I have a weight issue.
Before you think this is a whine about how people see me, or
some sad tale of discrimination, it is not.
This is my story, but only as it relates to the way I am trying to live
my life in complete honesty, completely in the present, more so than ever
before, and how this one issue had (has) me living with fear, clouding my
thoughts, and even running to a place that could best be described as
hiding.
I don’t like hiding, though as I tell this story, you might
get some of why I did, and why I could very easily do it again. I own it, I am fucked up. This is my
shit. All laid on the table. If I can get all philosophical and empowered
for a second, I am going to quote Maya Anjelou and say I did the best I could,
and when I knew better I did better.
This is part of my doing better, more bricks and matches, building
strong places to be, and burning the rest.
At my current weight, I am still a little over 50 pounds
over the absolute top of the scale for “healthy” weight for my height and
age. This is actually a slight point of
pride, because there was a time (admittedly while taking large amounts of
hormonal fertility drugs, injected daily) that I was a little over 100 pounds
over that top number. No praise for
the weight loss at all because honestly most of it came off when my marriage
ended and I stopped taking the meds. Oh, and I stopped eating because
everything made me want to throw up. I
was a mess, and only by the Universe’s grace did I not disappear completely.
I was a fat kindergartener. It was the first time I had the
word obese put on my medical charts, when, at my 6 year old check up, I was 62
pounds, when the national averages chart had kids my age around 42 pounds. Yep, 20 pounds over what I should have
been. I was a popular kid, had tons of
friends, was already smarter (as measured by some other national averages
chart) than most of the kids (okay, all of the kids). I learned right then that I could hide behind being smart and
clever, and if someone (even as an elementary schooler) would say something I
didn’t like, I could burn them to the ground with any one of a dozen things to
make them feel like idiots.
I didn’t like that about myself even back then, and changed
the whole mean kid thing by junior high, when all of a sudden having people
(read that as boys) actually like me for being a nice person seemed
important. I learned really quickly
that if I made friends with the popular boys by getting them through their
classes, then I would never be picked on for my weight. I was strong, and semi athletic (I got
chosen pretty quickly for teams), and had the backing of the academically
challenged boys on my side. I never did
their homework for them, or in any way cheated, but I did tutor them, teach
them on the side without anyone knowing, praised them completely, building up
their self-esteem as the competent leaders I always saw in them. For my effort, I had all the boys as
friends, protectors, confidants. What I didn’t have was any boys paying
attention to me in a way that let me be a girl. I was already invisible that way, and the few crushes I admitted
to having in a spark of complete honesty was always (almost without fail) met
with “You are great, really, but….”. I
knew, already, that boys would always see my outsides first, and not see any
more of my insides than I showed them.
Huge huge walls.
Around this time, I was also placed in a “program” for fat
kids. Once a week, my mom took me a
meeting with other fats kids at the hospital.
There we were supposed to talk about nutrition, about having a good
body, about how our eating patterns would get us judged, about shame and
worthiness. I don’t remember ever once
talking about what we could actually do to get our parents (who all seemed to
have food, alcohol, drug, or control issues) to buy something other that crap
food. It was 1978. I drank real sugar Kool-aid and ate butter
laden foods, and had a mom with completely messed up ideas about starvation and
food-waste. My dad was fat, I was fat,
and my brother was stick thin because he refused to eat most of the time. What I do remember about the class was that
we weighed in every week, and as a reward for losing a ¼ pound at any given
time, we were allowed to color a section of a drawing on a paper that would
show our progress. The most sick thing
about that was that the drawing was of puffy bubble letters that spelled the
word “FAT”. I am not sure I ever completed a whole page to fill in the drawing
before my mom made me stop going because clearly her daughter was too unwilling
to change enough to lose weight.
Unwilling. Yeah,
that became a pretty big accusation. It
must have been my stubborn streak and my complete disregard for everyone else’s
feelings that kept me fat. I was told that over and over again. I would be so pretty if I just lost
weight. I was so smart, too bad I was
so fat. If I loved you, I would just
lose the weight so that you could be happy, be willing to be around me, and
maybe, just maybe, love me back. My
mom, my sex partners, my husband, all let me be just my body, no matter how
much my heart was breaking.
So I played the game.
If they were going to only see my packaging, I would not show them
anything else. My fat suit became my
justification for no one ever being allowed to know me. I built walls and told myself that I was
safe. A total fucked up lie, but my
lie, and I was good with it.
Until I wasn’t.
Until the love I was giving to my husband became a weapon of verbal
abuse. I have written tons about this
before, about my own sickness and depression, and how I allowed myself to stay
there in some messed up safety net. I
didn’t want to have to change. I didn’t
want to have to think something new. I
had hit my own type of pathetic bottom, and finally left the marriage, battered
and bruised and hurting, and no tools what-so-ever to cope.
