Wanting.

There is not so much to say right now.

The weather these past few days has been hinting at spring, all coy sunshine and soft breezes, and when I walk out to get the paper in the mornings, birds are singing in the trees.

It makes me want to go outside and lift my face to the sky and take deep breaths.  It makes me long for a hammock and a book and a tall glass of tea.  It makes me think of shaving my legs and putting on my shorts* and letting the sun warm my winter-white skin.

Oh, but alas.  My shorts.  They are too small now.  I can put them on and zip and snap and all that, but they fit more snugly than I’d like.  My shorts were once baggy.  They used to rest on my hips.  Now they squeeze.  It makes my heart sad.

This last week-and-a-half, I’ve been back to a more consistent and intense workout routine, but I’m appalled at how weak I’ve become.  My triceps dips yesterday were pathetic.  I feel limp and loose and floppy.  I don’t like my weakness.  I don’t like not feeling strong.

I know my tight shorts are not related to my noodle-y muscles, but my brain has tied these two things together in a way that makes me think too much about my food and makes me want to chart my workouts neatly on the calendar.  I feel like I’m holding the ticket back to CrazyTown; I just haven’t decided whether or not to have it punched.

I know I can get stronger again.  I know I can work back up to knocking out set after set of perfect dips.  And I know it’s okay to want that.

But if it’s okay to want that, how do I keep from wanting something as simple as my shorts to fit again?

*They’re not really shorts, in that they actually reach just past my knee, but they’re the only shorts I’ve ever bought and worn as an adult, without shame or discomfort.  They’re only one size down from what I wear now, which is how they survived the purge.  Tragically, I bought them 2 years ago, so there’s no chance of finding them now.

Back to the future.

I was thinking yesterday, if I could back to how I was before November 2001, before I ever went on that diet, before I ever decided that fat was a bad thing to be, would I?

You know?  I don’t think I would.

I do miss my blissful ignorance about the unacceptability of my fat ass.  And I would like to have back some of the awfully cute size 16 clothes I had then, as well as the ability to look at my thighs and ass without only seeing cellulite.

But while I was accepting of my body then, I didn’t take very good care of it.  Honestly, I didn’t even thinkabout my body; I lived from the neck up.  HAES was something I’d never heard of, and as a young, living-in-my-first-apartment, no-clue-how-to-cook, hot-damn-food-costs-money girl, I ate a lot of quick and cheap prepared foods.  I also didn’t exercise, because I’d never thought of myself as someone who could be athletic.

Now here I am, 6 years and 4 months away from that decision to make myself smaller.  My weight has stabilized 40-odd pounds below my highest-known weight, but 20 pounds above my lowest.  I have a belly and squeezable thighs and broad hips.  I also can run harder and farther than I could at either my highest or lowest weights.  I don’t get lightheaded every time I stand up (as a side effect of not eating enough), nor do I get as tired as I did when I never moved and ate nutritionally inadequate food.

I am healthier than I was at 187 or 126.  I feel better.  My body never feels like it’s breaking down these days; my limp is gone.  I don’t find myself wondering how many more miles I can get out of my ankle before I damage it too much to run at all, because I don’t push through injury now.

More importantly, I think I love my body more than I could have if I hadn’t dieted.  Dieting (and eventually overexercising) made me aware that what I do to and for my body has consequences.  If I eat junk and don’t move, I feel run down.  If I don’t eat enough and move too much, I feel broken down.  I have learned there’s balance to be had, that there’s an equation where eating enough and moving enough and resting enough add up to a body that feels comfortable.  Strong.  Happy even.

So, are self-love and self-acceptance more meaningful if you go through self-hate and self-harm to find them?  I can’t say that’s true for everyone.  But for me, my dieting and disordered behavior led me here, to a place where I neither ignore nor harm my body, but live with it and through it.

And that’s a pretty great place to be. 

Gentle on my mind.

It all started when I read this post by Attrice. It kept rattling around my head for days and days, and resisted my best efforts to pretend I hadn’t read it.

Then I was snuggling with Little Dog a few days ago, kissing the tawny brown spots over his eyes and burying my face in his neck scruff, and I had a sudden, visceral connection about that warm wiggly body and the ground beef my husband was cooking in the kitchen. 

It was kind of ghastly.

I haven’t had any meat since then because I can’t quite shake that moment of horror.  And because a girl can’t live on salad alone, I’ve been looking at various vegetarian resources to see if I can handle a meat-free life.

Oh.  My.  Stars.  That is some head-exploding information out there.

In this process of figuring out how to love Megan-As-Whole-Person, I am trying to be kinder to myself; I’m learning how not to take in every negative message about what it means to be a woman and a non-dieter and fat to boot.  I’m working at making exercise a gift to my body, not a penance.  I’m focusing on feeding myself well, nourishing my body and my spirit with foods that make me feel my best.  Basically, I’m approaching myself with compassion and gentleness.

