I am a rip the band-aid off kind of girl; so, straight to the point. I have PTSD. It is related to me almost dying in December. It doesn't manifest itself in the typical ways that PTSD would because it wasn't necessarily new trauma. Because of that, it doesn't present itself the way that you imagine what PTSD looks like (with flash backs, anxiety about the event reoccurring, overprotectiveness, paranoia, etc).
Mine comes from a pattern of self-blame and a sense of failure that I have had in other areas of my life from a long time ago. I survived the surgery, and as I sat in my hospital bed with a catheter, a shit bag, a pain pump, a drain tube, a heart monitor, and about 4 different antibiotics flowing through my IVs, my surgeon told me I was going to have the colostomy bag for 6-12 months.
My first thought was that it was all my fault. I had a colonoscopy three weeks before my hysterectomy. And although I called all of the doctors involved to ensure this would be ok, the fact that this happened was clearly my fault. I shouldn't have scheduled them so close together. Somehow one was related to the other and if I had been more responsible about the timing, I wouldn't be sitting there mostly dead in the ICU.
In addition, all of the plans my husband and I had made were put on hold. We were working on our project house and we were due to be finished in March or April. Just in time to put it on the market in the spring when there are a lot of buyers. Instead, I wasn't even going to recover from the surgery until March. The recovery from the sepsis (though I didn't know it at the time) would be even longer. Putting in the long hours on the house while working my job full time was not going to be possible. For a long time.
But it wasn't just the house. The house was supposed to be a catalyst for us being able to move out west to Colorado where we would like to live. We were going to take the profit from the house and make the move happen. "You'll probably have the bag for 6 to 12 months," was a very short sentence that ended all of that. To me it almost sounded like a prison term.
The doctor left the room and my husband held me while I cried. I was alive. I was very sick, but I was alive. But everything we had been working for over the previous year and a half was just swept out the door with the rush of air as the doctor left.
And to me... it was all my fault. If I had scheduled the procedures further apart. If I had recognized I was sick and gone to the hospital sooner. If I had just been more proactive and finished the house sooner. Should've, could've, would've.
But the burden of blame I took for myself. It didn't matter how many times my husband (or anyone else for that matter) told me it was ridiculous, I blamed myself. And it wasn't just my fault, it also meant that I had failed. I had failed to get us to Colorado like I wanted, like I had planned to, in the time line I had set to do it.
My therapist has started working with me using EMDR therapy for the PTSD. It is hard to explain. Basically, you are taken back through reliving traumatic memories so that you can actually process the emotions. In general, when you experience a trauma, your left brain and right brain stop communicating with each other. The emotional part of your brain "checks out" entirely (for self protection) and the logical side is just going through the motions to keep you alive.
The disconnect is where the trauma sits. You never process it. You never allow yourself to feel or understand your emotions and work through them. And so you spend the rest of your life trying to forget the overwhelming emotions you had that made you uncomfortable in the first place. Sitting in the discomfort and fully allowing yourself to experience the emotions without "checking out" gets you to the other side. That is where you can find recovery from them.
I have been minimizing my PTSD because I don't have the typical symptoms. I don't feel it looks like the PTSD you would see with someone experiencing a new trauma because I don't have flash backs, or the same level of sudden emotional responses. My PTSD involving anger at myself for perceived failures is a very old emotion for me. It seems less important, or less like trauma, simply because it is already familiar.
Part of EMDR therapy is identifying where in your body you feel certain traumas. For example, when the surgeon said the words 6 to 12 months, I felt like I was going to throw up. And when he walked out of the room, I can only explain the feeling in that moment as being like grief. Like that tightness in your chest that feels like a thousand rubber bands wrapped around your heart.
My therapist asked me in my session who in my life besides my husband had previously provided me comfort or advice in adverse situations like this. Of course, I thought of nana because she was always very free flowing with her advice (whether I felt I needed it or heeded it). She asked me to walk myself back through the experience of the doctor telling me I would have the bag for so long and immediately in that moment have a conversation with what I thought nana would say to me.
After walking myself back through the experience the second time, with nana and her advice in it, my therapist asked me if there was any difference in what I felt in my body. I described tightness across my shoulders. When pressing me for why it had changed, I knew it was specifically related to nana.
Nana died in 2007. Since 2007, I have had a knot in the muscle under my right shoulder blade. I have been to massage therapists, orthopedics, physical therapy, a chiropractor, you name it. Yet it is 10 years later and I still have a nana knot. I have actually joked with my husband that it is where she lives.
I never thought of it as being literal until now. When nana was dying, there was a point where she was no longer lucid. I felt she still knew I was there and could hear what I was saying. She was dying, but having a really hard time letting go. I felt like it was probably from worry: worry that we wouldn't be ok without her.
Nana was always the caregiver of my dad's side of the family. No matter what it was that we needed (or wanted for that matter), she tried her damn best to make sure we had it. As she aged and moved into a phase of life of being on a fixed income, and particularly when she got sick and went on dialysis, I think that was the hardest part for her. She wasn't able to take care of everyone and everything as well as she wanted and used to be able to.
In a moment in the ICU alone with her, I told her she didn't have to fight anymore. That she shouldn't worry about us. That we would be ok. And that I would take care of them. I would take care of my dad's family the way she had. And all of the weight of the family obligations and needs transferred directly from her shoulders to mine. In a more literal sense than I even thought.
I didn't even remember saying that to her until I was working through all of this with my therapist this week. Despite the fact that I have spent the past ten years doing my best to do just that: take care of all of them (not just dad's side of the family, but mom's as well). Although I have tried my best, there is some part of me that still feels like a failure in this regard. And that failure sits right under my right shoulder blade.
"I am a failure," is a pretty heavy belief to hold about yourself. Most people would probably look at different pieces of my life and call it successful. I think most of that typically lies in envy to some regard. Someone may perceive me as more successful because they think I make more money than they do, or go on more vacations, or have a better relationship with my husband, or a better job, or more talent, or whatever it may be that they *think* I am more successful at than they are.
But the core belief I have about myself is one of perceived failure. For a lot of reasons and in a variety of ways. I think it originates with really high expectations that I was held to as a child by different family members, as well as myself. I also think it relates to responsibilities that I took on earlier in life than I probably should have (or should have had to). It certainly is linked into my struggles with my body.
But the origin of it is less important I think. The important part is changing this belief because it is only founded and justified by me within myself. No one in my life is constantly telling me I am a failure, but me.
Unlearning a lifetime of beliefs you have about yourself (true or false) is not an easy process. I know this is only the beginning of the work I need to do. In some odd way, I feel like what happened in December had a purpose after all. It forced me to face some pretty big fears, and in light of that has set me on a path of healing really old wounds.
It probably would have been a far greater disappointment to be living in Colorado right now, still having some sense of unrest/unhappiness about life, and be completely clueless as to why.
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Friday, September 22, 2017
Every Diet There Ever Was Ever...
Prior to having our gastric sleeve surgery, there was a lot of paperwork my husband and I had to fill out for the doctor and the insurance company. One of those things was a list of ways we had tried to lose weight in the past. For my husband, it was pretty short. He had tried a variety of diets in the past, but not that many. For me, well, it was a life time of documentation of yo-yo-ing.
Looking back over all of it, it was kind of depressing. I remembered each one. I remembered how excited I got about the prospect of *finally* finding something that might work. I remember how motivated I was and how awesome it was to lose those 10 or 15 pounds that inevitably fall off when you are morbidly obese and change your eating habits (even if only slightly).
Then, there would be a week hiatus when there was no weight loss. Which would turn into two weeks. A "plateau" they would say, to keep me encouraged. "Stay the course," they would insist. But when you need to lose over 100 pounds, and you lose 10 or 15 and then nothing? Staying the course doesn't happen, especially if you are a binge eater.
Because after two weeks of losing nothing, you lose the reason why you were making this change in the first place. The thought that you were actually going to be doing this "diet" (no matter what it was) for the rest of your life was never *really* the plan. The plan was to stay on the plan until the weight was lost and then go back to life as normal. When you don't continue to lose any weight, the plan goes right straight out the window.
"If I am not going to lose any weight anyhow, I am going to have pizza and go back to being happy." The fact that pizza makes me happy, probably should have been my first sign something was awry. But pizza makes a lot of people happy... even people who aren't obese... even people who don't binge on food or use it as a coping mechanism. But I do.
Although my husband's list of diets over the course of his life was shorter, mine was a long laundry list of all the things I had tried in desperation to not be the fat girl anymore. Weight Watchers, Dexatrim, Nutri-System, eating only rice cakes, the cabbage soup diet, Slim-Fast, Jenny Craig, low fat, low carb, low calorie, vegetarian, HCG, Diets-To-Go, lemon water fasts, working out 7 days a week, "healthy eating", periodic fasting, vegan, juicing, protein shakes; you name it, I have tried it. I know this isn't even a comprehensive list of all of the crazy shit I did.
Some diets I lost no weight. I could usually lose at least 10 pounds. Some diets I lost a significant amount. I lost 40 pounds once, 80 pounds once, and a variety of pounds lost and gained in between. The one thing that all of these diets had in common was that I always thought of them as a means to an end. Because I spent the majority of my life thinking that life would start and be better if I was just a normal size.