So, I went back to old patterns. Give the relationships
(read that as men) what they wanted, and they never had to see me. And I could wear my fat suit, and justify
being not seen, and I could just become whatever they wanted or needed. A total fucked up lie, but again, my lie,
and I was good with it.
Until I wasn’t.
For a long time, I just did not get into any relationships.
I recently had the opportunity to talk to some of the men I had been doing this
with. I asked them “Tell me something you know about Elise?” The answer varied. Two men said I gave good blow jobs (Was that a compliment?). One said that he liked that I didn’t mind
that he left after sex (I did mind, but I never told him that.). The most complex conversation (with a really
intelligent man who I was fucking every other weekend) was about how he thought
I was great, but that he never knew who I was, and that even when he asked me
to move to another state with him, he knew it was only to meet his needs since
that was all I ever did for him, and he had gotten used to me being that for
him. I told him about being told I give
good blowjobs, and he laughed, and said yeah, duh, but that he wondered if that
was just me hiding some more. He never
even knew my kids’ names. We had
“dated” off and on for 7 months. He
knew almost nothing about me.
Back when he left, my world started to change slightly. I started to work on myself. I started to reach out to make the relationships
(not with men) start to work. I opened
my heart up to friends and started being super honest about everything. I started working on building my village and
finding support for my failings, and letting people call me out on my
bullshit. I got lucky, blessed even,
that in that building of friendships some small shift in the way I saw myself
changed, and all of a sudden my body was not the most important aspect. My mind and heart, and dare I say my love,
took over. I thought, for the first
time in a long time (could it have that time of recovery since my divorce?)
that everything I felt about my body would and could be over ridden by enough
love.
And I opened my heart to that complete possibility. If you need to know the details, go read my
blog titled “cracks in the mortar” about falling in love, and being really good
with who I was, who I am inside of love.
I was free to love completely.
It was amazing, and has been amazing, to feel that kind of release of me
not hiding. All in.
But, back to my weight.
Very, very recently, that nasty little issue cropped again. I am fat.
Let me say it again, at my current weight, I am still a little over 50
pounds over the absolute top of the scale for “healthy” weight for my height
and age. What the fuck. No matter how much love I have to give, no
matter how honest I am inside of relationship, I will still be fat, and that
either needs to change, or I need to go back into hiding.
For the first time, maybe ever, I know better. If I am going to live in complete honesty
and continue to build real relationships, I need to want to do something
different.
And for the last ten days, I have. With the help of two serendipitously coincidental events, I have
had yet another small shift in my world.
I admitted, with some tears and some fear, to the best friend I have
ever had, that I needed some accountability to keep my health and my body from
being yet another time that I go into hiding.
At the same time, I had some professional photos taken. The photographer has always had a gift for
finding the most amazing light and angles that leave the viewer breathless, and
the subject in disbelief.
Out of the set, one photo (of a whole group of amazing
photos) still leaves me feeling the most beautiful I think I have ever
felt. You cannot see my face at all,
but the front of my body, nude but for a silk robe, from my neck to the middle
of my body. My breasts are partially
exposed, but not in a rude or vulgar way.
What makes this photo different is the other participant. A man, who for all reasons unknown, I have
been 100% honest with. I have not
hidden from him, not even once. My
heart completely open, completely vulnerable, completely willing to love him
with no expectation of him ever feeling anything in return. But in the less than five minutes that it
took to get that photo, he was present to me, too, and it was caught on
film.
Knowing now, that in this moment of my life, my body is
important. I never knew that. It has so often in my past been a source of
cruelty and judgment, a tool to control, and a justification that I could hide
behind. But, because of this small shift, Maya Angelou has hit me upside my
head with one of my own bricks and said “enough”. Take off your fat suit, get your shit together, and do
better. Not just the weight, but the
whole emotional fucked up blockage that the fat suit brings.
Okay, for the self love people out there, who are about to
bash my thinking, don’t worry. This is
not an attempt at becoming thinner or measuring my body by someone else’s
design. I think I it is just me
thinking that I want something different.
I WANT to feel the way the photo made (still makes) me feel about
myself. Loved. Honored. Beautiful.
Worthy.
Now, what am I going to do about it? Well, I am going to do
what I have been doing successfully with my emotions for a while now. I am going to ask for help. I am going to take every bit of advice I can
learn, and I am going to trust the people in my world to love me. I am ten days (and 6 pounds down)
already. See the photo below and know
that it, and some amazing support, might just make all the difference. Patience for sure, and time. It will not be easy, I have no doubt, but
that is okay. Everything worth having is worth working for, and I know that
better now. Turns out, love is like that.
So maybe it was not a weight issue at all.
