infinitedoover-blog

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Why is accepting kindness so hard?

The origin of my internal balance sheet is ... well, I’m not sure exactly what the origin of it is. It probably has something to do with the idea of needing to make myself useful, and how do you make yourself useful? You do things for people; you gain the reputation of being dependable, reliable, count-on-able, as someone who’s always willing to pitch in. Useful becomes indispensable. Indispensable becomes needed. And if I’m needed, then they’ll keep me around, regardless of my weight or appearance.

Or something like that.

But that’s a discussion for another day.

The point here is that I have this balance sheet, and even though it doesn’t dictate my life on a daily basis, it does reside ever in the ether, at the edge of my consciousness.

This is important, as it relates to the question of kindness, ultimately, because a I view a kindness as a tick mark in the red, something I need to pay back or offset in some way in order to stay, over all, in the black. (Not that I’m ever in the black, understand, but to stay, at least, as little in the red as possible.)

Does this mean I keep track of every single kind word or act that comes my way? No. I’m tracking the ones related to my size, my (lack of) speed, my inability to do the things a normal person does. I don’t feel I have to repay every time someone laughs at my dad jokes, or humors my tirades on poor grammar in song lyrics and commercials, or calls me out of the blue to say hello. (Thank goodness.) 

No, it’s the times I have to leave for a meeting across campus an hour early and return an hour after it’s over because I have to be sure I find a parking space and can get to the room and find a chair that will fit me. It’s the times I should be the one running out to the impromptu concert on the quad or taking candid photos of campus for social media and can’t because I can’t run anywhere and there’s no such thing as a stroll across campus for me. 

It’s the times I say no to being my best friend’s maid of honor because I know I can’t stand for three minutes, let alone the duration of a wedding ceremony. 

It’s the times I don’t go home for Easter or Christmas or summer vacation because I don’t want anyone at home to see me.

So we come to this week’s question: Why is accepting kindness so difficult?

The short answer is because I’m already drowning, and the swell of kindness red marks would simply overwhelm me and roll me, crashing headlong into the rocks, holding me under.

The longer answer is this:

1. I manipulate people, and then feel guilty about it

Take yesterday. I had trouble sleeping, like waking up once an hour or more, never getting comfortable, having trouble falling back to sleep, getting more and more anxious as the night wore on. So I emailed work that I had a rough night and would be in by noon. Around 10, I decided nah, I’m just not going in. No good reason (I’d been able to sleep a few more hours), I just didn’t feel like moving. I emailed again and said that I was dealing with remnants of a migraine, that the headache was mostly gone, but I was still feeling dizzy, and so would work from home. And I did do some work at home, but ... 

I wasn’t sick. I hadn’t had a migraine. I wasn’t dizzy. I just didn’t want to move, didn’t want to shower. Didn’t want to walk. Didn’t want to feel how hard it was to walk. 

So I lied. 

And the wonderful people I work with believed me and asked if I needed anything, and told me to rest and recover. 

Sometimes we all need mental health days, and I get that. I don’t begrudge anyone those days, and I don’t feel guilty when I take them myself. 

But this wasn’t a mental health day. Not in that same sense. This was a day I just didn’t want to deal with, and instead of owning up to that, I manipulated people I care about and took advantage of an established (and accepted) medical issue I have. Because, let’s face it, it’s not like I can call in fat.

2. The baggage that comes with accepting kindness

There is an elaborate dance that comes with accepting kindness, and frankly, I don’t have the energy for it.

The dance is this:

Something happens to shed light on the fact that I cannot operate like a normally functioning adult woman. This could be anything from not being able to wear a light-colored shirt because the only bras I have that I can physically put on are black to bailing on a meeting because I can’t make the walk to the meeting location.

Someone notices/knows my struggle and tries to be kind, accommodating, understanding.

I’m mortified and embarrassed, trying not to show it so as not to make the other person feel uncomfortable or awkward for acknowledging my struggle or suggesting that I’m struggling.

The other person often comments on my strength, my resilience, how inspiring it is that I don’t let my struggles get me down.

Not wanting to kill the person’s impression of me as capable and positive—and not wanting to be a total buzzkill for him/her—I deflect.

Buoyed by my deflection, the other person often makes observations, suggestions, and recommendations about things I could do to lose weight, ways I could tweak my routine, my eating habits, and a thousand other things. 

I simmer and remind myself of the person’s good intentions and inability to know that there is nothing he or she could tell me, no idea of which he or she could conceive, that I haven’t already thought.

This is also when the person typically confides his or her own “indulgences” or “problem areas,” likening our struggles as if we’re in the same boat.

And I find myself comforting him or her, sharing encouragement, trying to display empathy, when I really want to shake the person and shout that of course, our struggles are not the same. 

We part ways, and my hope is that the other person feels lighter, happy for having shown compassion, bolstered for having shared some personal tidbit, and secure in the knowledge that he or she did a good deed.

And I’m exhausted by maintaining the charade.

The thing is, I know, I KNOW, these people are good hearted. I know they mean well. I know they care and are, truly, simply being kind. 

That’s why I don’t rear back and bite their heads off.

To be continued...

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What I believe

I believe

I’m lazy

Unmotivated

That I’ve tried everything

But also that I haven’t tried anything with any sort of conviction

That I have no conviction

No willpower

No discipline

No faith in myself to change

I believe

I’m too far gone

That the weight is too much to lose

That what I can do is too little, too ineffective

I believe

I must not really want to change

That I’m fully capable, but unwilling to make different choices

I believe

I don’t deserve the patience and understanding of others

That I’m already indebted to them, and their kindness is just piling on more that I’ll have to payback somehow

That I do deserve the discomfort and pain and shame I feel

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Broke my desk chair today. Awesome.

Me, this morning

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Why can’t I learn?

I’m a learner in a lot of ways.

My resourcefulness is one of my better qualities, and my ability to just “figure it out” when I have no earthly idea what I’m doing has resulted in my designing of magazines at the Elms, and my taking pictures that have been enlarged and framed (and not just by family members!), and leading my establishing and now leading a social media presence for a liberal arts college.