I think a lot of people do this with a lot of different "goals". You can insert a lot of things into the framework of this statement: "When (this thing happens), I will be happy." When I am thinner, when I get out of college, when I have a better job, when I am married, when I have kids, when I can buy a house, when I move to a better city, when I have more money, when my kids are grown, etc. People do this throughout their lives until the statement starts with "when I am retired".
The thing is, it doesn't really matter how this statement starts. The fact of the matter is that we spend the vast majority of our lives not in the latter part of the statement: "I will be happy." I legitimately thought that I would need to be a normal weight to find the person I would marry and obtain a personal level of happiness within a relationship. Ironically, the man I met and dated right after losing 80 pounds and was the smallest I had been (to that point in my life), was probably the most destructive to my well being and my self esteem.
The man I met and married, I met as a fat girl (and he was a fat guy). If anything, we relate to each other in a way that any person who has never been obese will never understand. Even though our food story (and struggles) are different, he gets it. He knows what it is like to be ridiculed, and made to feel worthless and unlovable because of the number on the scale. He knows what it feels like to be immediately ruled out of the majority of the dating pool because you aren't height-weight proportionate. Trading stories about our childhoods and past relationships was a lot of back and forth of self-recognition in the other's life.
And even after we got married and were blissfully happy with each other, that statement still swirled around in the backs of both of our minds... "when I am thinner, I will be happy." Having a true love who completely gets you is fulfilling in ways I cannot explain. But being capable of loving someone else to this exponential degree does not necessarily mean that you have suddenly fallen in love with yourself. If anything we were in a love affair with each other and food.
Weight loss surgery was one of those things that I talked about for 20 years as an option to fix this life time battle with my body. I think I was probably 16 the first time nana mentioned it. But we talked about it with the understanding that they couldn't afford to pay $20,000 for it, and it wasn't something that insurance covered at the time. But in the back of my mind, it was always kind of thought of as the fall back plan. When I found out that my husband and I could do it together, and it would be a covered benefit, it was the only path either of us could see.
Interestingly enough, I convinced myself that it was going to be like any other diet. It would be an awesome tool for me to lose weight. Then once I was at my goal weight, I would just stretch my stomach back out so that I could eat "normally". It is amazing what one's mind can convince oneself of. Don't get me wrong, you can totally stretch your stomach back out. The part I don't think I allowed myself to comprehend at the time is that I cannot be trusted with a normal sized stomach. I will always choose food over my own health, and apparently my own happiness.
I have learned that to the fullest extent over the course of the past 9 months. September 27th is the 9-month anniversary of the day I almost died. November 1st, I will have surgery to finally reverse the major remnant of that experience (the shit bag). Almost a year spent feeling like my life was on hold and eating my feelings about it.
I know that there is a reason that I have sought out help for this problem at this part of my journey. I still have another surgery to go through as well as that recovery. Prior to all of this happening, I would have told you I was at the healthiest I had ever been. I was working on the project house, doing yoga, walking every day with my husband, not binging, and in general, taking care of myself in a way that I had never done before in my life.
I feel like all of that reverted December 27, 2016. I didn't have the strength or energy to do any of the things I was doing before. My doctor told me no ab exercising until after the reversal (so no yoga). I couldn't keep pace with my husband or go as far on the walk when I tried to get back to it, so I quit, despite his encouragement. And I have been working from home about 10 feet from the kitchen... and eating all day.
I want to help myself work through the issues with the food because I want to go back to being my best and healthiest self. I know that even before everything happened in December, my issues with food and *wanting* to binge all the time were unresolved. I was just too busy doing all of these other things in life to focus on food or my thoughts about it. I now realize that until I address the core of it, I am never really going to be my best self.
Looking back over all of it, it was kind of depressing. I remembered each one. I remembered how excited I got about the prospect of *finally* finding something that might work. I remember how motivated I was and how awesome it was to lose those 10 or 15 pounds that inevitably fall off when you are morbidly obese and change your eating habits (even if only slightly).
Then, there would be a week hiatus when there was no weight loss. Which would turn into two weeks. A "plateau" they would say, to keep me encouraged. "Stay the course," they would insist. But when you need to lose over 100 pounds, and you lose 10 or 15 and then nothing? Staying the course doesn't happen, especially if you are a binge eater.
Because after two weeks of losing nothing, you lose the reason why you were making this change in the first place. The thought that you were actually going to be doing this "diet" (no matter what it was) for the rest of your life was never *really* the plan. The plan was to stay on the plan until the weight was lost and then go back to life as normal. When you don't continue to lose any weight, the plan goes right straight out the window.
"If I am not going to lose any weight anyhow, I am going to have pizza and go back to being happy." The fact that pizza makes me happy, probably should have been my first sign something was awry. But pizza makes a lot of people happy... even people who aren't obese... even people who don't binge on food or use it as a coping mechanism. But I do.
Although my husband's list of diets over the course of his life was shorter, mine was a long laundry list of all the things I had tried in desperation to not be the fat girl anymore. Weight Watchers, Dexatrim, Nutri-System, eating only rice cakes, the cabbage soup diet, Slim-Fast, Jenny Craig, low fat, low carb, low calorie, vegetarian, HCG, Diets-To-Go, lemon water fasts, working out 7 days a week, "healthy eating", periodic fasting, vegan, juicing, protein shakes; you name it, I have tried it. I know this isn't even a comprehensive list of all of the crazy shit I did.
Some diets I lost no weight. I could usually lose at least 10 pounds. Some diets I lost a significant amount. I lost 40 pounds once, 80 pounds once, and a variety of pounds lost and gained in between. The one thing that all of these diets had in common was that I always thought of them as a means to an end. Because I spent the majority of my life thinking that life would start and be better if I was just a normal size.
I think a lot of people do this with a lot of different "goals". You can insert a lot of things into the framework of this statement: "When (this thing happens), I will be happy." When I am thinner, when I get out of college, when I have a better job, when I am married, when I have kids, when I can buy a house, when I move to a better city, when I have more money, when my kids are grown, etc. People do this throughout their lives until the statement starts with "when I am retired".
The thing is, it doesn't really matter how this statement starts. The fact of the matter is that we spend the vast majority of our lives not in the latter part of the statement: "I will be happy." I legitimately thought that I would need to be a normal weight to find the person I would marry and obtain a personal level of happiness within a relationship. Ironically, the man I met and dated right after losing 80 pounds and was the smallest I had been (to that point in my life), was probably the most destructive to my well being and my self esteem.
The man I met and married, I met as a fat girl (and he was a fat guy). If anything, we relate to each other in a way that any person who has never been obese will never understand. Even though our food story (and struggles) are different, he gets it. He knows what it is like to be ridiculed, and made to feel worthless and unlovable because of the number on the scale. He knows what it feels like to be immediately ruled out of the majority of the dating pool because you aren't height-weight proportionate. Trading stories about our childhoods and past relationships was a lot of back and forth of self-recognition in the other's life.
And even after we got married and were blissfully happy with each other, that statement still swirled around in the backs of both of our minds... "when I am thinner, I will be happy." Having a true love who completely gets you is fulfilling in ways I cannot explain. But being capable of loving someone else to this exponential degree does not necessarily mean that you have suddenly fallen in love with yourself. If anything we were in a love affair with each other and food.
Weight loss surgery was one of those things that I talked about for 20 years as an option to fix this life time battle with my body. I think I was probably 16 the first time nana mentioned it. But we talked about it with the understanding that they couldn't afford to pay $20,000 for it, and it wasn't something that insurance covered at the time. But in the back of my mind, it was always kind of thought of as the fall back plan. When I found out that my husband and I could do it together, and it would be a covered benefit, it was the only path either of us could see.
Interestingly enough, I convinced myself that it was going to be like any other diet. It would be an awesome tool for me to lose weight. Then once I was at my goal weight, I would just stretch my stomach back out so that I could eat "normally". It is amazing what one's mind can convince oneself of. Don't get me wrong, you can totally stretch your stomach back out. The part I don't think I allowed myself to comprehend at the time is that I cannot be trusted with a normal sized stomach. I will always choose food over my own health, and apparently my own happiness.
I have learned that to the fullest extent over the course of the past 9 months. September 27th is the 9-month anniversary of the day I almost died. November 1st, I will have surgery to finally reverse the major remnant of that experience (the shit bag). Almost a year spent feeling like my life was on hold and eating my feelings about it.
I know that there is a reason that I have sought out help for this problem at this part of my journey. I still have another surgery to go through as well as that recovery. Prior to all of this happening, I would have told you I was at the healthiest I had ever been. I was working on the project house, doing yoga, walking every day with my husband, not binging, and in general, taking care of myself in a way that I had never done before in my life.
I feel like all of that reverted December 27, 2016. I didn't have the strength or energy to do any of the things I was doing before. My doctor told me no ab exercising until after the reversal (so no yoga). I couldn't keep pace with my husband or go as far on the walk when I tried to get back to it, so I quit, despite his encouragement. And I have been working from home about 10 feet from the kitchen... and eating all day.
I want to help myself work through the issues with the food because I want to go back to being my best and healthiest self. I know that even before everything happened in December, my issues with food and *wanting* to binge all the time were unresolved. I was just too busy doing all of these other things in life to focus on food or my thoughts about it. I now realize that until I address the core of it, I am never really going to be my best self.