And honestly?  I’m having a hard time reconciling that path of compassion with the way I’ve always eaten.  Knowing what I know about the meat industry, knowing that pain isn’t only felt by those of us at the top of the food chain…well, I can’t quite stomach it any more.

What it comes down to is this:  I don’t want to bring any more violence against my body, and that includes violence that comes on the end of a fork.

Anyone have any good recipes?

In Which I Work Blue.

I’m not much for the bad language.  That said, I’m not offended by most curse words as long as they’re not demeaning to any group of people other than assholes.  But I just don’t use those kinds of words in my everyday speech; it’s not a habit I’ve picked up.

But you know?  The single most useful phrase I’ve discovered while giving up dieting and body hatred and self-hatred is this:

Fuck that.

You’re not pretty because you’re fat?  Fuck that.

You’re not “a good girl” because you eat meals that are not portioned and calorie-counted and Pointed?  Fuck that.

You don’t deserve to love yourself because you have cellulite or wrinkles or gray  hair or a size 26 ass?  Fuck that.

You’re a quitter because you refuse to starve yourself any more?  Fuck that.

You’re too short?  Too tall?  Too wide-hipped?  Too big-chested?  Too loud?  Too quiet?  Too demanding?  Too hungry?  Too confident?  Too proud of yourself? 

Fuck that all.

That phrase has saved me in dressing rooms.  At grocery store checkouts.  While watching television.  When flipping through magazines.  On the doctor’s office scale.  When faced with packing up a closet filled with clothes that have become too small.

I like it because it very simply affirms what I’ve come to believe is true:

Anything that says you are not a worthy person just as you are right now is noise.

And fuck that.

Put it together.

My last two posts have reflected the drift I’m feeling lately, the move away from my body-acceptance journey toward one seeking a broader self-acceptance.  I feel like I’ve held the body image stuff in my hands for so long now, turned it over, examined it from all sides, lifted it to the light.  I think I know it pretty well.  But I also now know it’s just a puzzle piece, not the puzzle itself.

I am ready to pay more attention to who I am and how I am and why.  I want to learn things about myself beyond how many miles I can run or how I take my coffee.

I’ve always been disappointed with my natural inclinations.  I’ve fantasized about being strong and stubborn and courageous, carefree and brash and assertive.  I like the idea of those things, how powerful they sound.

But the truth of who I am?  It is not those things.  And that is okay.

I am quiet and cautious and safe.  I listen to both sides.  I frequently change my mind.  I wait until I am certain.  I look, then step gingerly off the edge, leaving the leaping to lords.  Security matters to me.

It all doesn’t sound very exciting; Wonder Woman doesn’t wait for safety nets.  But I am not Wonder Woman.  I am Megan.  I like to be prepared.

And you know?  Confidence isn’t always brash.  Smart isn’t always stubborn.  I can be my own version of those things.  The Wonder Woman type is only one variation.

I think self-improvement has its place.  There’s something to be said for becoming more well-read, or a better cook, or fluent in another language.  Those things are all awesome and worth doing.  But too often, we make goals of changing the fundamental traits of who we are.  We look at our brashness or shyness, our restlessness or stillness, and we see them as flaws to be overcome.  We focus on improving what is already acceptable and, in doing so, we tell ourselves over and over and over that we are not good enough.

Who you are?  How you are?  Those qualities and characteristics that are unique to you?

They are all good enough.

Be proud of them.  Love them.  Be proud of you.  Love you.

And happy Valentine’s day.

Digging.

Because of this post, over the last few days in the fatosphere, a lot of bloggers and commenters have been posting letters to their 14-year-old selves. The letters have been beautiful and practical, heartbreaking and wise. And of course, they’ve made me think about what I would tell myself at 14.

But the honest truth? I don’t really remember fourteen. I don’t remember much of anything before I was sixteen. Most of what I do recall has a snapshot quality that makes me wonder if I remember it from actual life or from a photo album somewhere. There are a few memories that are jagged and sharp and vivid enough to make my cheeks burn with shame, but not many, and even fewer joyful ones.

I lived my childhood in fear. My earliest memory finds me at three, cowering in a corner of the dining room, my father’s fury burning across me like fire. My first suicide note was written in shaky, freshly-learned cursive in the third grade.

I was a terrified and terrorized child, and certain that I’d earned it.

It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I could be alone in a room with my father.  I still struggle to make eye contact with him.

He will never apologize; I think his memory of my childhood is as fractured and self-protecting as my own.

He believes he was a good father.  I love him too much to tell him the truth.

But I believe there must be happy things in my childhood, hidden beneath the shifting silt of my fear.  I want to unearth them, to remember what I was like when I wasn’t afraid.

