Numbness/Filters/ isms/and Body Image Pt.2

I think people find this sort of thing relatable, so why not talk about it more. Here's a  COVID-19 body image update.

For starters, I've been feeling numb ever since I finished my finals. I think it's because busyness distracts me from all of my problems, and once my time and brain space are freed up, I don't know what to do with them. It's either feeling the hard feelings (which is what I am slowly learning how to do), letting pain back in, letting unwanted voices back in my head, or my body just chooses itself (rudely, without consulting me) to react with numbness. That's how I feel right now, just numb. I don't recall anything happening or making any choices to lead to this feeling, it's as though my body has just trained itself to react this way to avoid pain. 

My life with my mental illness has caused me to always be somewhere else than wherever I am. Somewhere along the road I developed a difficulty in making friends and connecting with others, because I never really feel like I'm with the people I'm around. I'm always hovering somewhere above, just watching it all happen. I get confused sometimes when people talk to me and ask questions because I'm not really there, and being acknowledged is odd when I am not even acknowledging the existing part of my being. I am somewhere else. It all feels so strange and temporary, and my mind wants to convince me that everything is temporary and therefore not worth trying to connect, because I don't belong anyway. For instance, I am doing this weird hovering thing that nobody does and if I tried to explain, it would prove this truth further. There is usually truth in every convincing lie - and the truth there is that everything is temporary, but it is wrong that connecting isn't worth it or possible. Regardless, God loves me and we're working on coming back to earth and remembering I'm still alive and well.  

So that's an update on where my mood is at right now,  

and my body image is directly related. But it's hard to update, because it changes by the second. The past few days have been incredibly different from each other. A couple days ago, I was actually feeling neutral about my body - which is a miracle. Generally I am preoccupied with thoughts about it at least 50% of the time. I may have just been so tied up with finals, or it just hasn't mattered. No one has required me to wear any real clothes (not even jeans), so it hadn't been on my mind much. There's even a chance that I'm growing as a person, and it just isn't as important to me right now. 

The next day, I stood in front of the mirror for a long time until I could look away without complete disgust, and then walked away and returned to do the same thing...the usual drill. Then I had to change the t-shirt I was wearing because I was insecure. In front of myself, I was insecure. It was actually both the t-shirt and the sweatpants. They were unflattering. The wrong combo. So I picked a new pair of sweats and t-shirt. 

I couldn't stand to look at it longer before my head exploded. I just hate it when I choose the unflattering baggy clothes over the flattering baggy clothes (this sentence was written with 100% sarcasm).

Some days with food have been normal. On those days I can eat all 3 meals and snacks, and even foods that make me uncomfortable, and I'll feel completely satisfied and okay. I don't even have to have a conversation with someone to convince me that I am okay and not a horrible person for it. I can eat when I'm hungry and to satiation, and allow myself what my body is craving. Lately I've been having oreos more often. Also, pie. For everyone in Walpole, I had a BJ wrap the other day. That was my first time since high school. I enjoyed every bite of it. I love French fries (which are included inside of BJ wraps), but I haven't had them in a year.  The last time I had them was when my dietitian tried to challenge the voices in my head that tell me french fries are not okay, so we ate them together. My PA found out about it and exclaimed:

 "What?! I'm so jealous, I want french fries!" 

Further enforcing the normalcy, and that it is okay.  Before that I hadn't allowed myself french fries in 2 or 3 years. My dietitian and PA allow themselves to have fries however often the desire is there. I've waited for years to feel worthy of them, to not tremble in fear and back away.

This is how damaging diet culture and our society is. 

I feel compelled to repeat:

I had to change my t-shirt and sweatpants in quarantine because I was too insecure looking at myself to be home with my stuffed animal.

I hadn't had one of my favorite snacks in years because I was afraid. 

Afraid of what? There is not a single thing inherently wrong with french fries. And they don't turn into monsters while I'm sleeping and eat my family. Honestly, I'd say the only immoral thing to eat would be a family member. Or probably any person in most circumstances.

Circling back, I was grateful to have a few days to feel completely normal eating… but it felt too right, too good to be true.

No worries though, because shortly after I woke up early and my brain began telling me that I couldn't eat until a certain time that day. As that time approached, my brain asked me when it actually matters that I eat, what time I am running, and tried to push it back even further. After I ran, I got home and had every intention to have a great meal, then I froze in front of the cupboard. I didn't know what to do. A switch flipped inside of me as I anxiously paced around the kitchen for an hour, which was frustrating because I was still studying for a major final. I kept finding food I thought would work but my brain couldn't accept anything, it couldn't focus and kept telling me why whatever my choice was would be a horrible choice. So I kept sitting down and getting back up to try again until I just gave up. I continued in anxiety and couldn't focus on studying because now, my brain wasn't fueled. 