This quality is straight-up my dad, alive inside my head. 

He taught me that you have to make yourself useful. Do the jobs no one else wants to do. (Hello, being cast as a custodial hostess at Disney World, which turned into piloting the animal presenter/super greeter advanced internship.) Be willing to learn from everyone. (Oh, you want me to shadow the web manager so I can be her functional backup, even though I don’t know a lick of code?) Volunteer. (Sure, I’ll serve on the reaccreditation committee and the emergency management team.)

Making yourself useful is how you make yourself valuable.

And making yourself valuable is how you make yourself invaluable.

So I’m a learner. 

A couple weeks ago, I was proofreading an information sheet on our bioethics program, and I corrected a sentence that ended with a phrase in quotation marks. The author had put the question mark outside the quotation marks.

Oh no, no, no. Punctuation (except semicolons, colons, em and en dashes, and sometimes ellipses) goes inside the quote marks.

Except it doesn’t. 

From the Associated Press Stylebook:

PLACEMENT WITH QUOTATION MARKS: Inside or outside, depending on the meaning:

Who wrote "Gone With the Wind"?

He asked, "How long will it take?"

In other words: If the question mark applies to the whole sentence, the whole thought, and not just the part in quotations, then the question mark goes outside the quote marks.

I have literally been doing this incorrectly my whole life. Or, at least, since I started working at Puget Sound, where we adhere (with some standard deviations) to AP style.

I just... I learned it that punctuation goes inside quote marks. As as I’ve learned additional punctuation, such as the en and em dashes, I looked up where to place them, and learned what to do. But it never occurred to me to look up question marks because I had learned what to do with them already! I thought I knew.

I’m not gonna lie. That stung. It physically hurt me to learn I’d been using the mark incorrectly all these years. But not only that... that I’d also been “correcting” other people. Erroneously! I took it really personally. I was ashamed and chagrined and embarrassed. 

And you might be thinking, Sarah, wth? It’s not really a big deal. Twelve people know the rule and might actually catch your errors. Probably only four of them would be confident enough to call you out on it. So, get over it. It’s really fine.

And, of course, it is really fine. 

But knowing that doesn’t lessen my indignation. Knowing that doesn’t make me cringe any less when I now see or use a question mark at the end of a sentence with a quoted phrase. Knowing that, yes, of course, it really is fine doesn’t actually make it fine with me. 

And therein lies the rub.

Rebecca asked me why I’m so much harder on myself for learning this lesson than for figuring out how to make a table borderless in our CMS. Why does this lesson make me cringe, when the lesson about how the lapel mics don’t work during Facebook Live rolled right off my back?

Why does this lesson matter differently? Why do I hold onto it so tightly?

Because proofreading is kinda my thing! Because AP style is kinda my thing! Because I’m a writer and an editor and it’s my job to be the person who catches and corrects exactly this kind of thing. 

Because it’s who I am.

...

It’s hard to learn this lesson about the question mark because being an editor, having an expertise in the written word... that’s who I am. And not knowing something so fundamental... being wrong about something so basic... It cuts me off at the knees. It pulls into question everything I know.

And everything I know about myself.

Rebecca is on my case all the time about being a psychic. About me being a psychic. I must be one, after all, if I know how I’m going to act in the future, right?

She’ll talk to me about parking a couple parking spots away from where I normally park every day to walk a little further, and, more important, to prove to myself that I’m able to walk a little further. And I tell her, “But I know I won’t do that.”

Instead of ordering 10 tacos at Taco Time, order eight.  But I know I won’t.

When you’re putting meals together, think about the perfect plate. Not the portions, don’t worry about that, just the diversity of types of food. Vegetables, protein, carbs.  But I know I won’t.

Tonight when you go home, move one of the dressers from your front room to your bedroom. Just one.  But I know I won’t.

Ok, don’t even worry about moving the dresser, just clear a path so you can think about moving it sometime in the future. But I know I won’t.

You get the idea.

How do I know those things? How do I KNOW them? 

Because I know myself, I say. I’ve had 37 years of observing my behavior, and I will do the least amount of work possible, put forth the least amount of effort. If it takes effort, I know I won’t do it. I’ll look for a way around. 

I KNOW this about myself. 

Except

Doesn’t that fly directly in the face of everything I said earlier about being a learner? About making yourself useful and valuable and invaluable? 

Why am I so unwilling to learn something new about myself?

Is this so much a part of my identity that even entertaining the thought that I could choose—that I could choose—to behave differently threatens my identity and makes me cling that much more tightly?

If I’m such a learner, why can’t I learn this?

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Life or Death

Rebecca last week at therapy:

“There’s a part of you that wants to live. And a part of you that wants to die. Both exist in you and are duking it out right now, each moment. Sit with each part. What in you wants to die? What’s that about? What in you wants to live? What feeds each part of you?”

Well shit.

She has asked me some version of these questions before. Usually by asking, simply, do you want to die? To which, of course, I respond no. 

But sometimes I don’t respond very quickly. 

Do you want to die? 

In my head: NO! Of course I don’t want to die! Who wants to die? I’m not suicidal. I’m not jumping off a bridge or putting a pistol in my mouth. If I wanted to die, there are way easier and more decisive ways of making that happen.

Simultaneously in my head: Yeah buuuuuut... you often think about how easy it would be to just drive off the road. Especially when you’re driving over bridges. And you are actually kind of suicidal because you eat and eat and eat and it’s not like you’re getting any joy from it. You don’t even want to eat half the time, but you do it anyway, and often to a point where you feel sick, and why? Maybe you do want to die. After all, if you didn’t, wouldn’t you be working harder not to?

And that’s where I get hung up. 

Do I want to die? Or do I just not want to live?

Wanting to die seems to take effort. If I were truly suicidal, I could go buy a gun, I could drive into oncoming traffic (I’d never do that, though because I wouldn’t want to injure innocent people), or I could go to a bridge and jump off it. 

But that takes effort. I’d have to actually jump. 