I want to rewrite my history.  Can that be done?

On fire.

The farther I get from dieting, the better I can see what it gave me.

Oh, restrictive eating and the accompanying illusion of control, how you soothed me.  Oh, punishing and endless exercise, how you numbed and distracted me.  Oh, single-minded purpose of becoming smaller and smaller, how you turned my attention away from my broken places.

I am dissatisfied so much these day, so full of vinegar and fury; it spills everywhere across my life. 

It terrifies me.  It’s asking for sweeping changes, loud declarations, cleaned slates.  It would be so much easier to starve it into silence, to tire it out on the treadmill until it is limp and weary.

But I’ve learned self-punishment can’t be my sedative.  So I don’t self-punish to contain my rage; I let it seep into corners and across pages and I hope that by letting it out, it will let me go.

I have a spent a lifetime not being good enough.  I have spent a lifetime apologizing for being me.  For being not-pretty, not-clever, not-graceful, not-lovable.  Apologizing.  Diminishing.  Hoping that if I make myself small enough through word and deed, then I’ll be allowed to pass by unharmed. 

I made myself small for my father.  For my classmates.  For too many men.

And eventually for myself when I believed they were all right about me.

I don’t want to be small anymore.  I don’t want to be small in my own esteem, small in my body, small in my life.  I want vastness, fullness, depth and breadth.

More than just wanting though?  I believe I deserve it.

I am not apologizing anymore.

At Home.

Fillyjonk has a great post up at Shapely Prose about why it’s important to treat your body with love and attention even if it’s not your ideal.  It’s good reading and really resonates with me.

I don’t put a lot of effort in dressing myself well.  I have lots of excuses: a wee clothing budget, a lack of shopping choices given where I live, a low tolerance for fluorescent lighting and dressing room mirrors. 

But my very, very biggest reason?  I’m not completely convinced that this is my real and permanent body.  I sometimes think that as I become better at intuitive eating, my weight will stabilize a bit lower.  Or that when spring comes and I can run outside more, I’ll drop back into a size 10.  Or that magic elves will come during the night and spirit away my thighs, and I’ll suddenly look really good in skinny jeans.

Honestly, though?  I stopped dieting in April, my body arrived at this weight in June, and I’ve not moved more than 4 or 5 pounds in either direction since.  That includes the times when I relapsed into calorie-counting, the periods of poor eating and no exercise, and lots of weeks of sensible food choices and rigorous workouts.  I’ve run the gamut of behaviors and my weight hasn’t left the 143 – 148 range (PMS-related bloating doesn’t count!).  That sounds at least semi-permanent, no?

Even if this changes six months from now, even if I shift into a size 14 or a size 10 or something else altogether, I need to treat my body like it’s my home, not a brief stop on the way to somewhere better.

If that means minor shopping trauma or scheduling a real haircut instead of just hacking at my hair in my bathroom or actually using the gift certificate for a manicure* that my husband got me instead of waiting for “a reason,” then that’s what I need to do.

This is home.  And there’s no place like it, right?

*I’ve never had a manicure.  Is that weird for a 31-year-old woman?  I’ve been working really hard at keeping my hands injury-free for the last 2 months and have been leaving my cuticles alone in preparation, but I’m still nervous.  There’s a good chance that no amount of primping will make my charwoman hands pretty and that would be rather sad-making.

Ch-ch-changes.

I think I’m finally coming to terms with my belly.

 Of all the physical changes that have occurred when I gained weight again, my new belly has been the most challenging for me.  When I decided to stop dieting, I had a stomach that was pretty washboard-y.  I don’t carry much weight in my midsection, so by the time I got to my lowest weight, there wasn’t much fat left there at all; every muscle was visible.

Then I gained weight and I couldn’t see the muscle quite as well anymore and that made me feel a little uneasy, but I tried to think of it as a cute little curve, something to appreciate. 

And then I gained a little more weight and my belly actually…jiggled.  When I ran or did jumping jacks or played on the trampoline, the flesh of my stomach actually moved.

MOVED. 

FREAKED ME RIGHT OUT.

I couldn’t remember ever having a belly that jiggled (though, obviously, I must have because I used to weigh about 50 pounds more than I do right now, so…) and it made me feel out of place in my body.  I mean, fat ass, fat thighs…those I’ve always had.  But a fat little belly?  Where did that come from?

I tried to pretend it didn’t exist for a while.  I didn’t make eye contact with it in the mirror.  I worked at placing my waistband just so to minimize the jiggliness.

But you know?  It’s just a belly.  It just jiggles.  It doesn’t kick puppies or drive drunk or donate money to Republicans.

To have a flat stomach again, I’d have to live a life of less.  I’d have to stop giving myself food and rest and love.

And you know?  I really, really like those things.  So I think I can like my belly, too.