationally, and not out of fear of deprivation, I remember that I *do* want to devalue thinness. Because humans are worthy and lovely and lovable by virtue of existing. Not based on what they eat or if they exercise. I can love a person who is unhealthy (though I am *not* saying that being fat is unhealthy) just for being alive and near and available to be loved. I don’t need people to earn my love with thinness or the desire to achieve thinness, or perceived health. (Though not being an asshole helps a lot!) And I don’t want to live in a world where that makes me weird. So that means I have to devalue thinness myself. For myself. About myself and everyone else.

I also want to reiterate that I love my eating boundaries. That I do not want to give them up. This is not me angling to get some cake. I am happy to live without cake. I just want the fat people who *do* want cake to be able to have it and eat it too.

Also also, this has made me want to go back and revise my post about thinness as social currency. So maybe you’ll see that in the next few weeks?

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24 Jan 2021

I do not have as many hours as Beyoncé. So I have priorities.

I have occasionally written about my bare minimums here. It is the way I manage my time, and therefore, my life. And another way to say that I have priorities. 

One of the lessons from getting my eating under control that took a little longer than many of the others was that I could not get everything done. Not just that I couldn’t get all of the things done today. That I could not get done all of the things I wanted to, period. It was never going to work. 

It was a bit of a hard pill to swallow, frankly. I had my sugar addiction arrested. I was sleeping enough, eating nourishing food, keeping track of my commitments, paying my bills. On time! These were huge, empowering, life-altering shifts to my day-to-day operating. But I still could not get everything done that I wanted to. 

There is a coffee mug that says “You have the same hours in the day as Beyoncé.”(Look, you don’t. Neither do I. Certainly not if you have to drive yourself 45 minutes to and from work. And grocery shop. And blow out your own hair and do your own makeup. And cook dinner for yourself and your family. But I digress.) I hate that saying for more reasons than the fact that it is a lie. I hate it because it implies that there is something grand and specific that you and I should be doing with our time. And that if we are not, we are wasting it.

That mug is implying that there are priorities that you should have and they are in line with the priorities of a multi-millionaire superstar.

Right now, my priorities are basically food boundaries, relationship with husband, bare minimum self-care (exercise, water, meditation), work, and making sure there are clean dishes to cook and eat my meals. That is it. That is the sum total of what I have the energy for. My house is a mess and I don’t care. I am not knitting or crocheting. I am not cooking interesting meals. I am not doing my regular grooming rituals like doing my nails or deep-conditioning my hair. 

One of the best things about priorities is that you have to be really honest about what you want and the amount of time you have. Before I used the tool of prioritizing, I didn’t have to look at the truth about what I could get done because I was living in the lie that I could get it all done. Because, at least in theory, I had the same 24 hours as Beyoncé. But in having the clear head that was the result of giving up my drug foods and having my eating under control, I could see that the math didn’t work out. That it was never going to work out. And I had to make choices.

One of my priorities is, and truly always has been, rest. I need a lot of down time. A lot. I need to daydream. I need silence and space and solitude. 

For much of my life, that seemed like a terrible thing. It was seen as laziness and vanity. It felt wasteful and shameful. And perhaps it was when I had no priorities. 

But now I have priorities. And I honor them. I manage my time and my life. Once I really looked at my life and got specific about what was most important to me, my priorities were obvious. Food first. Husband second. And once those were settled, everything else just clicked right into place. Simple. 

But for me, food first is the priority of all priorities. Without the clarity and peace that having my addictive eating under control brings, I have one priority: sugar. And that “one” priority comes with its own set of other priorities. How to get it, how to eat it without anyone judging me, how to get it out of myself without it showing on my body, how to stop once I started. And with that many priorities, how can anything else stand a chance?

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17 Jan 2021

If I can’t do anything else, I can still be present

I am a person who cries. A lot. And I always have been. But I don’t cry when people expect me to cry. I cry out of frustration, and anger. I cry over not being seen or heard. I cry over being misunderstood or misrepresented. But I don’t cry much over death, real or fictional.  I cry about life and relationships (also real or fictional.) 