This way, what I’m doing, is just not doing anything. Which sounds an awful lot like sloth.

The Pocket Catholic Catechism says:

Sloth is the desire for ease, even at the expense of doing the known will of God. Whatever we do in life requires effort. Everything we do is to be a means of salvation. The slothful person is unwilling to do what God wants because of the effort it takes to do it. Sloth becomes a sin when it slows down and even brings to a halt the energy we must expend in using the means to salvation.

I like the way VintageChurch puts it, too:

In Hit List, Brian Hedges defines the sin of sloth with four characteristics: (1) carelessness, (2) unwillingness to act, (3) half-hearted effort, and (4) becoming easily discouraged by any possible difficulty.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I find myself falling into my normal habit of trying desperately to identify and define the problem rather than answer the questions and do the work. 

Do I want to die?

Let’s get over this hurdle by just picking a side. Yes. There’s a part of me that wants to die. 

What in me wants to die?

I think this is the part of me that wants to hide under a rock, the part that hides chocolate in my desk drawer, the part that goes out to eat with friends then picks up a second meal at the drive-thru on the way home. Why does this part of me want to die? What is she avoiding?

Reality, right?

The truth is so overwhelming. It seems impossible to change, impossible to overcome. My fate feels decided already. 

Intellectually I know that I can change. ought to be able to change. I know that my brain is capable of learning new skills. I know that I have command over my faculties and can make different decisions and choices.

But it feels futile. 

Do I want to live?

I would say this is a pretty obvious yes. After all, I’m not hurtling through space to a watery grave, so...

What in me wants to live?

This trips me up. I could list a bunch of things that I’d like to do and be—and I often do just that when faced with this question—but are those things that make me want to live? Nah. If they were, I would be trying harder to live, right? I love my family; I want to be a role model for my nieces and nephews; I want to show up for my friends in their lives; I don’t want to give Dad any reason to worry about me. 

Yeah... and?

The heart of this question, to me, is, What do I live for? (Or the even more terrifying, What do I have to live for?) 

And to that, I really have no answer. 

I don’t live for my family. I don’t live for my friends. I don’t have a child or significant other who depends on me. I’m not integral to my church or community. I’m not influential over or significant to any sizable group of people. 

This isn’t me downplaying my importance; it’s just the truth. 

What about the one thing I believe to be my purpose in life, the reason I was brought into existence? Do I live to write? Nope.

So what do I live for? West Wing marathons? Buying camera lenses I rarely use? Corny jokes?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

Sigh.

I think about that, and those few years I researched the wazoo out of depression come flooding back. 

Hello, apathy, my old friend. 

So, how much of this is truth, and how much is depression-clouded listlessness?

I don’t know. Seems like it would take a lot of effort to figure out.

Meh.

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Why not approach recovery like a road trip?

So, it’s been a while.

I didn’t post much in the spring, though I was journaling more than I have in ages. Something about screen exhaustion, I think. I spend my days at the computer, and when I get home, though I zone out to the tv, there’s something wearing about the idea of opening up my laptop for another few hours of screen time.

So I was handwriting some this spring. Venting, deep thoughts, notes to self, dreams, homework from Rebecca, grocery lists. The whole shebang. 

And I have starts. Drafts. 17 of them, I think. I’m not sure I’ll ever finish them.

I also get hung up on the idea that a blog like this needs to be in chronological order. To show progress. To make sense when I reread it. To keep it from being a jumbled mess. To make sure I don’t get ahead of myself.

Does that really matter? Maybe not.

Last month (May) I took a three-week vacation. 

I left Tacoma on Monday afternoon, and drove the first leg of a five-day trek to Ohio, where I would stay for about 10 days, before driving back.

I needed this, I told people. I needed the break from my computer screen, the rolled-down window, the turned-up radio, the open road.

I also needed to not fly.

The last time I was home was 2011, and that was for a funeral. And I was sick with a bad case of the flu. 

I decided to make the trip about a year ago, when my brother told me my niece and goddaughter was planning to ask me to attend her college graduation. It was the same weekend of my second cousin’s wedding, a girl I used to babysit. Seemed like the universe was encouraging me to spend the weekend in Ohio.

A year, I thought, no problem. I know I can’t lose a ton of weight in that time, but I should be able to lose some, and I should certainly be able to work up the strength and endurance to walk around and stand around and attend functions without too much trouble.

And then it was 10 months until May. Then eight. Then suddenly it was January, and I was going home in May. And I was heavier. Less mobile. Weaker. More ashamed. 

I knew I couldn’t fly. Not fitting in an airline seat was, frankly, the least of my worries. I couldn’t walk to the gate without stopping and resting every few yards. My dad would pick me up at the airport, and I wouldn’t be able to walk with him to the car. Heck, I wouldn’t be able to walk with him to baggage claim. Or stand and wait at baggage claim.

Ok, yes, I could walk there, but not without stopping to rest. Not without sweating a ton. Not without heaving and gasping and running out of breath. Then, could I get into his van? Could I pull myself up into the passenger seat? Could I buckle the seatbelt? If I couldn’t, would it beep incessantly the entire 50-minute drive home?

So I decided on a road trip.

The truth is, I did need the break from my computer screen, the rolled-down window, the turned-up radio, and the open road. But what I needed more was the comfort of my car, which I know I fit in (if not especially comfortably), the relative safety of being able to control at least one facet of the trip, of having a backup plan if I discovered I can’t sleep in a hotel bed, of knowing, push come to shove, I could offer to drive so I wouldn’t have to worry about breaking someone else’s car seat.

These are the things I worry about.

I’ve spent the last several months anxious about this trip.

I can’t sleep lying down in my own bed; how am I going to sleep in someone else’s?

I take water pills, which make me have to pee every couple hours; will there be enough rest stops for me? and will I be able to maneuver in rest stop bathrooms? 

Can I ride with Alex and Shelley to the graduation so I don’t have to walk from heaven knows wherever I find a parking spot? Can I climb into Alex and Shelley’s minivan? Will there be a bench or a folding chair or someplace for me to sit at the ceremony, since I won’t be able to fit in the theater-style seats?