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Fat Girl Syndrome
Girls are raised to be pretty. Carefully think about that statement before you disagree with me in your head. How many times has someone shared a photo with you along with a statement similar to, "look at my beautiful wife/daughter/sister/mother/aunt/niece/granddaughter/friend". The quantifier of value is beauty.
Girls are raised to be pretty. At least they were when I was growing up. Don't get me wrong, the 80s were slightly more progressive than the 50s, but girls were still raised to be pretty. We are told to fuss over our hair, make-up, clothes, bodies, etc to make sure we are attractive. Because the judgement you get from the world perceiving you only comes initially based on your appearance.
Fat girls don't fall in with this stereotype. What's the old joke? "What does a fat girl and a moped have in common? They're both fun to ride, but you don't want your friends to know." The first impression that any fat girl makes on another person is one of being the fat girl. Unless you also happen to be a really clumsy fat girl (like I am) and the first impression may be the falling fat girl. I digress. Point being, since you can't just fall into line with being a pretty girl, you have to come up with something else that defines you as a person.
I call this Fat Girl Syndrome. You are not good enough just being who you are because you are fat. So, you have to make up for your fatness by also being something else. A really pretty girl can be just that. She can just be beautiful. She doesn't have to be smart or funny or creative or have an interesting life. She has value with her pretty face.
A fat girl has to make her value apparent through some other measure. I want you to think about the obese/overweight women you have known throughout your life. And then compare them to the list below and see if they don't overtly fall into these categories. Or, into more than one.
The Funny Fat Girl:
This girl overcomes the daily judgement of others by turning comedic tricks. She is sharp-witted, or sarcastic, or (more often than not) self-deprecating. She provides value to her peer group by being entertaining. She will legitimately laugh at your joke about the size of her ass, and make a return joke about the size of your bald spot to put you back in your place. She will make fun of other people with you, mostly to ensure she is not the target of the jokes.
The Smart Fat Girl:
This girl derives her self-worth from being the smartest girl in the room. When you are younger, this can be easier, particularly if most of your female peers are more concerned with how their lip gloss looks or whether Marcus thinks they're cute. You can outshine some because you get all of the awards at school, or scholarships, or better grades, or better college opportunities. The value in this usually ends when school does. It can be very easy to be the smartest girl in a class of a few hundred if you study hard enough. It is impossible to be the smartest girl in your company of 5000, or your city of millions, or the billions in the world.
The Yes-Girl Fat Girl:
This girl is the nicest person you will ever meet. She will laugh it off when people say mean things to her (or behind her back) and continue to try to be a part of the group by being apologetically nice. She will never tell you no when you ask her to help you move, or to set up for a party, or do your work for you, or to be the designated driver. This fat girl is always on the go, doing things for other people, being the shoulder to cry on, helping out her "friends" who are always in need. She is also usually putting their needs before her own.
The Bitchy Fat Girl:
This girl usually doesn't appear until later, maybe in her 20s. She has had enough of your shit and she is tired of it. You can say something rude to her, and her response will sound something like, "I might be fat, but I can lose weight... you'll always be ugly." She has reached a point of having had enough of the verbal/emotional abuse from everyone and is on the path of being the abuser instead. I mean, if everyone has always been hateful to you, why not hold up the mirror and reflect it right back? Or even better, attack first to establish your power/control/dominance in the beginning.
The Fag Hag Fat Girl:
This is a straight girl who surrounds herself with gay men. It is easier to be friends with gay men. Being friends with other straight women bring up issues of competition (I am not as thin as she is, I don't have a boyfriend like she does, my job is not as awesome, etc). Being friends with straight men bring up issues of possible attraction (which most men do not reciprocate at the same level of interest). But a gay man is safe. You can go to the bars with them, never having to feel bad about yourself because no one is hitting on you. Because the expectation in a gay bar is that no one will hit on you because they are all gay. This kind of life is extremely safe, yet overwhelmingly lonely.
The Slutty Fat Girl:
Here's an interesting fun fact: men will have sex with whomever is willing. There are a LOT of men (the vast majority in my experience) who would never consider dating or marrying a fat woman. These same men will fuck a fat woman. For him, it's easy pickings. I have actually met men (too many to count) who only hooked up with fat women because they're "easier". I literally had one guy I met on an online dating site (note: dating site, not a hook-up for sex site) tell me he wouldn't want to be seen with me in public, but he'd love to come "hang out" with me at my house. No thanks, asshole. There are fat women who try to regain the control in this dynamic by being whores. You aren't getting the kind of attention you actually want from men, but at least you're getting some attention, right?
The Talented Fat Girl:
Similar to the funny fat girl, this girl has cultivated some area of expertise as the thing that defines her (instead of being the fat girl). She is an artist. Or a seamstress. Or an amazing cook. Or an expert in her field of work or study. She derives her self-worth from being better at something than everyone else is because she doesn't get it from her reflection or her relationships. The relationship she may have with a painting, or a costume she is making, or a dinner party she's planning, or a big project at her job is more fulfilling than the human ones are.
The Giving Fat Girl:
This girl will give you the shirt off her back, the car in her drive way, the money in her bank account, and the milk out of her refrigerator. She will buy you gifts to make you feel special to purchase some friendship or love from you. She will never give you anything with the expectation that you would buy her something in return because she has literally turned her friendship in this scenario into a monetary transaction. You are basically her escort in life, though she would never view it that way.
The commonality among all of the fat girls is that they are using something else in their life to give themselves value. There are other things, besides being beautiful, that they have to come up with in order to be a part of the peer group or feel like they fit in. It isn't as simple as being one of the girls in the vast sea of girls if you are the fat girl. You have to find something else about you that makes you desirable to the group: unless you particularly enjoy being the butt of every joke or the wallflower that no one notices at all.
Personally, I have been all of these fat girls at one point or another, some of them overlapping in different periods of my life. There were a lot of times that I convinced myself that being smart, funny, creative, artistic, giving or any of a myriad of other things would make up for the fact that I was fat. And at the end of the day, I still felt alone (even inside of relationships or friendships) and not ever quite good enough.
There was never a time that I thought to myself that people valued me (for just me) without having these other attributes to make up for my being fat. This remained true probably until I almost died last year. In the immediate aftermath, I was only myself and mostly incapable of being anything other than that. I found that I was surrounded by a cultivated group of people who actually valued just me. I didn't see it that way until then.
Perhaps this is why I am now trying to find that value within myself. When will it be enough for me to be just me for myself? When will I see that I (just me) have value? Not the artist, or the brain, or the cook, or the caregiver... just me. I'm not sure. Because I think I am still at the point where I don't really know who that is, without all of the other quantifiers...
Girls are raised to be pretty. At least they were when I was growing up. Don't get me wrong, the 80s were slightly more progressive than the 50s, but girls were still raised to be pretty. We are told to fuss over our hair, make-up, clothes, bodies, etc to make sure we are attractive. Because the judgement you get from the world perceiving you only comes initially based on your appearance.
Fat girls don't fall in with this stereotype. What's the old joke? "What does a fat girl and a moped have in common? They're both fun to ride, but you don't want your friends to know." The first impression that any fat girl makes on another person is one of being the fat girl. Unless you also happen to be a really clumsy fat girl (like I am) and the first impression may be the falling fat girl. I digress. Point being, since you can't just fall into line with being a pretty girl, you have to come up with something else that defines you as a person.
I call this Fat Girl Syndrome. You are not good enough just being who you are because you are fat. So, you have to make up for your fatness by also being something else. A really pretty girl can be just that. She can just be beautiful. She doesn't have to be smart or funny or creative or have an interesting life. She has value with her pretty face.
A fat girl has to make her value apparent through some other measure. I want you to think about the obese/overweight women you have known throughout your life. And then compare them to the list below and see if they don't overtly fall into these categories. Or, into more than one.
The Funny Fat Girl:
This girl overcomes the daily judgement of others by turning comedic tricks. She is sharp-witted, or sarcastic, or (more often than not) self-deprecating. She provides value to her peer group by being entertaining. She will legitimately laugh at your joke about the size of her ass, and make a return joke about the size of your bald spot to put you back in your place. She will make fun of other people with you, mostly to ensure she is not the target of the jokes.
The Smart Fat Girl:
This girl derives her self-worth from being the smartest girl in the room. When you are younger, this can be easier, particularly if most of your female peers are more concerned with how their lip gloss looks or whether Marcus thinks they're cute. You can outshine some because you get all of the awards at school, or scholarships, or better grades, or better college opportunities. The value in this usually ends when school does. It can be very easy to be the smartest girl in a class of a few hundred if you study hard enough. It is impossible to be the smartest girl in your company of 5000, or your city of millions, or the billions in the world.
The Yes-Girl Fat Girl:
This girl is the nicest person you will ever meet. She will laugh it off when people say mean things to her (or behind her back) and continue to try to be a part of the group by being apologetically nice. She will never tell you no when you ask her to help you move, or to set up for a party, or do your work for you, or to be the designated driver. This fat girl is always on the go, doing things for other people, being the shoulder to cry on, helping out her "friends" who are always in need. She is also usually putting their needs before her own.