Over 10 years ago now, my dad’s mom, who was my first love and the other love of my life besides my husband, died. But I barely cried at her funeral. Because while she was in the hospital from April 2010 to July when she finally went to sleep and didn’t wake up again, I cried. I cried a lot. And I didn’t do almost anything else. I went to work, and I came home, I choked down my meals and I laid out on my roof and I thought about all of the regrets I had; the things I took for granted, the ways I was selfish and self-centered, the times I failed to show up for her even though she showed up for me without fail. 

But I will tell you the other thing that I was doing while I was crying and devastated for 4 months. I was mourning. In real time. So that by the time she was truly gone, all of the shame and the regrets and the sadness of losing her had been dealt with. I came out on the other side of her death having internalized it, dealt with it, and I was complete. 

Look, it helps that we truly liked and loved one another. It was an easy relationship. It was filled with fun and joy and mutual love and respect. We didn’t have a lot of issues to work through. We didn’t have unfinished business. 

But also, my eating had been under control for over 4 years at that point. And I was clear headed and present. I was able to look at myself honestly. I was able to see the world clearly. 

Right now, the US is in a precarious position. For many reasons and due to many factors. And I am so grateful to not be eating compulsively. Because I am dealing with the fear and the uncertainty, the anxiety and the horror, every day, moment-to-moment, in real time.

I don’t have a lot of energy lately. I don’t want to do the things I love. I don’t want to be in touch with people. I don’t have it in me to get things done and take care of the things that need taking care of. I don’t want to clean my house, or paint my nails, or deep condition my hair or any of the things that I do to take care of myself emotionally or physically. 

But I keep my eating and my food under control. I do that without exception no matter what. And thank God. 

I know that a lot of people are eating compulsively right now. And I am not judging. Let me assure you that eating compulsively saved me in my early life. When I didn’t have an understanding of, or a way to deal with, those huge emotions that lived in my little kid body. Eating sugar and using it as a drug *saved* me!!!

But over the past 15 years, after giving up drug foods, or really *because* I gave up my drug foods, I acquired some important tools for managing my stress, for living in the present moment, for listening to my own truth and honoring my head and my heart both.

And I believe that, like I was able to get through the end of my beloved grandmother’s life present and in the moment, I will be able to go through these national and global situations and circumstances in real time, and come out on the other side of this political turmoil having internalized it and dealt with it. I know that I am already dealing with the world, the country, and my place in it. Because I have the tools to manage it. Because having my sugar addiction and compulsive eating arrested means that I can fully digest the events of my life and the world. Even if I can’t do anything else. 

So I fully believe that as long as I keep my eating under control, I can take each moment as it comes and trust that when the dust settles, I will already be complete.

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10 Jan 2021

Moving forward clear-headed and confident

What do I have to say today? Good lord. Who even knows. 

My food has not changed. My addiction didn’t magically disappear because of political turmoil or personal fear and anxiety. So my solution remains the same.

I am afraid. About the future. For myself, and my country. But the events of the past week have offered an excellent reminder. I see things clearly. I understand what I am seeing. I don’t need to second guess myself. I don’t need to doubt myself. And I don’t have to wonder if I am making the wrong choices.

Over the past several months, I have sometimes wondered if I was overreacting in regards to certain relationships, relationships I needed to step back from. I wondered if I should put differences aside. But whenever I really thought about it, thought about letting go of certain personal moral standards, I would cry. Not just cry. Sob. To the point where my husband would get upset. (He is already really bad at dealing with my crying in general – I cry a lot –  and this was serious toddler-level ugly crying.) 

But now I am clear that those tears were helping me. Those were emotions that were reminding me how to honor myself; they were saving me, protecting me, taking care of me. And I could really see and experience and understand them because my food is under control, my addiction is arrested, and my head is clear. 

I don’t know how to move forward from here. But I guess the point is that that is fine. I have done right by myself until now. I will continue to do right by myself as we go along. Because I have my addiction under control, my head is clear, and my commitment to myself, my honor, and my integrity are in tact because I keep my sugar addiction on a tight leash.

I don’t think any of us really knows how to go on right now. The dust hasn’t even settled yet. But when it does, I want to be clear headed and confident. And I do that by keeping my food boundaries and staying well away from my drug foods.