Or maybe it would be better if I drove separately, made up some excuse why I couldn’t find them in the auditorium, and just streamed the ceremony on my phone in the car, so I could talk about it later, as if I’d been inside.

Should I take food? Should I plan on cooking dinner a few times while I’m home? What recipes can I make that would be relatively easy, and that wouldn’t make it seem too odd to have a chair in the kitchen, since I can’t stand at the stove or when I chop vegetables?

Should I take my own bath towels so I don’t dirty the ones Deb will have out for me? That way I won’t have to worry about going down to the basement to do laundry before I leave. Should I sleep on top of the covers so I won’t have to change the bed? 

If I can sleep, that is.

I had no idea how I would travel. If it would work. What would work. How long I’d be able to drive before my legs swelled up and I’d need to stop. If my legs would swell up. How often I’d need to stop to use the bathroom. Whether I’d sleep well and get up early each morning to hit the road, or sleep poorly, and stop frequently for cat naps. Or if I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, and have to change my plans to drive at night and sleep at rest stops intermittently along the way.

So I didn’t make any plans. No sights to see. No hotel reservations in advance. I picked a spot I thought I ought to be able to get to, mapped a route that should get me there, and then started driving, and figured I’d see how things went and adjust as needed.

I needed that, too.

I needed to just see what I could do, how I could adjust, if I could adjust. And there was no real way for me to do that without just doing it.

This is not the normal way I operate. 

I’m a planner. I’m an analyzer. I’m a measure 14 times, cut once-er.

Except when I’m not.

And then, when I’m not, I’m a screw-it-let’s-just-go-er.

Normally I chalk those moments up to following my gut, which I trust implicitly to make major life decisions without much second guessing. This trip wasn’t really like that so much as it was entering uncharted territory filled with shame and embarrassment, and desperately avoiding dealing with any of it until the last possible moment.

So it was with mild surprise that I listened to Rebecca suggest I approach my weight/binge eating/obesity with the same ... shall we say ... flexibility.

Why not approach your recovery like you did this road trip, she asked.

By that she meant, with an open mind, without the notion that a single path was not the only route to arrive at my destination, and with the grace to make adjustments and take side trips and correct wrong turns along the way.

It’s an interesting idea. 

I feel compelled to point out, of course, that I didn’t approach my road trip that way inspired by some new zen philosophy that I thought valuable, but rather out of necessity and fear.

I’m not sure that matters.

Can I approach my situation like I did my road trip? Is it worth a try?

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Well, that’s a new experience.

Yesterday morning, getting dressed for work, I had a totally new and unexpected experience.

I put on clothes that were too big for me.

Before you congratulate me, rest assured this isn’t because I’ve lost weight or slimmed down in any way. I found myself a victim of the fate that befalls so many people in this same situation. I made an assumption, and I was terribly wrong.

A few weeks back, maybe even a month or two ago, I was shopping for clothes online, as I’m wont to do when in desperate need of some item of clothing, and I spotted a sale on underwear. Normally the underwear I buy is like $12 or $15 a pair—not because it’s fancy or lacy or designer, but because, I’ve always assumed, it requires a few yards of fabric.

So, when I saw a special 10-pack for about $40, I was stoked. I ordered the largest size—because I always order the largest size—and didn’t think twice about it until I started to put a pair on yesterday morning.

They felt a little larger than my normal underwear, but I still didn’t think much of it, until I realized they don’t stay up on their own. In fact, I had to ball up the sides, double them over, and tuck them under my roll of fat to keep them in place. I was in a pinch, as I’d run out of clean (fitting) underwear.

I haven’t tried a piece of clothing on that was too big for me in probably 15 years. 

I have been reaching for or ordering the largest size available in whatever I was buying for at least the last five years.

It never occurred to me to double check the size when I ordered them. The size is meaningless. I remember years ago, when Lane Bryant changed the way it sized its jeans, so that instead of 14/16, 18/20, 22/24, 26/28, it was now a size 6, which had x, y, and z waist, hip, and inseam measurements, I think. I believe it was an effort to get a better fit, but I just saw it as a marketing ploy to make us fat people feel less bad about the size of pants we were buying. 

Meanwhile, what did it matter to me, I was looking for 30/32.

Something similar happened more recently with the underwear. A year or two ago, I realized I couldn’t buy 26/28 underwear anymore; the sizes were literally 1, 2, 3, and so on. So I just found the largest size, 15 or 16, I think, and bought those. They fit, so I’ve continued buying them.

So I find what I think is going to be a good deal, 10 pairs—TEN!—for less than 50 bucks! And I get the largest size, because that’s what I get. And they’re too big.

Ugh, the irony.

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Why I want to punch Oprah in the face (a short list):

You love bread? Congratulations. You’re now part of the 99% of Americans who don’t have celiac disease.

Wait wait wait. You mean to tell me that the secret to weight loss and healthy eating is to manage it? Why didn’t I think of that??

By the way, Oprah owns about 10% of WW, so, as a savvy business woman, it’s no surprise that she would hawk the product to make a profit (about $12.5 million just for tweeting this very commercial, even though the stock bump seems to be fading).

Look, Oprah’s had to deal with shit from everyone under the sun for her careerlong battle with her weight and body image. If WW is working for her this time, and helping her be healthy and happy? Great. 

But she’s no fool. She has built an empire of loyal lemmings who would follow her off a cliff if she asked, and when you pair that with the desperation that often comes with the desire to lose weight and the eternal hope that this time it will work... you have millions ripe for the recruiting.

Moderation? It’s not a revelation, Oprah. As someone who has been up and down the road of yo-yo dieting dozens of times—very publicly—I had hoped you would be above this. 

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Note to self 021216

Could it be that I value being a special, unique unicorn snowflake so much, that that’s why I fight so hard against anything working?

Oh, your philosophy of acceptance... your affirmations in the mirror... your weekly food plan... do I try to make those efforts fail—or am I so dedicated to making them fail—because if they worked, I’d be just like everyone else?