The Bitchy Fat Girl:
This girl usually doesn't appear until later, maybe in her 20s. She has had enough of your shit and she is tired of it. You can say something rude to her, and her response will sound something like, "I might be fat, but I can lose weight... you'll always be ugly." She has reached a point of having had enough of the verbal/emotional abuse from everyone and is on the path of being the abuser instead. I mean, if everyone has always been hateful to you, why not hold up the mirror and reflect it right back? Or even better, attack first to establish your power/control/dominance in the beginning.
The Fag Hag Fat Girl:
This is a straight girl who surrounds herself with gay men. It is easier to be friends with gay men. Being friends with other straight women bring up issues of competition (I am not as thin as she is, I don't have a boyfriend like she does, my job is not as awesome, etc). Being friends with straight men bring up issues of possible attraction (which most men do not reciprocate at the same level of interest). But a gay man is safe. You can go to the bars with them, never having to feel bad about yourself because no one is hitting on you. Because the expectation in a gay bar is that no one will hit on you because they are all gay. This kind of life is extremely safe, yet overwhelmingly lonely.
The Slutty Fat Girl:
Here's an interesting fun fact: men will have sex with whomever is willing. There are a LOT of men (the vast majority in my experience) who would never consider dating or marrying a fat woman. These same men will fuck a fat woman. For him, it's easy pickings. I have actually met men (too many to count) who only hooked up with fat women because they're "easier". I literally had one guy I met on an online dating site (note: dating site, not a hook-up for sex site) tell me he wouldn't want to be seen with me in public, but he'd love to come "hang out" with me at my house. No thanks, asshole. There are fat women who try to regain the control in this dynamic by being whores. You aren't getting the kind of attention you actually want from men, but at least you're getting some attention, right?
The Talented Fat Girl:
Similar to the funny fat girl, this girl has cultivated some area of expertise as the thing that defines her (instead of being the fat girl). She is an artist. Or a seamstress. Or an amazing cook. Or an expert in her field of work or study. She derives her self-worth from being better at something than everyone else is because she doesn't get it from her reflection or her relationships. The relationship she may have with a painting, or a costume she is making, or a dinner party she's planning, or a big project at her job is more fulfilling than the human ones are.
The Giving Fat Girl:
This girl will give you the shirt off her back, the car in her drive way, the money in her bank account, and the milk out of her refrigerator. She will buy you gifts to make you feel special to purchase some friendship or love from you. She will never give you anything with the expectation that you would buy her something in return because she has literally turned her friendship in this scenario into a monetary transaction. You are basically her escort in life, though she would never view it that way.
The commonality among all of the fat girls is that they are using something else in their life to give themselves value. There are other things, besides being beautiful, that they have to come up with in order to be a part of the peer group or feel like they fit in. It isn't as simple as being one of the girls in the vast sea of girls if you are the fat girl. You have to find something else about you that makes you desirable to the group: unless you particularly enjoy being the butt of every joke or the wallflower that no one notices at all.
Personally, I have been all of these fat girls at one point or another, some of them overlapping in different periods of my life. There were a lot of times that I convinced myself that being smart, funny, creative, artistic, giving or any of a myriad of other things would make up for the fact that I was fat. And at the end of the day, I still felt alone (even inside of relationships or friendships) and not ever quite good enough.
There was never a time that I thought to myself that people valued me (for just me) without having these other attributes to make up for my being fat. This remained true probably until I almost died last year. In the immediate aftermath, I was only myself and mostly incapable of being anything other than that. I found that I was surrounded by a cultivated group of people who actually valued just me. I didn't see it that way until then.
Perhaps this is why I am now trying to find that value within myself. When will it be enough for me to be just me for myself? When will I see that I (just me) have value? Not the artist, or the brain, or the cook, or the caregiver... just me. I'm not sure. Because I think I am still at the point where I don't really know who that is, without all of the other quantifiers...
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Historical Revision
If anything, I am going through this process to get better. I cannot do that if I am not 100% completely honest with myself and my past. Bringing all of that to the forefront of not only my mind, but also to the pages of this blog, is not easy. I do it because I know it will help me through this process.
Writing in particular helps me. I feel like it is therapeutic in ways I can't really express. Selfishly, it allows me a space to speak the truth I am living, good or bad. It's almost like once it is typed out and exists in the world, I can release it. Additionally, I seems my words resonate with people who may not have even known or recognized that I was struggling with something they also fight daily.
Writing in particular helps me. I feel like it is therapeutic in ways I can't really express. Selfishly, it allows me a space to speak the truth I am living, good or bad. It's almost like once it is typed out and exists in the world, I can release it. Additionally, I seems my words resonate with people who may not have even known or recognized that I was struggling with something they also fight daily.
However, I also feel like I am a crazy person sometimes. I have very specific memories about things that happened to me when I was younger and how they happened. But I have read and studied about the fallibility of memory, psychological protections our brains instinctively use (particularly as children), and how individuals experiencing the same event perceive it differently (clouded by their own perspective). All of this makes me question myself and my memories of traumatic events in particular.
Am I remembering these events, that have now become a part of me and my life experience, accurately? Was my perception of the motivations of the people around me on point? Can I look at my experience now from my lens 20 or 30 years in the future and understand where the other people involved were coming from?
Was there some sort of embellishment I gave to these stories? Because some of them seem ridiculous now. Ridiculous in that I don't understand why the other people in these situations (particularly adults) acted the way they did to a child who was clearly struggling with her body, acceptance, and ridicule among her peers.
Example, I remember going to the Debbie Gibson concert when I was around 14. I had just lost 40 pounds on Nutri-System and was feeling pretty good about myself. When we were walking down the row to our seats at the coliseum, there was a group of teenagers in the row behind us. One of the boys, probably 17 or 18, was chanting "boom, badda, boom, badda, boom, badda" as I walked in front of them.
Whatever self confidence I obtained from the weight I lost was immediately shattered in a matter of a few seconds. I was at the lowest, most normal weight I had ever been and there were complete strangers mocking me in public. I can only assume he was just being an asshole and trying to impress the girl he was with; though I can't really understand how destroying a 14-year-old girl would impress a 17-year-old one.
What would that guy say about that situation now? He probably doesn't even remember it. If he was a bully to many people, it may be one in a series of events he puts out of his mind as an adult. To me, it altered my perception of myself. And to him it was probably nothing. In retrospect, this was around the time I quit Nutri-System. What was the point if I lost weight and people still made fun of me?
Another example, I had a teacher when I was in grade school who through a variety of statements and behaviors I won't go into here (simply so as not to embarrass them), made me feel like I was not like the other kids and should feel bad about myself. As a teacher, they were the adult in the situation, and had control over aspects of my life and self-perception, and treated me much in the same way that 17-year-old boy did at the concert.
By singling me out, it made me feel even more excluded than I would have if they had just let me fade into the background. Were they unhappy with their own life choices (also being overweight) and were attempting to change a pattern of behavior early for me before it got more out of control? Did they just not like me because I was overweight, awkward, and didn't fit in? Did they participate in this different kind of bullying because of their own issues with their own body?
I don't have answers for this. I think to myself, that put in a similar set of circumstances, that I (as a person who struggles with my weight) would have extra compassion for a child going through something similar. That I wouldn't have singled them out in front of everyone and embarrassed them, even if it was in an attempt to get them to participate more fully in their own health. That, if anything, I would have taken them aside privately, and said that I understood how they felt and I wanted to help them. Even if they didn't want the help and refused it outright.
Perhaps this person regrets the choices they made and the things they did. Perhaps they don't even recognize it was damaging. Perhaps they thought they were doing what was best, or what my parents wouldn't, or what I didn't want to do. But my experience of them, as a child, was traumatic. And I haven't let it go. And I haven't forgiven them.
Another example, there are people in my circle (friends, family, acquaintances, past lovers, however you want to define it) that I feel talk out of both sides of their mouths about fat people. They claim to not see any difference between a fat person or a thin one, and claim to not judge people about their weight. They claim they like me for who I am and don't think of me in a negative way. Then make comments to my face about other fat people.
"You were never as fat as THAT woman."
"I don't understand how he could even eat all of that."
"The only reason people are fat is because they do it to themselves."
"I would never let myself go like THAT."
"Look, he's going back to the buffet... again."
"Have you seen her lately? She has gained a LOT of weight."
"You weighed 300 pounds? Wow, I didn't know you were THAT big."
"I can't believe they would let their child get like that."
"I don't think that about you though."
I can only assume that these statements come from a place of their own self-loathing. The alternative is that they are completely unaware of how offensive or hurtful the things they say can be. Like if every single fat person in the whole world had a choice this morning to wake up fat or thin, they wouldn't choose to be thin. Like every wish I ever made on a shooting star, or an eyelash, or at 11:11 wasn't... "I wish I was skinny."
Sorry for the rant.
The point in all of this, is that you can't revise history to make yourself feel better about your own choices and how they affected other people. My teacher cannot take back the way they made me feel in school. The people in my circle cannot absorb and erase comments they have made to me or about me regarding their judgements about fat people. That 17-year-old asshole can't undo the damage he did in 5 seconds in 1990.
I can change my perception of myself in relation to all of these events. But the events happened. We cannot pretend they didn't.
