A Little Bit of Weight, A Little Bit of Anxiety

Weight - 

Here's the deal. 

I have (and am far into recovery from) an eating disorder (SURPRISE!) If you're reading this and didn't know it, that's totally fine. I don't know how you found me, but now you know. 

So here's the deal, all of my doctor's appointments for the last year were all virtual, from my bedroom (and occasionally the couch). I've basically had a year of amnesia, forgetting that if you are an eating disorder patient, they have to weigh you as a piece of measuring medical stability. (Weird, right?). 

I don't want this post to trigger anybody and want to start with saying that weight is ONLY ONE indicator, and since weight does not always change in some of the most serious cases, and goes up in some of the most serious cases, it truly is just one measurement that they use. None the less, they use it. 

I was really hoping that I'd gotten out of getting weighed for like, ever. But it turns out it doesn't work that way. (How was I supposed to know, this was my first pandemic?)

Turns out, I didn't get out of it. They wanted me to come in a month ago for a weight. 

"Sure, that's fine," I thought. "Just once, and then it's over with," I thought.  

NOT.

Every month they want me to do this again. Every month!!! It's better than doing it every appointment we have, as they were weighing me weekly before the pandemic hit, but it's enough to throw me into a tailspin of anxiety. 

What for? 

Why does weight weigh so heavily on me?

I try and think back to early years. Sure, there were times I got teased for my weight. Maybe just 3 times? 

I know there's always the patriarchal message that tells us we need to be small as women. But I couldn't be more aware of that than I am now, that's one piece that I make an effort to take up as much space as I possibly can with my presence at this point. 

Obviously there are a lot of factors from my childhood and the sports I played and just growing up in the world we all grew up in that led to it, and then of course, how the ED just became the symptom and not the problem, that I used to cope with trauma and stress factors in life. 

I really enjoyed listening to Glennon Doyle talk about how the whole "worrying about our bodies and what people say about them" issue is the world's issue, and not our issue.

She told a story about going to the doctor's office, telling the doctor how under no circumstance did she want them to make any comment on either of her daughters' weights. 

And when the doctor came in, she said nothing about her firstborn. 

And then to her second born, she told her "your weight is perfect." 

Glennon was furious, because this sent a message to her firstborn that her weight was not perfect, and a message to her second born that her weight can't change, or else it won't be perfect anymore. 

We all have different healthy perfect bodies, and we condemn women to thinking about them all the time worrying about something they really can't change for their whole entire lives, and so they just think about it and make harmful attempts to change it. 

It makes me sick thinking about what we continue to spread and encourage about bodies and weight. 

So of course, I feel shame when I still care about my weight. Because I know it doesn't matter. And at this point, it has nothing to do with outdated fatphobic beliefs that I no longer have. Because I know they're not even remotely true. Even though I know we can know things are true and still have it internalized as a truth that we want to dismantle, and there's no shame for that either. 

At this point, what once was an internalized issue of what I thought was healthy, is now just internalized anxiety about something that I know isn't even what's causing me the anxiety. But I still turn back to "controlling my weight" to fix my problems that have nothing to do with my weight. Besides the fact that it actually makes my problems worse. I become more irritable, I now have a broken bone (again), and it's just flat out discouraging. 

I know that my weight is not indicative of morality.

I know that the healthiest weight to be is where my body lets itself be (which for the majority of women, is way higher than what is thought. I mean, the average retail store stops making sizes a size below the average size of women. How messed up is that?) 

I know that people of all sizes live life hating themselves and trying to make themselves what the world wants it to be. 

I know the lucky ones are the ones who never tried to change their bodies because they knew the world was lying. 

All of the water in the world can't sink the boat, unless it gets in. The message is all around us, but it's sheer luck to have avoided it getting ingrained inside of you. 

It's a game the world plays on you, that if you keep your body a certain way, you'll be accepted, but even if you temporarily win the game you're playing and get the size you think you want to be, you still lose, because the patriarchy is still controlling you telling you you're supposed to be that way and then you spend the rest of your life losing your self worth over maintaining that body and it steals your life from you. If you are even someone who has the physiological responses in your body that when you over exercise and restrict your food you lose weight. 