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Body checking

Group started up again, and I learned a new term.

One of the rules for group is “No body checking” (or, at least try not to body check).

To me this brought to mind Hulk Hogan strutting up to Rowdy Roddy Piper, chest puffed out, guns blazing (by that I mean, arm muscles oiled up), getting right up into his face, and bumping Roddy’s chest, pushing him back (not the fist pump chest bump, but the you’re getting too close chest bump).

And I admit I got a chuckle thinking of all of us, in our cushioned chairs and leather sofa, surrounded by bay windows and soft lighting and developmental toys resting atop mismatched wooden end tables, “body checking” each other on a thick Oriental rug. 

Alas, that’s not what was meant by “body checking.”

Body checking is primping, but with a different motivation. Primping is checking yourself out in every reflective surface you pass to make sure you look your best; primping is touching your hair or your eyebrow or your earrings or your sweater to make sure it’s laying flat and turned up where it should be and hanging just right; primping is fussing at yourself as a result of vanity.

Body checking is doing all those same things but due to fear, anxiety, and shame.

I do it. I do it all the time. I can’t move without checking to make sure my shirt is laying how it should be. 

Except... it’s never laying how it should be, because I have rolls of fat. And some of my shirts get caught in my rolls of fat. And some of my shirts have to be stretched out or else they’ll ride up my hips because they’re really too small to fit over my hips. Some of my shirts won’t lay at all, because they’re too busy simply trying to cover various body parts.

So I pull and fluff and tweak and double check and adjust and straighten and shift and pull again and shake out and stretch and whatever else I have to do to try to make my shirt look marginally presentable.

I’m thinking, if I don’t fix my shirt, people will notice and they might see this big roll of fat, and how embarrassing for them AND me, and how uncomfortable it will make them, and I’ll be so distracted by what people might see if I don’t fix it... I’m just going to take care of it real quick...

Meanwhile, chances are no one would have even noticed if I didn’t draw attention to myself by shifting and adjusting and fixing. 

Because, remember, I’m so big that I can’t make small gestures. Every gesture is big, is noticeable, is a thing. (At least that’s how it feels.)

So, this kind of body checking, for a group of people with eating disorders and body image problems... well, you can imagine why we have a rule.

[infinitedoover-blog]

What do you do from morning to night? “I endure myself

Emil Cioran, from The Trouble With Being Born (via watchoutforintellect)

[infinitedoover-blog]

Do I want someone who wants me fat?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been texting a bit with a guy on the East Coast. It’s not romantic. It didn’t begin as sexual. I wouldn’t even say we connect on any great or promising level, really.

So, why do I do it?

I chat online because I’m lonely. I would say that’s pretty obvious. In high school, it was Teen Chat rooms on America Online. In college... well, I don’t think I was lonely in college, so I didn’t chat much there. When I first moved out here, I tried Yahoo and maybe a few others, and landed on Spinchat. The interface was basic; there always seemed to be at least a few hundred people online; and I quickly and easily fell into a habit of logging on.

Online chat works really well for me for a few reasons. 

It’s anonymous.

I can sit on my couch and be gross while still feeling like the prettiest girl at the party.

It’s all about text. And text is kinda my thing.

So online chat is sort of something I can win at, even when I’m at my lowest.

Except... it also royally sucks.

Finding intelligent or engaging conversation is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

All the women are certifiably batshit crazy. (Yes, I realize I must include myself in this statement, but honest to God, every time I’ve tried to chat with another woman online, the conversation has gone south almost immediately.)

All the men are married. Or 23. Even if they’re not married, they’re married. And if they’re really not married, there’s probably a reason, i.e., they actually hate women, they’ve been married a few times already, they’re lying about something else, or they’re jerk faces.

There are, obviously, exceptions, and, truth be told, I’ve run across a few of those exceptions over the years. But they’re few. And faaaaaaaaaaaaar between.

All that said, I’m still lonely. And I still log on to Spin now and then. And I did recently, and struck up an email conversation with a man that was ... nice. We didn’t talk about sex at all the first few days. When he asked what I looked like, I was self-depricating, but honest. He said looks were always a distant second to intellectual chemistry for him. (Thanks, I guess?) And we moved on. 

A few days later, inevitably, sex became the conversation. And he mentioned having a thing for “curves,” which we all know can mean 100 different things to 100 different people, but essentially means “big boobs, big butt.”

I just kind of ignored it at first, but then thought I’d see what he really meant, and asked straight up if he had a fat fetish. (Another great thing about anonymous online chatting is that you can be pretty blunt, and if the other person is offended or upset or doesn’t like what you have to say, who cares? You part ways and never have to interact with each other again. And also, you don’t actually have to face the person. I would never ask a guy at the grocery store or the bookstore if he had a fat fetish. Even though that’s pretty much the same situation—we’re strangers, I don’t have anything invested in a relationship with him, and we’ll never see each other again—it would be absolutely m-o-r-t-i-f-y-i-n-g to look him in the eye and ask such a question. Online, you just type it in and send it out into the universe.)

The short answer is that yes, he has a fat fetish.

So I thought I’d try the sexting knowing that. I commented on it. He commented on it. And it was.... kind of gross.

I certainly didn’t get off on it. Though, to be fair, I don’t get off on sexting; it’s more of a mind game for me. Not mind game mind game, but mind game, as in game for my mind. How creative can I get (because there are actually only so many ways to say you want to suck a cock or get pounded or ooo baby or whatever else), or how kinky I can get, or what makes him respond, or what surprises him, or what surprises me, or how many other things can I do while I’m doing this and still get him off, and lots of other game-like challenges.

But not only did I not get off on the idea that a guy was into me not only in spite of my weight, but largely because of it (Ha! largely because of it... I crack me up), but it was even harder than normal for me to imagine him being into me at all.

Does that make sense? 

Things I wouldn’t normally think about while sexting, like how thick my thighs are or what positions I could, actually, honestly get into (rather than the acrobatic yoga positions you see in porn and describe in sex chat), or how, if I got onto the floor to give a blow job, I probably couldn’t get back up again... those things that I normally escape from to this world of anonymous hookups and frenzied passion and extraordinary textual chemistry... they were invited into this exchange. 