And if it seems like this is directed at you specifically, that's on you. Perhaps you are perceiving something about yourself. I don't believe that anyone should be censored as I clearly don't censor myself. What you see is what you get. And what I say, I mean. But I also don't believe anyone should expect that their words and actions are not going to have an effect on other people, and no one gets a free pass.
You have to own your words and actions, as well as how they might affect the people around you. If you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, don't say hurtful shit. And if you do, do so with the understanding that you can apologize, but you can never take back words once they are spoken.
Monday, September 11, 2017
Gastric Sleeve: The Double-Edged Scalpel
My therapist said something interesting to me in my last visit. Basically, she is on the fence about gastric surgery. To her, it is clear that any person who is obese enough to qualify for these procedures obviously also has some sort of issue with food: as a coping mechanism, food addiction, binge eating disorder, whatever.
On the one hand, it solves some of the physical problems morbidly obese people have. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, type II diabetes, joint pain, etc are all alleviated for most within the first year, some within months. The rapid weight loss really does make that big of a difference physically.
I remember that the year my husband and I had surgery, we went on vacation with my family about three months later out west. At that point, we had probably lost half of the weight we needed to lose (and would lose over the course of the next year or so). But even with that small of a change, it was like night and day for us.
We went to Arches National Park in Moab, Utah as part of the trip. My mom, step-dad, aunt, and cousin were with us. I remember this distinctly because we decided that we were going to do a one mile round trip hike to one of the scenic views. One mile is not that far, but at an elevation of over 4,000 feet, the air is thinner, and it can be harder to breathe. The hike was relatively flat, and not much to it.
My mom, step-dad, and aunt turned back within a quarter of a mile. All were current or former smokers and my aunt has a bum foot (she broke it several years ago). My cousin turned back at about the halfway point (she is 14 years younger than us). My husband and I were the only ones who completed the hike. In jeans. In May.
We weren't huge sweat balls. We weren't out of breath. We saw the view point, took some photos, and walked back. It was probably the first time that we both realized we weren't the morbidly obese couple anymore. We were just another couple enjoying the view. The fact that it was so much easier meant everything to both of us. We could actually do things like this now and enjoy things we had always wanted to do.
Gastric sleeve saved our lives. I have no doubts about that. He no longer has acid reflux. His blood pressure is normal. It was so high at the doctor in the past that they questioned whether he needed to go to the ER. I am no longer taking Metformin for pre-diabetes. I am off my cholesterol medication. And interestingly, I don't even have as many migraines. In hindsight, I think I had a lot of food triggers I was just unaware of.
We are able to exercise together, walking mostly. We go to the zoo even when it is hot outside and it isn't a big deal. We actually get cold. I have never had to prepare for a social event by making sure I take a sweater. It was always making sure I didn't sweat, because then I was the sweaty fat person. You feel like it just calls more attention to yourself.
If anything, we just blend in like normal people. People don't stare at us for being the fat couple, nor do they purposefully ignore us for the same reason. I don't see the judgmental looks from strangers, at least not about my weight. I still get looks about my tattoos or my tongue ring, but I guess people have to have something to judge.
So, in summary, to say I am an advocate for gastric sleeve changing your life would be the understatement of the year. Any friend, family member, stranger, whomever I see in life struggling with the same battles I did, I would recommend it. It's a do-over. Another chance to get it right.
But it is not fail proof. You can stretch your stomach back out to hold more food. You can eat really fattening foods in really small quantities consistently throughout the day. You can gain the weight back. But it is a very powerful tool to help you change your life.
My therapist is on the fence about it for a very good reason. Because although gastric sleeve does help you make all of these wonderful and positive changes in your life, it does not fix your relationship with food. And in a way, the restrictions you have after gastric sleeve limit your ability to change your relationship with food on your own by your own choices.
I get what she's saying. I also know myself enough to know that if I was struggling with trying to treat and resolve binge eating disorder while simultaneously being morbidly obese, I don't think it would work. My coping mechanism was to eat. Dredging up all of this old heavy shit from your past makes you want to reach out for that coping mechanism.
I guess I am cheating the system in a way because I literally cannot binge anymore. If I even tried to eat the portion of food that comes from a typical restaurant meal, I would vomit because it is too much volume. The set of circumstances that even sent me to this doctor at this time are probably miniature binge eating disorder if anything.
It was more so about my thought processes about food. I was buying things at the store for myself that I knew my husband didn't like. In the back of my mind it was because I could eat all of it and he wouldn't know when it was gone or how much I had eaten of it. I was working all day and not drinking hardly any liquids because that meant I could have another snack instead.
Every time I go somewhere in the car, I still subconsciously think of every fast food establishment on the way. Previously, it would have been to plot a different course to pass the restaurant I wanted to stop by and get food. Even if I had already eaten. Even if I wasn't hungry. Now, I have to convince myself that I don't need to stop, I don't need any food, I am not hungry.
More often than not, I am able to pass by these days. But I have found myself eating chicken nuggets I didn't really need simply because Wendy's was on the way and I wanted the taste of the comfort food. I have found myself sickeningly full because I stopped for food when I wasn't actually hungry. And whether I stop or not, I am still running maps in my head of food on the way no matter when I get in the car or where I am going.
In essence, I am driving myself crazy. But my therapist has a point. I am not going to be able to ride out the recovery from this eating disorder in the way that a normal patient would. It is almost a cheat and a hindrance at the same time.
I remain hopeful that this is something I can work on to overcome. I know that I will probably spend a lifetime at odds with myself about food and what I am eating or not eating. But if I could just reach a point of some inner peace about it, I think that is all I am really looking for at the end of the day.
On the one hand, it solves some of the physical problems morbidly obese people have. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, type II diabetes, joint pain, etc are all alleviated for most within the first year, some within months. The rapid weight loss really does make that big of a difference physically.
I remember that the year my husband and I had surgery, we went on vacation with my family about three months later out west. At that point, we had probably lost half of the weight we needed to lose (and would lose over the course of the next year or so). But even with that small of a change, it was like night and day for us.
We went to Arches National Park in Moab, Utah as part of the trip. My mom, step-dad, aunt, and cousin were with us. I remember this distinctly because we decided that we were going to do a one mile round trip hike to one of the scenic views. One mile is not that far, but at an elevation of over 4,000 feet, the air is thinner, and it can be harder to breathe. The hike was relatively flat, and not much to it.
My mom, step-dad, and aunt turned back within a quarter of a mile. All were current or former smokers and my aunt has a bum foot (she broke it several years ago). My cousin turned back at about the halfway point (she is 14 years younger than us). My husband and I were the only ones who completed the hike. In jeans. In May.
We weren't huge sweat balls. We weren't out of breath. We saw the view point, took some photos, and walked back. It was probably the first time that we both realized we weren't the morbidly obese couple anymore. We were just another couple enjoying the view. The fact that it was so much easier meant everything to both of us. We could actually do things like this now and enjoy things we had always wanted to do.
Gastric sleeve saved our lives. I have no doubts about that. He no longer has acid reflux. His blood pressure is normal. It was so high at the doctor in the past that they questioned whether he needed to go to the ER. I am no longer taking Metformin for pre-diabetes. I am off my cholesterol medication. And interestingly, I don't even have as many migraines. In hindsight, I think I had a lot of food triggers I was just unaware of.
We are able to exercise together, walking mostly. We go to the zoo even when it is hot outside and it isn't a big deal. We actually get cold. I have never had to prepare for a social event by making sure I take a sweater. It was always making sure I didn't sweat, because then I was the sweaty fat person. You feel like it just calls more attention to yourself.
If anything, we just blend in like normal people. People don't stare at us for being the fat couple, nor do they purposefully ignore us for the same reason. I don't see the judgmental looks from strangers, at least not about my weight. I still get looks about my tattoos or my tongue ring, but I guess people have to have something to judge.
So, in summary, to say I am an advocate for gastric sleeve changing your life would be the understatement of the year. Any friend, family member, stranger, whomever I see in life struggling with the same battles I did, I would recommend it. It's a do-over. Another chance to get it right.
But it is not fail proof. You can stretch your stomach back out to hold more food. You can eat really fattening foods in really small quantities consistently throughout the day. You can gain the weight back. But it is a very powerful tool to help you change your life.
My therapist is on the fence about it for a very good reason. Because although gastric sleeve does help you make all of these wonderful and positive changes in your life, it does not fix your relationship with food. And in a way, the restrictions you have after gastric sleeve limit your ability to change your relationship with food on your own by your own choices.
I get what she's saying. I also know myself enough to know that if I was struggling with trying to treat and resolve binge eating disorder while simultaneously being morbidly obese, I don't think it would work. My coping mechanism was to eat. Dredging up all of this old heavy shit from your past makes you want to reach out for that coping mechanism.
I guess I am cheating the system in a way because I literally cannot binge anymore. If I even tried to eat the portion of food that comes from a typical restaurant meal, I would vomit because it is too much volume. The set of circumstances that even sent me to this doctor at this time are probably miniature binge eating disorder if anything.
It was more so about my thought processes about food. I was buying things at the store for myself that I knew my husband didn't like. In the back of my mind it was because I could eat all of it and he wouldn't know when it was gone or how much I had eaten of it. I was working all day and not drinking hardly any liquids because that meant I could have another snack instead.
