Coming Back to My Body
Well, it’s been a while. And I have truly fallen of the wagon…of life. For those of you not in know, I lost my father unexpectedly in August and everything has been harder since. But if I am being honest with myself, and you, things started to slip long before dad even got sick.
Grief is a powerful thing. It can influence our lives in surprising and terrible ways but this story that I am living is about so much more than the acute grief of loss. It is about the chronic, daily grief of losing yourself.
It is challenging to pinpoint the exact moment over the past 18 months where things really started to go south. Perhaps it was not one pivotal point in time at all but rather, a slow landslide of anxiety, sadness, feelings of inadequacy, and fear.
I don’t need to rehash the state of the world. We are all living it and we have all been affected by the turn of events that brought the global community to its knees in December of 2019. But I do hope that in sharing my story, you find comfort in companionship, and perhaps, the bravery to share yours.
The first symptom that something was amiss was weight gain. My clothing felt tighter, uncomfortable. I felt less at home in my body and although, I desperately wanted to address it, I hid from it instead. Pandemic 15, I joked. As if the stress of a feeling completely out of control in all aspects of life and the resulting changes to my body were somehow laughable. But that’s me, the funny girl hiding behind her laughter when things hurt the most.
As someone who has struggled with her weight for most of her life, I felt embarrassed and ashamed. Why can’t I just be in control of my body? Why can’t I have the genetic makeup of someone who never gains weight? Why aren’t I better at this by now? This cascade of negative self-talk took hold and became an avalanche.
The theme was lack. I lacked self-control. I lacked good genes. I lacked the ability to change. I had failed at being the person I want to be because of an intrinsic lack of goodness. I found myself in a binary inner world where things were either good or bad; right or wrong. And most often, I came to the conclusion that I was bad and wrong. I spent the majority of the last 18 months locked in battle with myself and it was completely exhausting.
This war on myself affected my sleep patterns, my moods, my headaches, my endometriosis, and so much more. The internal struggle is no longer sustainable, if it ever was. And weight gain was only the tip of the iceberg. No aspect of my person or life seemed safe from self-deprecation but weight is easy to hate. Society tells us to hate our bodies. Society tells us we should have no creases, rolls, dimples, or scars. So, weight became the obsession upon which I focused my inner angst. It became the scape goat for all the many things I was struggling with but was brushing under the rug.
And my breaking point? A six-year old telling me I looked pregnant with my “big belly.”
Those words hurt. They hit me like a train at full-speed, knocked me to the ground, and pierced my very soul. I do not blame this child. She was doing what six-year olds do. She was observing the world around her and trying to make sense of it. She experienced her mother’s belly getting bigger before her little sister came into this world and now, she noticed mine.
But there is no baby in there. I imagine that if you cut me open right now you’d find somethin akin to one those big balls of rubber bands but the rubber bands are made up of all the awful, terrible things I allow my mind to say and think about myself. I am carrying around the weight of my own insecurity and fears; bundled up and ready to bounce.
That single observation, made so innocently, caused a catastrophic break down. I actually ran away. I, an adult in her 30s, took off from the family home without telling anyone I was leaving or where I was going. I laid down in the grass at a park a few blocks away and cried big, ugly tears.
This six-year old said out loud one of the many awful thoughts I have had about my body and self lately. Her words hung out in air in front of others and I was mortified. I was exposed. The mirrors I have been avoiding. The nagging feeling that something is wrong that I have pushed aside. It was all hung out to dry in front of the people I love the most. I was embarrassed. And so the veneer of having it all together came crumbling down.
It’s time for me to let go of the metaphorical ball of rubber bands and negative self-talk that is sitting in the pit of my stomach. It is time get back to a place of health and wellness. For the first time in my life, I am more concerned about coming back to a place of mental clarity and peace than my weight. Weight loss would be a lovely side effect but I know that what I really need to work on is inside.
This vendetta against my body is a symptom of a deeper need for safety and connection and I will never heal my body without healing my mind. It was never really about my physical appearance. It was always about the burnout of existing with near-constant anxiety for the past two years. Like an old TV, worn out from too many hours watched, my life unfolded with a static haze over it. It is time to start fresh.
So, here I am. Laying it all out for you to see. I am human. I am vulnerable. I am imperfect. I need to come back to my body and this is the starting line. I need to reset my habits and my thoughts and priorities because I deserve so much more than to continue to live with this self-inflicted pain any longer.
My first step is connect back to myself. And I’m taking a physical, emotional, and spiritual approach to finding myself again. Stay tuned for the adventure.