I don’t want that!

I have to live with the actual me every day. Do I have to do so in my fantasies now, too?

But there’s something else that’s bugging me about all this.

He’s a nice enough guy, and he uses complete sentences and punctuation in his texts, and I don’t begrudge anyone his kinks. Heaven knows I have no room to judge. 

But... how can I like someone who likes something I hate?

I’m not only super morbidly obese. I’m other things, too, like funny and sarcastic and a good friend and a good aunt, and a great proofreader and all the rest. But my weight is THE THING that defines me.

I hate saying that. I hate thinking that.

But that’s the truth. It’s virtually all I think about. I can’t breathe without feeling my size. It dictates my activity and lifestyle. 

I know there’s more to me, but, as I get bigger and bigger, it feels like my weight is slowly crowding those things out...

I chat online because I’m lonely, and because I desperately want connection but I’m too ashamed and afraid and disgusted and immobile to seek it in person. I want to be seen. I want to be known. Even if by a stranger. Even if for just a couple hours or a handful of conversations. 

It’s the absolute truth that when you’re fat, when you’re my size, you’re the biggest person in every room you enter. 

And you’re the most invisible.

Online, I can be visible in a way I can never be in real life. And finding someone with a fat fetish, who not only tolerates my size, but embraces it, I wondered if it would be liberating. Affirmative, maybe. Even in the temporary fantasy world that online chat creates. 

But that’s not what happened.

I was just as invisible. More so, maybe, because he wasn’t even looking at me, and still saw just the fat.

[infinitedoover-blog]

Seriously? He’s the one who gets married??

The alcoholic is married.

Readers’ Digest condensed recap: I hung out with a charismatic alcoholic pothead for about four years. And by “hung out,” I mean we watched a lot of football, smoked a lot of weed, argued about everything under the sun, and slept naked with each other, but never had sex—no, seriously. He moved back to Ohio in 2011. And over the next few years was alternately healthy, sober, in rehab, on a bender, in the hospital, suicidal, or stalking me. After the most recent trips to the hospital and a brief stint in jail, he seemed to be finding some success with AA—and met and moved in with a woman, whom he told me was pretty great. And stable. Hallelujah.

I knew he was living with her, and he’d mentioned possibly eventually marrying her, but the announcement was still a surprise.

In recent months, he’s called and texted me less than he has the last few years. Invariably, though, when we would talk, in the same breath that he told me how great she is, how much she loves him, how much he loves her family, how nice their house is, how they have a yard and dogs and a garden, and how, genuinely, he feels he has it all... in that same breath, he would tell me that he still needed to call me because he doesn’t get any intellectual stimulation from her.

Ok, he was more blunt. She’s dumb, he would tell me. 

This is how he’s so brilliant. Because in that one fell swoop, he plays on two of my biggest vanities: that I offer something no one else in the world does, and that I’m smart.

One of the reasons I like him so much, despite all the ways in which knowing him is unhealthy for me, is because he’s smarter than me. Because we’ll debate and discuss. Because he challenges my opinions and beliefs, and in doing so, makes me up my game. And I do the same for him, which I love. And he knows that, damn him.

Anyway.

When he tells me he’s married her... I didn’t feel sad or indignant or robbed or bereft or anything like that. Contrary to what he thinks (or thought), I don’t want to marry him. I never wanted to marry him. 

But—and this is especially true of my history with him—I know what it’s like to be with someone who doesn’t really want me. So my first thoughts about him getting married were actually about her.

I asked him why they got married.

She wants kids. He may be going to jail (for violating his probation for a DUI last year). He’s already past 40. She takes care of him. She loves him.

Do you love her?

...

And that’s when I start to feel sad. Not because I’ve lost my chance to marry him or because I’m sad that I’m not with him... but because he’s settling, and she doesn’t know it. 

I don’t know if there’s a worse feeling that the realization that you’re not wanted, but that you’ll do.

I may be completely off base—I hope I am—but I can’t see how that will be a happy marriage.

And yet.

At the same time

I still sit in awe and indignant self-righteousness, thinking, HOW THE HELL does he, the raging alcoholic who can’t hold a job, whose family is in and out of jail and rehab like most people are in and out of the grocery store, who loves too easily and who stays loyal too long, who wastes his potential and shamelessly relies on others, who is selfish and self-absorbed and stubborn and ungrateful... how the hell does he have someone who loves him in spite of all these things so much that she wants to spend the rest of her life with him, raise a family with him, and grow old with him?

And it dawns on me: Because he puts himself out there—big, giant, flashing red flags of flaws, and all. And I don’t.

I cannot imagine that someone could see past my wrapping and the way my weight affects my life and has affected my personality, to see someone of value. And not just of value, but someone desirable. Appealing. Attractive. Worthy of love. 

That’s inconceivable to me. 

And actually, the fact that he has the self-loathing like I do, and has the failings and the addiction, like I do, and yet STILL puts himself out there... still has the audacity to feel entitled to relationship and love and sex and all the rest... it pisses me off.

I find it ... offensive, almost, that he feels entitled to these things. Instead of humbled and unworthy.

I feel like he should feel unworthy. And I’m furious that he not only doesn’t feel unworthy, but that he insults the universe by settling for someone he doesn’t love desperately and appreciate entirely...

As if relationships grow on trees.

As if it’s easy to find someone who loves you.

[infinitedoover-blog]

So, it’s February.

Yeah, that happened.

2016 started off with something of a bang. Well, that’s half true. The month began quietly enough, but the second half played out rather dramatically.

Here’s a rundown...

Jan. 15 The alcoholic called. He’s married.

I’m happy for him, somewhat relieved to no longer be the only stable person in his life, and can’t help but think, “SERIOUSLY?! Of the two of us, he’s the one who finds someone who loves him and wants to marry him?! I’m doing everything wrong.”