Every time I go somewhere in the car, I still subconsciously think of every fast food establishment on the way. Previously, it would have been to plot a different course to pass the restaurant I wanted to stop by and get food. Even if I had already eaten. Even if I wasn't hungry. Now, I have to convince myself that I don't need to stop, I don't need any food, I am not hungry.
More often than not, I am able to pass by these days. But I have found myself eating chicken nuggets I didn't really need simply because Wendy's was on the way and I wanted the taste of the comfort food. I have found myself sickeningly full because I stopped for food when I wasn't actually hungry. And whether I stop or not, I am still running maps in my head of food on the way no matter when I get in the car or where I am going.
In essence, I am driving myself crazy. But my therapist has a point. I am not going to be able to ride out the recovery from this eating disorder in the way that a normal patient would. It is almost a cheat and a hindrance at the same time.
I remain hopeful that this is something I can work on to overcome. I know that I will probably spend a lifetime at odds with myself about food and what I am eating or not eating. But if I could just reach a point of some inner peace about it, I think that is all I am really looking for at the end of the day.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
I Want All The Food
Today has been a struggle for me.
I have a lot going on at the moment. We are almost finished with the project house. We have several social engagements over the next few weeks. I started seeing a doctor about my arm (still have the tendonitis) so I will be doing PT for the next month or so. There is the therapy. And my reversal surgery is scheduled for 11-01.
And then there's my job. We are currently in the process of a software conversion. Which essentially means that we are setting up about 300 clients on our software over again. Setups are my responsibility... so this has fallen on my shoulders.
This would be fine if it was all I was woking on because it is pretty much a full time job unto itself. But it is not. I am still responsible for all of our new setups (which continue to come in), all of our re-setups (that happen as our clients do software conversions of their own), the reports I typically run, the questions I typically am answering for the other analysts. Not to mention the questions I am getting from everyone as a result of them testing the new software.
This morning, I received probably 4 emails in rapid succession that required some sort of immediate action on my part. In addition to the conversion. In addition to the reports I am supposed to run today.
I was sitting at my computer and that really overwhelmed feeling came over me where my heart starts beating faster and I am pretty much just irritable and frustrated. And my first thought was I should go get myself something to eat.
I had eaten breakfast about an hour before and I was still drinking my coffee. I was not hungry. But when I feel overwhelmed, food is my first thought. It always has been. In the past, I would have gone to the kitchen, pulled out a bag of chips, or a box of candy, or a package of oreos, and eaten them all.
It wouldn't have changed the fact that I was overwhelmed. It wouldn't have made my day any less stressful. I would have zoned out into the food not really even realizing how much I was eating. Of course, I am talking about in the days before I had the gastric sleeve.
In that moment, I would have been placated. And then I would have returned to my computer and gotten started on the work. This morning, it wasn't an option. Not only had I already eaten breakfast, but I am also trying to figure my shit out with food.
My thought process was this:
I should go get some food.
Why? You just ate and you aren't hungry.
It's what I always did.
You can't do that anymore.
I still wish I could.
Well, you can't. And even if you could, would you still do it? Even though you're trying to make healthier decision about food and work through being addicted to it?
I would eat. If I could, I would eat.
And then I took a deep breath and started working.
But if I could, I would eat.
I have a lot going on at the moment. We are almost finished with the project house. We have several social engagements over the next few weeks. I started seeing a doctor about my arm (still have the tendonitis) so I will be doing PT for the next month or so. There is the therapy. And my reversal surgery is scheduled for 11-01.
And then there's my job. We are currently in the process of a software conversion. Which essentially means that we are setting up about 300 clients on our software over again. Setups are my responsibility... so this has fallen on my shoulders.
This would be fine if it was all I was woking on because it is pretty much a full time job unto itself. But it is not. I am still responsible for all of our new setups (which continue to come in), all of our re-setups (that happen as our clients do software conversions of their own), the reports I typically run, the questions I typically am answering for the other analysts. Not to mention the questions I am getting from everyone as a result of them testing the new software.
This morning, I received probably 4 emails in rapid succession that required some sort of immediate action on my part. In addition to the conversion. In addition to the reports I am supposed to run today.
I was sitting at my computer and that really overwhelmed feeling came over me where my heart starts beating faster and I am pretty much just irritable and frustrated. And my first thought was I should go get myself something to eat.
I had eaten breakfast about an hour before and I was still drinking my coffee. I was not hungry. But when I feel overwhelmed, food is my first thought. It always has been. In the past, I would have gone to the kitchen, pulled out a bag of chips, or a box of candy, or a package of oreos, and eaten them all.
It wouldn't have changed the fact that I was overwhelmed. It wouldn't have made my day any less stressful. I would have zoned out into the food not really even realizing how much I was eating. Of course, I am talking about in the days before I had the gastric sleeve.
In that moment, I would have been placated. And then I would have returned to my computer and gotten started on the work. This morning, it wasn't an option. Not only had I already eaten breakfast, but I am also trying to figure my shit out with food.
My thought process was this:
I should go get some food.
Why? You just ate and you aren't hungry.
It's what I always did.
You can't do that anymore.
I still wish I could.
Well, you can't. And even if you could, would you still do it? Even though you're trying to make healthier decision about food and work through being addicted to it?
I would eat. If I could, I would eat.
And then I took a deep breath and started working.
But if I could, I would eat.
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Hey... Do You Think My Kid Has A Problem?
I recently received a message from someone I know about their child. Basically they were seeking advice from my position as to whether I thought their child may have similar issues with food that I did at that age. If a child was obese in the 80s, like when I was a kid, there was probably a problem specifically with food. Now, it is harder to discern.
33% of US adults are considered overweight. 38% of US adults are considered obese or extremely obese. So, the majority of adults (70%) in this country are not at a healthy weight. I know I am speaking of weight as defined by the BMI chart, but the correlation of being overweight/obese to chronic diseases is something that can't really be ignored. Looking at child statistics specifically, 20% of kids are considered obese.
When I was in school, that would have translated to about 12 kids in the same grade with me that were obese (out of 60 kids). However, when I was a kid, I was among maybe 3 in any given year that fit that mold. Processed foods and fast foods weren't as prevalent at the time. In fact, I remember when McDonald's got a drive through (of course I would remember that).
In any case, the question for me surrounds how the child talks about food. "Can I have some chips? I'm not hungry, they just make me happy." It sounds innocent enough and is probably as a result of boredom, or for the love of the taste of food. There are people out there who just love the taste of food, some are addicted to food, some use it as a coping mechanism, and some have eating disorders. I think all of them are distinct, though some people might experience some overlap with each one.
Salt and sugar both trigger the release of dopamine in the brain's pleasure center making them just as addictive as nicotine or cocaine. In addition, this release actually makes you crave more, just as any other dopamine release would for other addictions. The fact that in the US, food is readily available, particularly processed food that is full of these two very addictive substances, almost makes it impossible not to have some sort of odd relationship with food. Every time you consume most of the food available here, you are getting a dopamine "hit".
So, my response to this person was essentially, do you feel like the child is eating in response to something negative (like "hey, I've had a bad day and I want this food to make me happy"). That is something I know I did as a child and something that probably sounds like something to be addressed. In my case, it was more so, "I've had a bad day" and Nana was like, "here have some ice cream." But the association came either way (from her or from myself).
Alternately, if it is more like "hey, pizza tastes good to me, I want to eat this pizza (even though I may not be hungry)"; to me that sounds like more of the dopamine-seeking or food-loving behavior (though I'm no expert). If a child is hiding, hoarding or sneaking food, it is definitely an issue. All of this to say that sometimes the why of it may not matter as much. If a child is obese, and feeling like they are being singled out or isolated or made to feel different than everyone else because of it, addressing it may be more important no matter what the root of the issue is.
But here's the kicker that every parent faces, what do you do? In my case, the idea was to put me on Weight Watchers. I am sure they thought it would help me have a better understanding of nutrition and foods I should limit because they were full of sugar and salt. For me, it just gave me a list of foods I needed to try to eat when I wasn't around my family because I wouldn't have access to them at home.
So, there were trades made at the lunch table. And allowances stocked away so I could buy ice cream after lunch. And manipulating Nana into giving me what I wanted even if it was her idea for the Weight Watchers in the first place. If food wasn't already the focus, Weight Watchers definitely made it the focus from that point on.
Here is an interesting inter-family case study. My brother doesn't really like or crave sweets. I remember when he was born, my step-mother read a lot about parenting because she wanted to do it perfectly. I think a lot of moms, particularly if they are older and more settled in their lives, probably do this. I mean, you don't want to fuck up your kid.
In any case, she read that you should limit a child's exposure to sugary sweets in their early years. So she made it clear to Nana that she didn't want him to have the sweets that I loved so much. I think Nana was tormented because she wanted to keep peace in the family, but at the same time she desperately wanted to love my brother with food and sweets the way she did me. At the time, I thought my step-mother was kind of being a nazi about it (I was 12 and in love with food, what did I know).