Because for a lot of people, as mentioned before, that doesn't happen. Or they are already in larger framed bodies and God forbid someone tells them to lose weight and practically prescribes them an eating disorder.

If someone is making you feel like you are worth less based on your looks, they're trying to sell you something. 

I'm not buying.

Sorry if you get me started on weight I have a really difficult time stopping. 

Back to me getting weighed - the big thing is I have this internalized anxiety still over breaking food rules. Over habits I have, changing routine. If I change one thing, does everything change? How will my head wrap itself around a new routine? Will the world end when I break this habit? 

And so my eating disorder is largely based on my anxiety, at this point. 

I said last week that this one doesn't get to me anymore… but somewhere inside of me, it does. I have high anxiety over,

"Will my doctors take me seriously if I've gained weight? Will they think I was lying about how much I was eating, and think I wasn't struggling at all?" 

"What if they won't believe me and let my eating disorder get away with things and fly under the radar?"

"What if I have been a fake this whole time?" 

"What if they won't think I need them anymore?" 

Gosh, I know I'm blessed with doctors who won't do those things, but it's not like I don't think the things!

Do you know how much of my life is filled with what ifs????

Like, truly, I always wonder why there is always SOMETHING wrong with my life. But isn't there ALWAYS something? 

True, that there are things that are unfortunate and like, mindset can't change that this is an intense obstacle. And those are most of the things that are happening with me right now. No mindset I have can alter the fact that there are these unnecessary obstacles. 

HOWEVER, maybe, just maybe, I have a hard time resting in peace and staying present in the belief that I am not alone, I am safe, life is actually going pretty well right now, because I am always thinking of the:

"WHAT IF THIS HAPPENS AND THEN I'M COMPLETELY ALONE?????" 

Gosh, it's terrifying to imagine the worst happening and being alone, so of COURSE I have anxiety, and rightfully so, because it's happened before. 

But at the end of the day, it's making my life miserable. Like, living inside of my body and head is miserable, because I have a ticker in my head telling me something is wrong and if I don't figure out a way to be safe in every single situation, and how to make sure the people I need are reachable in every very specific bizarre scenario, then I'm going to be alone and not safe and the darkness is going to get me. 

And I wonder why people don't understand this way of thinking. But most people can't. Most people can't understand. 

I mean, you know you've hit a wall when even your psychiatrist doesn't seem to get it. 

It's just in my veins. I can't just "chill out." How could I "chill out." There's a potential scenario that I might be completely alone with the world ending if the stars all align the right way and that's all that I can think about!!!

It makes existing miserable. Lately, all I can think is how unfair it is, that other people don't live this way but I do. Why am I like this, and other people get to be free? 

Who knows, really. 

At this point, obviously, there's nothing I can do about it. And it's not just as easy as reminding myself that I'm not in any of those worst case scenarios, I'm safe, I have proof of safety, and everything is okay. God is with me. 

It's not that easy.

It's what I can try to do for now, until I figure something better out. But it's not that easy. 

The more I talk about it and get validated for it helps too. I think there's just something about someone not understanding how much sense it all makes in your head, and how horribly intrusive it is, and how badly you just want to be understood for what you need and who you are, that makes it so desperately isolating. 

So, we keep going. With the people who stick by our sides, and sometimes just alone in our heads, with those horrible feelings in our bodies and brains, through the night. 

I share it with the world not for pity, but for hope someone else understands and finds relief in knowing what I'm talking about, and realizing someone understands how much sense it makes to them. How they aren't crazy, they aren't a loser, and they aren't isolated in it.

On another note, the US women's national soccer team plays Australia tomorrow at 4 AM, and I'll be up watching. Shoutout to Alex Morgan! Sam Mewis! Megan Rapinoe! Kelly O'Hara! Becky Sauerbrunn! My heroes. As are all the rest of the team. We're going to be the first team in history to win the World Cup and Olympics back to back. Goodnight Boston!!!!