trigger me, baby (thoughts on how FA is great for everyone but me)

Note-sub-1: Trigger Warning: for weight issues, dieting, eating disorders, and assorted mental and emotional hell.

Note-sub-2: Disclaimer: This entry is personal.  This is about the way I feel about myself and my life and I do not intend to imply anything about anyone else via any of the words I write below.  This is only about me, and a struggle that I am currently and actively engaged in.

Note-sub-3: On a lack of specifics: I am avoiding including things like numbers and pants sizes except when absolutely necessary, as they are exceedingly difficult for me to write, and often triggering when I read them elsewhere.

This is going to be difficult - but it is necessary, for reasons listed below.
Reason Number One:  I am gaining weight, and it's terrifying.

I exist with a moderate level of discomfort about my weight.  This moderate level of discomfort varies, from me being barely aware of how much I hate myself to being actively, passionately engaged in despising the image in the mirror.  When I gain weight, though, when things stop buttoning and zipping, my awareness is heightened.  I am suddenly consumed with my chin and my arms and the calorie content of one fucking tomato. 

It is not that those last however many pounds are that relevant, it's that the only way I am able to exist at relative peace with myself is to Not Think About It.  To not think about how I look, or how I walk, or what I am eating or what people think of me.  Jeans that won't button are hard to ignore. 

Reason Number Two:  It's the fucking holidays.

It's time to dress up and look pretty and go to swanky New Year's parties and...oh yeah, I forgot, only skinny people can do that.  All the formal dresses and strappy shoes and pixie haircuts and whateverthefuckelse - they're for skinny people. 

Looking pretty is the whole reason people go to those stupid parties - to look pretty and look at other pretty people while I, of course, am sitting in the corner in my hopelessly generic purple and green mother-in-law ankle-length dress from the thrift store because it's the only thing they had that fit over my ass, eating way too much shitty dip.

Party on.  I think I'll just stay home.

Reason Number Three:  It's the fucking holidays.

And it's resolution time!  It's time to admit that none of the shit I said I'd do last year actually happened.  It's time to admit that instead of losing weight this year, or the year before, or the year before, or the year before that, I've been steadily gaining, and it's only a matter of time befor I'm completely unable to even leave the house because of the stairs!  Wow, 2011 sounds swell.

Once I've admitted all of those things, it's time to plan.  It's time to add and subtract and divide, and weigh everything and make worksheets and go into HYPER SELF-BERATING MODE whenever I skip the gym or eat anything that isn't on my list.  This, of course, will last a week or two, result in no significant weight loss, and make me more miserable than I've been in at least a month.

Reason Number Four:  This isn't me.  Or is it?

I know how to lose weight.  In high school and college when I got above a certain number I'd opt for ridiculously simple plans.  I'd eat salad and hummus for a week or two.  I'd fast one day a week for a month.  I'd limit my portions of everything except fruits and vegetables. 

I'd go to the gym every single day, for an hour, or two, or three.  I'd have a week of 500 calorie days, while going to the gym.  I'd lose enough, and stop worrying about it for a while.

When I lost a scholarship and had to leave college, I spent a summer proving that I was in control of my life by losing a few sizes.  My mother told me I was too thin, and I felt like I'd won a prize.  I also thought she was being ridiculous, and I kept losing weight until I met up with the worst idea I'd ever had.

I settled into my first "serious" (what does that even mean?) relationship and stopped worrying about my weight as much.  For about six months I was genuinely happy.  When things went to hell, the way things do, my weight was a huge issue.  We argued about it all the time (or, he yelled and I cried).  Weight gain that started out slow and probably benign was then fueled by secret grocery store trips and fast food runs.  I ate in secret, in huge amounts.  He wanted to track everything I ate, took my ATM card and wanted every receipt.  I got around it.  He paid for a personal trainer and I followed up my appointments with McNuggets.

By the time I got my head out of my ass and skipped town, I'd almost doubled my weight from my lowest point.

And, yes, I left.  I moved on.  I am happy and well-adjusted and I respect myself, or something.  Except I never lost most of that weight, and it's been four years.

Reason Number Five:  I'd actually like to be healthy.

I would actually like to eat few processed foods, and be active and go hiking and biking and take some dance classes and YOGA.  My addled brain needs yoga.

I want to be one of those whole-grain-grass-fed-I-grew-this-lettuce-myself types.

Somehow I can't separate the two.  Somehow the whole-grain-grass-fed-I-grew-this-lettuce-myself girl is really skinny, in my head, and reading ingredient labels and counting calories are the same thing.  And I can't go to yoga because everyone there is skinny.  And I can't take a dance class because OMG leotards.  And I can't go hiking because I am out of shape and I know I'm conflating these things, and I know that "capable of completing a challenging hike," is not the same thing as "comfortable with one's appearance in a leotard."  They're different, only they aren't, to me - no matter what I do it's all the same thing, the same people and the same words, it's just me being not good enough.

Reason Number Six: I am triggered as fuck.

Not just because of reasons 1-5, but also: because my cousin is going on a "weight loss plan" with her TEN-YEAR-OLD daughter.  Because I told my mom that I thought that was horrific and my mom just said, "Well, she does need to lose weight."  Because apparently the pantyhose I wear are too light, "since I gained some weight."  Because it's a constant theme of every holiday function, who lost or gained what on which program and why you should try it!

And how can I defend myself to them when I can't even defend myself to me?

_______________________________________________________________

My resistance to Fat Acceptance is defensive, I know that now and I knew when I first encountered the idea.  I knew that my reluctance to accept this whole concept that Fat Isn't Bad stemmed from the knowledge that they were talking about me, too.

And I do a pretty good job of maintaining that cognitive dissonance.  So far, it is OK.  For everyone else.  I have no right to police or judge or really give a fuck about what other people do or don't do or how they look or don't look.  Totally.  Not.  My.  Business.

It's OK for other people to be fat - really, truly OK - it's just a modifier, not a quality judgement, it's no more indicative of value than eye color or hair color or nose shape - but it's still not OK for me to be fat.

If it's OK for me to be fat, then I will never, ever, ever lose weight. 

And I will always struggle in the ways that I struggle now.  I will hate myself in the morning before I leave the house.  I will hate mirrors.  I will hate shopping.  I will hate events that require me to dress up or dress down or have a costume.  I will hate pictures of myself.  I will hate dancers and runners and yogis and ice skaters.  I will hate everyone that I walk past in a day at work who is perfectly thin - people whose clothes fit well.  People who don't have to worry about how offensive their very presence is to all the normal, skinny people.  I will hate talking to people.  I will hate sitting and standing and walking and turning and raising my arms.

It's so exhausting, all that hate.  It wears me down little bits at a time.  Sometimes I fight through it, and sometimes I sit on the bed and cry because I just don't have the energy to choose clothes, look at myself in the mirror, and go out into the world anyway. 

But I can't let it go, not really.  I can't move on.  I can't just accept that I am stuck like this forever and ever and ever and that I will never really like myself, and never really be OK with my body, and never feel comfortable and never feel like I fit in.  I'll never feel in control, never do any of the physical things I like to do, that it will just get worse, and nothing will get better, ever.

And somehow, going back to reason #4 - if I am never able to be the person I was before that relationship, if I'm never able to heal from that damage, to purge what remains of that time, then he wins, doesn't he?

And if I sit here and bitch at myself and weigh my rice, then he wins again.

And I know that I've got it all twisted, and I know that I don't have a fucking clue, but attempting to articulate where I am, right now (I just started tracking all of my food yesterday) seems important.