My brother never developed that strong attachment to sweets that I did. He didn't have them on a regular basis in the formative 0-5 years. I remember he would go trick-or-treating every year, eat maybe 5 or 6 pieces of candy that night when he got home, then he would forget about the candy entirely. It was AMAZING for me (I ate all of his leftovers), albeit confusing at the time. To this day, as a 30-year-old adult, he still doesn't really crave sweet things.
My sister came along about 4 years later. Nana couldn't resist giving her all the sweets. She was a rotund child, on par with my weight around the same ages. Interestingly enough, when she got a little bit older, she changed her eating habits and lost weight. She did not spend all of her childhood/teenage/adult years as an obese person. I know she spent a lot of years just eating salad, but I also know a lot of people eat like that to be thinner. Her experience of it probably doesn't sound this simple. But I can only write about my observation from the perspective of someone who didn't live at home with them anymore (I left for college when she was 3).
All of this to say that every child is different. I know that each of us (in my family specifically) had slightly different sets of parameters, but all of us are different in this regard. I feel you could just as easily take three children (identical triplets for the sake of specificity), raise them in the same way, and potentially have similarly different results in relation to food and how they use/relate to it.
On a personal level, my relationship with food is so screwy that I question how I would have handled it if I had a child of my own. Like, I know I would try to love them with food exactly the way Nana did. I already do that to my husband, the rest of my family, my coworkers, my friends, even our pets. But I don't know how I would address it specifically if my child were overweight.
Parents are sabotaged in modern US society from the get-go. Everyone is very caught up in making sure they produce well-rounded little individuals who get to play sports, take dance lessons, do gymnastics, play instruments, are artistic, whatever. This translates to a lot of running around, even if you only have two kids with two activities.
The days of June Cleaver starting a roast at 10 in the morning so that the family has a healthy meal before the soccer game have pretty much ended. With two parents usually working, it's either fast food in the car on the way, or a quick prep meal at home when there's time. Everything that is prepackaged for quick prep food at the grocery store like: macaroni, stove top, rice-a-roni, granola bars, oatmeal, grits, cereal, bread, etc... are full of preservatives, chemicals, sugar, and salt. All of these addictive foods are cheaper and faster to make. And we aren't even addressing all of the conflicting information we are constantly exposed to about fat, sugar, starches, what to avoid, what to eat more of, etc.
At the end of the day, if I had grown up in a classroom with 12 fat kids instead of 3, I may have felt more at ease about my weight and less singled out. But that wouldn't have changed the fact that I had an issue with food, it would just have normalized it. My advice to the person that originally asked me about their kid was to keep a close eye on it.
But honestly, the only way I feel like any of this changes for anyone is a life overhaul. It is really difficult to commit a family to permanent dietary changes, particularly when something like this may only be affecting one person out of 4-6 total. In my case, it would have been three households committing to these kinds of changes between my mom's, my dad's, and nana's houses. Unfortunately, more kids are in multiple households now than even when I was a child.
I don't feel like I can ever be a person that gives advice about what to do specifically to remedy a situation like this. I can probably give some great advice about what to observe and look for as signs of a problem, but not what to do to fix it. I don't feel like anything that was done for me as a kid helped, but at the same time I don't know what would have successfully helped me either. What would I have done differently if I had been my mom in that situation? I can't answer that.
33% of US adults are considered overweight. 38% of US adults are considered obese or extremely obese. So, the majority of adults (70%) in this country are not at a healthy weight. I know I am speaking of weight as defined by the BMI chart, but the correlation of being overweight/obese to chronic diseases is something that can't really be ignored. Looking at child statistics specifically, 20% of kids are considered obese.
When I was in school, that would have translated to about 12 kids in the same grade with me that were obese (out of 60 kids). However, when I was a kid, I was among maybe 3 in any given year that fit that mold. Processed foods and fast foods weren't as prevalent at the time. In fact, I remember when McDonald's got a drive through (of course I would remember that).
 |
| That's me - middle row, furthest to the right |
In any case, the question for me surrounds how the child talks about food. "Can I have some chips? I'm not hungry, they just make me happy." It sounds innocent enough and is probably as a result of boredom, or for the love of the taste of food. There are people out there who just love the taste of food, some are addicted to food, some use it as a coping mechanism, and some have eating disorders. I think all of them are distinct, though some people might experience some overlap with each one.
Salt and sugar both trigger the release of dopamine in the brain's pleasure center making them just as addictive as nicotine or cocaine. In addition, this release actually makes you crave more, just as any other dopamine release would for other addictions. The fact that in the US, food is readily available, particularly processed food that is full of these two very addictive substances, almost makes it impossible not to have some sort of odd relationship with food. Every time you consume most of the food available here, you are getting a dopamine "hit".
So, my response to this person was essentially, do you feel like the child is eating in response to something negative (like "hey, I've had a bad day and I want this food to make me happy"). That is something I know I did as a child and something that probably sounds like something to be addressed. In my case, it was more so, "I've had a bad day" and Nana was like, "here have some ice cream." But the association came either way (from her or from myself).
Alternately, if it is more like "hey, pizza tastes good to me, I want to eat this pizza (even though I may not be hungry)"; to me that sounds like more of the dopamine-seeking or food-loving behavior (though I'm no expert). If a child is hiding, hoarding or sneaking food, it is definitely an issue. All of this to say that sometimes the why of it may not matter as much. If a child is obese, and feeling like they are being singled out or isolated or made to feel different than everyone else because of it, addressing it may be more important no matter what the root of the issue is.
But here's the kicker that every parent faces, what do you do? In my case, the idea was to put me on Weight Watchers. I am sure they thought it would help me have a better understanding of nutrition and foods I should limit because they were full of sugar and salt. For me, it just gave me a list of foods I needed to try to eat when I wasn't around my family because I wouldn't have access to them at home.
So, there were trades made at the lunch table. And allowances stocked away so I could buy ice cream after lunch. And manipulating Nana into giving me what I wanted even if it was her idea for the Weight Watchers in the first place. If food wasn't already the focus, Weight Watchers definitely made it the focus from that point on.
Here is an interesting inter-family case study. My brother doesn't really like or crave sweets. I remember when he was born, my step-mother read a lot about parenting because she wanted to do it perfectly. I think a lot of moms, particularly if they are older and more settled in their lives, probably do this. I mean, you don't want to fuck up your kid.
In any case, she read that you should limit a child's exposure to sugary sweets in their early years. So she made it clear to Nana that she didn't want him to have the sweets that I loved so much. I think Nana was tormented because she wanted to keep peace in the family, but at the same time she desperately wanted to love my brother with food and sweets the way she did me. At the time, I thought my step-mother was kind of being a nazi about it (I was 12 and in love with food, what did I know).
My brother never developed that strong attachment to sweets that I did. He didn't have them on a regular basis in the formative 0-5 years. I remember he would go trick-or-treating every year, eat maybe 5 or 6 pieces of candy that night when he got home, then he would forget about the candy entirely. It was AMAZING for me (I ate all of his leftovers), albeit confusing at the time. To this day, as a 30-year-old adult, he still doesn't really crave sweet things.
My sister came along about 4 years later. Nana couldn't resist giving her all the sweets. She was a rotund child, on par with my weight around the same ages. Interestingly enough, when she got a little bit older, she changed her eating habits and lost weight. She did not spend all of her childhood/teenage/adult years as an obese person. I know she spent a lot of years just eating salad, but I also know a lot of people eat like that to be thinner. Her experience of it probably doesn't sound this simple. But I can only write about my observation from the perspective of someone who didn't live at home with them anymore (I left for college when she was 3).
All of this to say that every child is different. I know that each of us (in my family specifically) had slightly different sets of parameters, but all of us are different in this regard. I feel you could just as easily take three children (identical triplets for the sake of specificity), raise them in the same way, and potentially have similarly different results in relation to food and how they use/relate to it.
On a personal level, my relationship with food is so screwy that I question how I would have handled it if I had a child of my own. Like, I know I would try to love them with food exactly the way Nana did. I already do that to my husband, the rest of my family, my coworkers, my friends, even our pets. But I don't know how I would address it specifically if my child were overweight.
Parents are sabotaged in modern US society from the get-go. Everyone is very caught up in making sure they produce well-rounded little individuals who get to play sports, take dance lessons, do gymnastics, play instruments, are artistic, whatever. This translates to a lot of running around, even if you only have two kids with two activities.
The days of June Cleaver starting a roast at 10 in the morning so that the family has a healthy meal before the soccer game have pretty much ended. With two parents usually working, it's either fast food in the car on the way, or a quick prep meal at home when there's time. Everything that is prepackaged for quick prep food at the grocery store like: macaroni, stove top, rice-a-roni, granola bars, oatmeal, grits, cereal, bread, etc... are full of preservatives, chemicals, sugar, and salt. All of these addictive foods are cheaper and faster to make. And we aren't even addressing all of the conflicting information we are constantly exposed to about fat, sugar, starches, what to avoid, what to eat more of, etc.
At the end of the day, if I had grown up in a classroom with 12 fat kids instead of 3, I may have felt more at ease about my weight and less singled out. But that wouldn't have changed the fact that I had an issue with food, it would just have normalized it. My advice to the person that originally asked me about their kid was to keep a close eye on it.