I thought that certainly the finals were causing my incessant anxiety, because I had been completely fine the past few days with food. But when finals were over, the numbness set in. Then a different reason not to eat appeared, which was just a lack of will to even fight to figure it out. Yet I know better than that. I know that no matter what, ultimately being fueled will cause me less anxiety long term and is the important thing to do. But man, is this confusing. 

My brain is doing whatever it can to sabotage me. All it wants me to do is internalize these messages that I am not meant to be human. I am not meant to have good feelings, but I also shouldn't feel the bad feelings. I'm not meant to eat, because I shouldn't be seen. But I also need to have a body that looks a certain way in order to be seen and accepted. 

What's harder than sweatpants right now is putting on shorts that feel differently on my legs than they once did when I go for a run, and somehow I have to tell myself that this is how it is supposed to be. It's the world telling me that I'm wrong and malfunctioning when I eat intuitively for what my body is asking for, how much of it that it requires, and the amount that I need to eat even when I am not hungry (every 3-4 hours unless hungry before that time frame) just to function physiologically, by God's design. It's the world telling me my body is unnatural and out of place, which is directly related to my moral character. It just isn't true. Many, many people are naturally made to be in bodies that are wrongly categorized (ALL BODIES ARE WRONGLY CATEGORIZED BECAUSE BODIES SHOULD NOT BE CATEGORIZED) by BMI's, and wrongly categorized by society. 

This is misogyny, diet culture, advertising, fat stigma, fatphobia, sizeism, sexism, satanism, you name it. And the people who promote it generally mean no harm, it's just the air we all breathe. And if we don't notice it, we don't filter it, so it stays inside and poisons us, and comes right out of us in our own way.

The only helpful thing about hovering above is that I can smell these messages from a mile away. It doesn't mean I don't breathe the air, but I smell it and I know when it's inside of me or circulating around. Unfortunately it still harms me because it's poisonous. I've grown in filtering what comes out, but it still poisons me to breathe it in.

Here's one message that I cannot say with more emphasis.

No one but YOU knows your body's needs. We cannot look outside of ourselves to find answers that are only inside of us. What should I eat right now? Ask your BODY, not a random person projecting their extreme internalized abusive diet culture insecurities onto you. These people are also struggling with their relationships with food and body, whether they know it or not, and they do not have answers for you. The absolute only time I would recommend asking someone for help with eating is if it is a dietitian and they tell you even if you are not hungry, you need to be eating anyway, for the sake of your brain and body. Oftentimes we just have to do that until our bodies understand, and sometimes even people who don't struggle with their food intake just don't feel hungry but know it's time to eat because it has been too long (which I've been slowly learning to do). That is the only time to ask another person, and that person must be a professional who specializes in eating disorders. 

Don't let other people's opinions about fitness and their own body image be projected onto you and your truth, your integrity. People do not know your needs. No one telling you to lose weight right now (or ever) is correct. No one telling you to change your diet to be "healthier" is coming from a strong relationship with food. They likely don't know that healthier is not discipline or taking things out of your diet - but actually allowing everything and honoring what your body asks for. I feel sorry for them, but you need to take care of you and not look for advice concerning matters that aren't anyone else's business - that they don't even have relevant input on. 

When you know the truth, you can't change it. And whether someone else knows it or not also doesn't change it. It's like the Bible or global warming. Just because people don't believe it's true or have never heard of it, doesn't change that it is true. Or if your boyfriend is cheating on you, whether you know it or not, believe it or not, you can't change "true" (but I'm really sorry if that's happening and I will happily track him down and egg his car).  

I've seen well-intentioned friends put friends on diets and waste time after time being preoccupied with food and weight and wishing they could eat but they "can't" and feeling deceitfully strong for it until it all crashes and burns, and the person feels as though they failed. You didn't fail, you were doing nothing wrong when you had been trusting your body's needs (and upwards up 95% of diets result in weight regain). The world just sent you a false message about your body. One more time - the way to know if you are hearing a false message about your body is if you hear any message about your body. We have set weights, and we likely have been maintaining the same weights for years (unless we have been sick or on extreme yo-yo diets which bounce back very quickly).

I can't change this easily, but I can share with you that every day I see my body I think I am a bad person, until I remind myself the truth. This is internalized diet culture (and female oppression, and fat stigma). If you think anything differently about me, but don't think differently about yourself - then whatever you think about yourself you think about me too. Because there are only 2 standards. It's either: Every body is acceptable and natural and perfect as it is; or there is only one acceptable, and everything else is wrong. Choose the standard you believe with integrity, and fight with me every day to look at yourself that way, so that we can look at the world that way too. At the same time getting angry whenever we see someone telling us how our bodies should look - or commenting on a woman's (or man's) body for any reason at all. 

When we stop looking at ourselves through the world's filter, we stop projecting the filter on others. I'm nowhere near perfect at this, so help me return the world to being seen through #NoFilter.