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27 Dec 2020

Problems vs Situations

It is the last post of 2020! And thank heaven! 

On January 1st this year, my husband made our favorite meal, carnitas! And as he took it out of the oven, we heard a weird creaking, and the Pyrex dish that we had been cooking our carnitas in for years, kind of imploded and covered our delicious nuggets of melty, crispy, perfectly seasoned pork with glass. And I had a thought. “I hope this is not an omen for the whole year.”

My friends, it was.

I have been very lucky this year. I have not suffered financially, or been personally sick, or lost a loved one to sickness. I have not personally minded being stuck at home. I like home. Even more than most people. It’s where I wear jammies and read books and comics. And I’m kind of antisocial.

But it has still been a hard year for me. Emotionally. I am an anxious person. I am an emotional person. I am a peri-menopausal person. And it has also been a year of clarity. Of me seeing some things clearly for the first time and having to come to terms with them. Or failing to come to terms with them. All of those things have meant that I have been on a rollercoaster ride of feelings for the majority of this year.

But I did not eat compulsively and I ate all of my strictly portion-controlled meals. Even when I didn’t want to. Because food and eating for me cannot be about my weight or my body. And I cannot safely decide to not eat any more than I can safely decide to eat compulsively.  And that very clear set of boundaries and rules to eat by has made this year bearable. 

There is a saying I like. “Food is my problem. Everything else is just a situation.” 

I can deal with anything as long as I have my eating under control. And I can know that I don’t have to “deal with” everything. Or I can deal with it on my own terms and in my own time. I can get through the day and the week and the month and the year without hating myself. 

I don’t know what will happen in 2021. Let’s face it. The coming year could be worse than this one. There is no guarantee that things will get better. And there is nothing magical about January 1st. Calendars are a man-made construct, obviously. The “new year” used to begin in March for the planting season.

But one whole trip around the sun is still noteworthy. And as this last trip has been a bumpy ride, I’m willing to hope for a better year ahead.

But of course, my point is that no matter what this new year brings, the most important thing for me is to keep my eating boundaries. That way even if Elon Musk hires Carol Baskin to train an army of murder hornets to drive cars, that will still just be a situation to deal with. And not an actual problem.

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20 Dec 2020

The Eternal Holiday Without the Fun

Since I gave up sugar, I have started to care less and less about holidays. 

When I was growing up, I looked forward to holidays. I mean really looked forward to them. There would be parties with special foods, and lots of people. My cousins would all be there to run and play and make an ungodly noise with. Both sides of my family were boisterous. There was always a lot of laughter and funny stories. But child Kate often forgot that those times were also, inevitably, too much. That I would become overstimulated, overwhelmed, overemotional, and overindulged.

As a grownup with her eating under control, I love the ideas of holidays more than I love the days themselves. A holiday is a way to acknowledge certain universal experiences we have because we are humans in bodies living on Earth. Christmas is the celebration of the return of the sun. If, as centuries and cultures, and empires have risen and fallen, it has taken on some other aspects, for example, the return of “a son,” well that is all well and good too. It is still about getting through the long darkness and trusting in the promise of the return of the light and the warmth. The promise that we won’t *all* starve to death. 

And a holiday is a day to forget our personal troubles and celebrate the enormity of life. It is a time to raise our consciousness above the idea of self and embrace humanity.

Addiction is a lot like trying to live in an eternal holiday. You’re trying to ride the same wave as Christmas, but every day, while nobody else is celebrating, and you don’t get the time off of work and school. It is like trying to forget your mundane self, and only live in the ecstasy of universality. But that is just too much for an individual to maintain. Trust me. I did the research for you.

When I gave up simple sugars and carbohydrates, I had to come to appreciate the simplicity of the day-to-day. I had to come to appreciate when nothing special was going on. I had to get comfortable in the calm. And I came to discover that I loved the calm. Once I had exorcised my demons, anyway. 

I realized that I had hated the peace of daily life because I didn’t have any peace. If I were calm for a moment, I would think about the wrongs that I had done. I would be haunted by the things I was ashamed of. And the ways I had hurt others and disappointed myself. But I had done a lot of those things *because* of my addiction. It was a vicious cycle and I didn’t know where it began or ended. And I could not seem to unravel it.