But honestly, the only way I feel like any of this changes for anyone is a life overhaul. It is really difficult to commit a family to permanent dietary changes, particularly when something like this may only be affecting one person out of 4-6 total. In my case, it would have been three households committing to these kinds of changes between my mom's, my dad's, and nana's houses. Unfortunately, more kids are in multiple households now than even when I was a child.
I don't feel like I can ever be a person that gives advice about what to do specifically to remedy a situation like this. I can probably give some great advice about what to observe and look for as signs of a problem, but not what to do to fix it. I don't feel like anything that was done for me as a kid helped, but at the same time I don't know what would have successfully helped me either. What would I have done differently if I had been my mom in that situation? I can't answer that.
Monday, September 4, 2017
Enmeshed
"Enmeshment is a description of a relationship between two or more people in which personal boundaries are permeable and unclear. This often happens on an emotional level in which two people “feel” each other's emotions, or when one person becomes emotionally escalated and the other family member does as well."
Like a good little student, I did a lot of reading this past week or so about binge eating disorder, personality traits, behaviors, etc. One thing I came across was the idea about enmeshment. Commonly associated with eating disorders in general, the submissive half of an enmeshed duo uses food as one thing they can control in their life while essentially being controlled by the dominant party in every other aspect. Or at least that is my understanding of it.
Nana and I always had a complex relationship. She was not my mother, yet she thought of me as her daughter. But she treated me like a granddaughter at the same time by spoiling me in ways that parents probably wouldn't. Since my mom and dad divorced when I was around 6, she played a big part in raising me and I spent a lot of time with her. She babysat me daily until I went to kindergarten, and when I started school I went to her house every day after school until my mom or dad picked me up.
Nana had two sons: my dad and my uncle (who died in an accident in the 90s). Then she had a series of several miscarriages (7 or 8) trying to have a baby girl. She went to the doctor when she was around 42 and he thought she was going through menopause and had some sort of tumor on her uterus. They did surgery to remove the tumor, but when they opened her up realized that instead it was a baby girl.
They sewed her up and sent her home, where she miscarried again. She was heartbroken. She told me she and grandaddy put her in a little box and buried her in the backyard. About two years later, my mom got pregnant and had me. And in every way, Nana thought I was the little girl she lost.
Nana was a very manipulative and controlling person. I can only say this because it has been ten years since she died and I have had a long time to create the distance needed for clarity. The lines between me as a person and her were blurry. She manipulated me as an extension of herself.
That sounds cold but I don't mean it to be. And I don't harbor any negative feelings about it. It is just the way she was. She loved me so much that there wasn't a huge distinction where I ended and she began. I told her everything. She was always my confidant. That probably sounds weird because most people don't have that kind of relationship with a grandparent. But I did.
Nana was a product of the depression and grew up very poor. She was born in 1931 and was the second child in a family of twelve siblings total. She left home at 18 to make her own way and never turned back. She was a waitress until she learned the restaurant business and by the time she left her job (essentially to babysit me every day) she was a restaurant manager.
She was probably never made to feel special as a child. In fact, she thought her birthday was May 15th until she got ready to retire at 62. She was trying to sign up for social security and her information was messed up. She was actually born on May 16th. She probably never had a birthday party as a kid and they literally forgot what day she was born.
She told me stories about putting cardboard in the bottom of her shoes because there were holes worn through the leather. The other kids made fun of her for being so poor. When she left home, her father told her not to come back. When she got married, her mother gave her two old iron skillets as a gift. They were her own skillets, but it was all she had to give to Nana.
I say all of this as a sort of precursor to *her* relationship with food. There was never enough to eat when she was a kid and she often went hungry. Then she spent her entire adult life working in the food industry. To say that she loved people through their stomachs is an understatement. No matter what time of day or night, or how good or bad she felt, when you walked into her door she tried to feed you.
I remember being at her house as an adult and she had cooked something for dinner but I had already eaten. She wanted me to eat it anyhow. "Just one bite," she said. I tried to tell her no but I have a very distinct memory of her holding a fork full of food against my closed teeth telling me to open my mouth and eat that bite of food.
It sounds kind of fucked up in retrospect, but at the time I laughed about it. That is who she was. The nurturer. The caregiver. And the dominant in our enmeshed relationship. I would have done anything for her, but I felt she would do the same thing for me.
When she died, I was lost. A gut-wrenching, horrifying, half-dead kind of lost. The week before she died, she was in the ICU (battling sepsis, ironically). We stayed up there 24-7. The night before she died, the nurses told us we should all go home and get some rest and that they would call us if anything changed. They called around five that morning. I couldn't get dad on the phone so I sent my brother to his house to wake them up and I drove to the hospital by myself.
About two days prior, her breathing had become very labored (she was never on a respirator). It was very loud almost like she was snoring. I remember walking into her room that morning and everything was silent. When I grabbed her hand she was still warm like she was fine. She had literally just died. Alone. I felt so guilty.
I called my brother to let them know she was already gone and then I waited for them to get there. It probably wasn't any longer than it would take for them to get dressed and drive the six miles to get from their house to the hospital. To me it felt like an eternity, and I felt completely alone. I guess I was crying too loudly because they called the hospital chaplain.
I am not religious. The words he spoke about her going to a better place sounded hollow. It isn't that I don't believe in something after this world, but delivered through the lens of the bible was not what I needed in that moment. I composed myself mostly so he would leave. By the time the rest of my family arrived, I was by the window watching two birds playing outside. She was cold.
I struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts in the months after she died. In some twisted series of events, my gay "best friend" at the time had decided he didn't want to be friends anymore because he didn't approve of the guy I was dating. Literally, the day she was admitted to the hospital was the day he stopped speaking to me.
Less than a week later, she was gone. That morning, I went home from the hospital to have a very complicated conversation with my live-in boyfriend. He decided that three hours after Nana's death was the perfect time to talk about how he really needed to explore a relationship with some girl he had met online while I was traveling for my job and supporting his unemployed ass.
So in summary, best friend gone, Nana dead, relationship over (?), in a matter of about five days. I found the now ex-boyfriend a job and a place and paid his deposit just so he would move out. And about two months after she died, I found myself in a New Orleans hotel room with a razor blade in hand. I was lucky that night. My friends returned from the bars before I did anything stupid. I never even told them about it. I took it as some sort of sign, came out of the bathroom, and finished the vacation with them. I didn't go back to the hotel alone again though.
I sought out a local job because traveling every week had become unbearable. I went back to the company I used to work for about four months after she passed away. And about six months after her death, I finally went to counseling. Reflecting on it now, I wanted to die, or thought I needed to because the other half of my enmeshed personality was dead. I wasn't sure who I was without her.
Being back at home and not out of town all the time, without the three people who had become a big part of my life, left me with a lot of spare time. I spent it working on myself. I went to therapy for grief counseling. I started getting massages. I joined a gym and worked out six days a week. I spent a lot time with my family. I started dating again.
I worked through a lot of stuff during that time and found my footing. The "best friend" came back into my life for a period of a couple of years. But honestly, being abandoned by him when Nana died pretty much ruined whatever friendship we could have salvaged. He knew she passed. And he didn't even acknowledge it. But that is a discussion about narcissism I can leave for another day.
I don't blame Nana for the issues I have with food. In retrospect, my current counselor said something very poignant about her that I had never really thought about. Nana probably never dealt with her grief over the babies she lost. In a way, her unhealthy way of dealing with it was to transfer all of that love and emotion to a very controlling relationship with me. She probably had an overwhelming fear of losing me from the moment I was born until the day she died. The fact that my uncle died at 38 in an accident probably only strengthened that fear for her.
Nana told me one time when I was talking to her about being depressed (in my 20s) that I had to be very careful about suicidal ideology. She told me that before she met my grandaddy, she also went through a deep depression. She was standing on a pier thinking about death and the next thing she knew she had jumped into the water. She couldn't swim.
She ended up on life support in the hospital for a little while. When her family was notified, they told the doctors to turn off the machines because they couldn't afford to pay for her care. The waitresses that worked with her collected money from her regular customers at the restaurant to pay the hospital to keep her alive.
I cannot imagine the sadness she felt when she found out her family was just going to let her go. I can only assume that she came out of it stronger and more independent than she already was. She was a Taurus after all. But I have to wonder if that is also why she taught me to be so guarded with people. I can honestly say that most people don't really know me, even the ones who think they do. For a long time, that was probably because I didn't really know myself either.
She made sure I never felt unwanted or hungry (for attention or food) the way she did when she was a child. The enmeshed relationship we had wasn't healthy for either of us and it did cause issues: with food, with my relationships with my actual parents and step-parents, and a myriad of other different pieces of both of our lives that you could probably pick apart. I don't think she did it intentionally or that she was probably even aware of it.
I think for a long time I struggled as a young adult trying to figure out who I am as a person simply because I didn't really know who I was outside of being her granddaughter. I never really made choices without asking her advice and I made life decisions based on her needs before my own. When she died, it was terrifyingly liberating. I could be whomever I wanted to be. I had to make my own decisions and own them when they were wrong.
Today, I am not the woman I was when she died. I'm not really even the woman I was five years ago. I sometimes wonder if she would approve of who I am or not. I wonder if she would think I have chosen the right path in life. I wonder if I could talk to her about this therapy and her role in why I needed it honestly.
Have you ever been loved so much it hurts?
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