MLK Weekend+ Probably in part as a reaction to learning the alcoholic got married, I went back on Spinchat, and started up a lively emailing/texting conversation with a lawyer in D.C. All PG. Until about Wednesday, when he asked for a pic, to which I was bluntly honest about being super morbidly obese, to which he was like, “SCORE.” That seemed curious, so I went along with the sexting to see what would happen. Turns out he has a fat fetish. Cue all the awkward feelings.

Jan. 18 (afternoon) I start therapy again at ELC. Cue all the other feelings. Literally all of them.

Jan. 18 (evening) Cavs get b-l-o-w-n o-u-t by the Warriors. At home. One national TV.

Jan. 21 Hello, period. For the second time in about three years (the first time being in December, about a week before Christmas), I got my period. Blood everywhere. Had to leave work, go home, and do laundry. One more nail in the coffin of me successfully womaning. (P.S. It lingers for about two and a half weeks.)

Group started tonight. I was doing laundry.

Jan. 21 (evening) Perusing OfferUp while my clothes were in the washer, I spotted a Nikon D5100 for a very affordable price. (This is coming about a month after starting to look in earnest for a Nikon 3300, not finding one for a good enough price over the holidays, and then having unexpected car issues just after the new year, which would have been more difficult to pay for had I just spent a few hundred dollars on a camera, and reminding myself that I don’t actually NEED a new camera until later this spring, and as a result deciding not to shop for one anymore.) But yeah, there it was, almost new, less than I was planning to spend, and available immediately. So I made a date to pick up the camera the next night.

Jan. 22 (morning) The Cavs fire David Blatt, seemingly out of the blue. OK, I realize this doesn’t really affect me at all, but it was just such a sudden, somewhat random move. 

I think what it is, is that, silly as it is, I feel like I’m part of the Cavs. Maybe fans of other teams feel that, too. There’s the whole 12th man movement in Seattle. But there’s something symbiotic about Cleveland sports fandom, about Northeast Ohio identity. The burning Cuyahoga, the Mistake on the Lake, Cedar Point, the Jake, The Fumble, The Shot, The Decision, The Return (or whatever we’re calling it), the snow belt and the Rubber City and the perogies and the gray weekends and the humid summers... they’re in your blood. Silly as it is, I feel like the Cavs need me cheering for them to win. That my attention and adoration feeds them. That they know I feel their loses and fouls and frustration and victories.

So such an abrupt change in team leadership... it affected me. Silly as it is.

Jan. 22 After work I meet Sebastian, camera owner, at the Krispy Kreme parking lot to get myself a new camera. Feeling nostalgic, considering the last major camera purchase in my life was when Dad bought the FujiFilm, whose maiden voyage was my three-week cross-country road trip in 2004, I called Dad. 

We talked about the Cavs. We talked about the presidential race heating up... all five or six Democratic candidates, and all 15 or 20 Republican ones. What I thought was a lively discussion about the candidates and issues became my dad telling me that I’ve changed too much, and “I guess we’re done talking.”

And I have a minor breakdown.

Jan. 23 My childhood best friend texts me a photo of her left hand with a big ol’ diamond ring. She’s getting married.

I want to be thrilled. Ecstatic. Overjoyed. I’m happy for her, but don’t feel connected to the moment, which makes me extraordinarily sad.

So January was fun. And now it’s February. 

So far, 2016 1, Sarah 0.

[infinitedoover-blog]

Unexpected kindness

Monday evening, on his way out of the house (where our offices are) to go home, one of my co-workers stopped in my doorway, as he often does, to say goodnight. We chatted for a few minutes, and then he said, “Well, I’m outta here. See you tomorrow.” And I corrected him that I would be out Tuesday at a  couple appointments.

[I wouldn’t be at a couple appointments. I had my therapy appointment at 4, but that was it. The truth was that I desperately needed to do laundry, since I hadn’t done it over the weekend, but I could say that to anyone, so I said I had a few doctors’ appointments.]

So he says, “Oh, that’s right. Everything OK?”

Well, for reasons inexplicable, I said, “Oh yeah, sure. I’m just trying a little bit of everything...” and, in response to his quizzical look, went on, “... Well, you know, since I’m... [stammering, and eventually gesturing to my body] ...so big and unhealthy, I’m trying whatever I can to find a way to change... so I’ve been trying to make appointments with different doctors and therapists, and there were some openings, so I took them...”

[Yah, I’m lying through my teeth. I have no idea why I’m saying all this. He doesn’t need to know! We don’t talk about this! Good grief! He’s a healthy, single guy, five years younger than me, and I do not need to be bending his ear about this!]

And yet, I continue talking, elaborating, if you can believe it, on these lies I’ve already spun! “I’m trying this food therapist, which is really strange, examining all your relationships with food... how you were raised, who you feel about everything you eat, blah blah blah... it’s really uncomfortable because I don’t feel much when I’m eating, I’m really just trying to be numb...

I literally wouldn’t shut up.

Finally—thankfully—I caught myself. “Ohmygosh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to dump all this on you...”

And he was so gracious. Of course he said, “No no no, you’re not dumping...” But he also went on to say how your health is the most important thing you have and at least I have my priorities straight by trying to address the issues. [I so don’t, but it’s really sweet of him to try to find that silver lining.]

We talked a little more, and he very sincerely told me that he considers me a friend, and that if he can help me in any way, he wants to.

And then he left me almost speechless by saying, “You know, we talk all the time about diversity here, racial diversity, ethnicities, etc. But I think being an overweight woman is just about the hardest thing to be in our society.”

While it stung to hear him tell me to my face that I’m an overweight woman [I don’t know why it stung, as it’s obvious, and it’s not like I think others don’t notice, but it jarred me a little], and while I don’t compare being obese to being a slave or having my land stolen from me, parceled up, and sold, or the hundreds of other atrocities that have been committed by one group of humans against another throughout history, I appreciated the acknowledgment that being in a body like mine isn’t great.

I’m not sure why, exactly, I responded as I did, I just said the first thing that came to me, which was, “The funny thing is, you spend every waking moment thinking about how much space you take up, and yet you’re invisible.”