It turned out that giving up my drug foods was the answer. Or, at least the first step. There would be many other things to do about it. Acknowledge my wrongdoings, make amends for them, change my actions, shift my thinking. But all of those things started with getting my eating under control.

So now my eating is under control. And I love my day-to-day living. I am happy with my integrity, and my willingness, and my life. And I don’t need to live like every day is a holiday. In fact, I don’t even need to live like holidays are holidays. 

I will miss my nieces and nephews this year. I will miss tickling babies and reading books to the bigger ones. I will miss exclaiming over dollar gifts from the elementary school‘s Santa’s workshop. But I will still be perfectly happy laying around in my adult-sized onesie and drinking coffee and doing nothing this year. There will be more Christmases to come. And as for this year, I don’t have any shames or fears or worries that I need to numb.

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18 Oct 2020

Gratitude for my very normal, very human body

I used to be angry at my body all the time. It was my enemy, and I treated it accordingly. Mostly, I hated it because it was not the size or shape other girls’ and women’s bodies were. It did not look the way magazines and television told me it should look, and indeed *could* look if I worked hard enough.

I was smart and interesting and funny. I had a wonderful mind. So I felt like a brilliant human stuck in a broken vessel. Broken is a great way to express what I thought of my body. Broken like a machine. Bad parts. A lemon.

When I got my eating under control I started to think about my body in a different way. First, giving up man made sugars, and most grains and starches, made my body smaller. And while I could not really change the shape of my body without surgery, I started to think about all of the ways that it served me, even when I was abusing it. 

And I didn’t just abuse it with drug foods. I abused it with over exercising to the point of injury, and still exercising more because I wanted it to be thin, but I couldn’t stop eating. I abused it with laxatives. I drank castor oil. Eventually, I started to stick toothbrushes down my throat to make myself throw up the food that I could not stop eating. 

But when I got my eating under control, I necessarily had to have a different relationship with my body. I had to ask not what my body could do for me, but ask what I could do for my body. Not to whip it into shape. Not to make it lovable and attractive to anyone who happened to be in its vicinity, but to make sure it was taken care of. For me, because it *was* me. Make sure it was nourished and hydrated and strong and healthy. 

And that changed how I dealt with all of the unappealing parts of having a body. I am 43. My hormones are crazy right now. And I should probably expect that to continue for maybe another 10 years. That is a whole *decade*!!! But also, that is normal. It is completely expected for my woman’s body to experience this.

And this past week was hard. I was exhausted all week. I needed to lay on the couch and do nothing, not even knit or crochet! I had several outbreaks of cystic acne which are painful as well as ugly. I was cranky and sad and did lots of crying. And at least half of it was *not* over imaginary characters in novels, comics and TV shows. And of course, I still had to do all of the things that I have to do. I had to prep food and clean the kitchen (I totally half assed a lot of that, and my husband did some as well) and do the shopping and go to work.

But because I have a level of clarity about my life and my body from having my food taken care of, I am not angry at my body. I do not blame it for doing what bodies do. I feel like it is a very modern concept to think of one’s body as getting in the way of one’s life. We have created so many workarounds to get out of dealing with our physical humanity, that we don’t necessarily see what is natural and good. We spend so much time powering through, that we think our bodies are the problem, and not the lifestyle we have created that doesn’t have any room for the basic needs of actually *being* a carbon-based machine.

My eating boundaries have given me a sense of reality about my body. Not only about what it can and should look like in the real world (not according to the latest Photoshopped ad for designer jeans, or the ad promoting some supplement guaranteed to make you lose 10 pounds in 10 days), but also how I can expect to feel and what I can expect to be able to do. Realistically. Because I have a normal body doing normal things.

I like my full life. I like my job and my commitments. I like the people I work with and the friends that I have. I am not campaigning for less modern conveniences. I love my gadgets and my technology. I just don’t want to forget that my body is not some separate gadget. It doesn’t need an upgrade. It isn’t in the way of my life. It is my life. It is me. And I show myself how much I love me, by loving my body and honoring it exactly as it is. Flawed and sometimes uncomfortable, and gloriously, normally human.

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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