Then I think we both sort of realized that we’d gotten a bit too real. A few awkward chuckles later, and he was out the door on his way to Seattle, and I was planning my stop at the convenience store for chips.

[infinitedoover-blog]

Stereotypes and prejudices

Last week in group, Colleen had us fill out a worksheet with three questions:

QUESTION 1: Without worrying about who will hear your answer, detail what your honest thoughts are about people whoa are living in a larger-sized body, including any stereotypes and prejudices. Does society also endorse these beliefs?

My response: The thing is, I’m very cognizant of the fact that people can be in large bodies and still be quite healthy. I’m cognizant of this because it’s in contrast to me. I’m in a larger body, but am NOT healthy. So, for me, when I see someone who’s big, even if I make snap judgments about them, those judgments last about a millisecond, because the next thing I’m doing is comparing myself to them, and almost invariably the other person comes out on top. 

For example, my internal dialog may go something like this...  Wow, she’s heavy. Yeah, but she’s out there on the sidewalk walking somewhere, and you can’t go 50 feet without sitting down to rest. Yeah, but she’s got a cane. Uh huh, and she’s also about a hundred years old. You’re 36. You should be able to walk a city block without collapsing in a heap. Yeah... but even then, I probably wouldn’t collapse in a heap because I’d never be able to get back up again...

I have the same list of stereotypes and prejudices that I think most others would name when thinking about people who are overweight and obese:

Lazy

Eats too much

Indulgent

Doesn’t care about him/herself

Sloppy

Slob

Slow

No fun

No discipline

But I can’t remember the last time I saw someone overweight and thought these things about them. I see that person, and I think, “Yeah, but you’re 100 pounds lighter than me!” or “Yeah, but you’re more mobile than I am!” or “Yeah, but you don’t eat as much crap as I do!” or “Yeah, but you always look so stylish and pulled together!” or “Yeah, but you’re so much more active than me!” It’s always a comparison, and the other person is always better off. 

That’s not in my imagination, either. Increasingly, over the past two years or so, I’ve realized this, that I’m the heaviest/slowest/sloppiest/whateverest in the room—in any room—I go to. Hell, the bariatric surgery places tell me I need to lose at least 80 pounds before they perform WEIGHT-LOSS SURGERY on me. I’m not going into rooms and saying, Yeah, but at least I’m more mobile than her. That just isn’t happening anymore.

So, even though I have that list of stereotypes, I almost never apply them to other people. Not because of their size.

On the other hand, I don’t necessarily disagree with them. All stereotypes, just like all cliches, exist because there’s a kernel of truth to them. Are all overweight people lazy? Of course not. But I am. Are all overweight people indulgent? Nope. But I am. So I can’t fault other people holding these prejudices and stereotypes against me.

QUESTION 2: Again, without worrying about who will hear your answer what are your honest opinions about people who are living in a smaller-sized body, including any stereotypes and prejudices? Does society also endorse these opinions?

My response: That they have no. idea. how lucky they have it. That everything is easier for them... finding clothes, climbing stairs, going on vacation, walking to meetings, putting on seat belts, shaving their legs, cleaning their houses, cooking dinner...That they can do whatever they want. That they don’t appreciate their own good fortune, and can’t imagine what it’s like to live in a body like mine.

None of this is fair. I know that. My assumptions may apply to many people in smaller-sized or proportional bodies, but certainly not to all of them. I know that. But that’s my opinion.

For whatever reason, this question brought to mind that night Beth Ann and I went to the movies, about a hundred years ago, when she told me she was afraid of big people. I think it was when we saw Never Been Kissed. Our schtick was to go to Dairy Queen for Blizzards, then go see a movie. Or sometimes the movie was first. I just remember we were sitting really close to the front of the theater over in Kent by the university, maybe even in the first row, and we were laughing hysterically and whatever we were talking about and having a great time. And she was telling stories about nursing. I think she was still in school at the time and talking about clinicals, maybe. And, still laughing hysterically, she said, in this super casual manner, that the worst part of it (nursing, or her rotation, or her current job) was having to move the overweight and obese patients. She was terrified that they’d roll over on top of her and suffocate her, or crush her, because she’s so petite.

I remember being stunned in that moment, realizing that she didn’t have a clue that she was saying that to an obese person. I mean, I love her for not seeing my size first when she sees me, but... I’ve never looked at her the same way.

It’s probably not fair of me to take exception to what she said or that she said it. After all, it’s her valid experience and a legitimate concern, but... I think in that moment, I realized the gulf between us. We’ve been friends since before she was born. Buddies in the womb. More sisters than friends growing up. 

And she will never understand what it’s like to be in a body like mine.

QUESTION 3: Is it possible that any of the above ideas limit your ability to love your own body or make changes to the way you think about yourself and your body?

My response: Uh, duh.

How can I love the tangible evidence that I’m not the person I think I am?

[infinitedoover-blog]

Proud or ashamed?

Last Friday night—on two separate occasions—I went on Amazon and partially filled a PrimePantry box with a 105-count package of mini Reese’s cups and two bags of potato chips.

I wanted the Reese’s. I reasoned that I could eat the chips with sloppy joes instead of bread. (I’ve done that before.)

Both times, eventually, I emptied my cart and closed the page. 

I’d like to say that it was because I realized I didn’t need them, but it had more to do with being unwilling to pay $35 for Reese’s cups and chips. 

$35 was for next-day delivery. It was only $27 for delivery on Sunday. But, I thought, that kind of defeated the purpose or ordering from Amazon, because if I really wanted chips and Reese’s cups, I could drive somewhere Saturday and buy them cheaper.

Of course, Sunday afternoon, all I could think about was, “If I’d placed that damn order on Friday, they’d be here by now.”

I’m kind of proud that, ultimately, I didn’t place the order. But then, I’m ashamed that that’s something for me to be proud of.

It doesn’t feel like a victory of any sort to me. 

And, of course, Monday, on the drive home from work, I stopped at the convenience store and bought two bags of potato chips. And two bags of Doritos.

Sigh.