Navigating the world in a body that is now seventy pounds larger than it once was has been an eye opener. I have somehow become both invisible and imposing. Though age has created a shield as did the pandemic, I’m finding myself pushing up against my own mental barriers as well as those placed on me by society’s continued unexamined biases.
The gain, as we will be referring to it from here on out, (instead of the nightmare, though it could without a doubt be seen as both) taught me much about how I wish to define health. And what I now want to stay away from with a ten foot pole (it’s a lot..). It forced a re-evaluation not only of my relationship with food, but of the world around me and how I navigate it. While it is true, my butt has grown to be an even bubblier bubble than it was, oft times bumping into things these days without my knowledge, that is not what I speak of when I say “learning to navigate”. New bodily proportions and dimensions are a story many who have fluctuated both up and down can relate to and it is jarring to experience, but only one factor of many in a before and after landscape.
Health is a deeply personal journey and anyone who tells you otherwise, that we can all tread similar paths and get the same results, is a charlatan. We all know calories in, calories out = sure fire science! or the latest craze around Pilates or strength training or Zumba, all have prophets that claim to have a cure all one-two move for that six pack you’ve always wanted. For those of us who have traverses any sort of health crisis we know that simple phrases are rarely the answer and while there are many loveable charlatans in fiction who come bearing crushed velvet and tales of romance, the ones of the modern day health industry and influence tend to be megalomaniacs. Or they are in a MLM pushing a juice cleanse- trust me, don’t do it!
The interconnectedness of health is an abstract in Western society because we dissect and separate everything, though it really shouldn’t be. It seems obvious from the outside that multiple parts of any system need to function optimally for the whole to thrive but, in today’s a world built around companies and not nature it is easy to lose sight of what true health is for the individual. I view health as a triangle with the three sides serving as body, mind and spirit with the ultimate goal of health to get an equilateral triangle. My thought was always get that perfect triangle and be complete, and to say I went overboard would be an understatement.
In my late 20s and early 30s I became obsessed with my health. I was going to be Buddha in a fitspo body. I worked out everyday, tracked my food, meditated, and went to therapy. I’d be lying if I said that I did not feel better at one point, I did. I did improve, but I never dug up the core issues, or root causes as to why my health constantly wavered on one side of the triangle or another. But thanks to a couple lovely fellas and dating apps that uncovered decades worth of trauma I got there – choo choo! One express ticket to the purgatory that is your body enduring a trauma response and the long, often treacherous road, to recovery.
Like many I thought I had experienced a Dark Night of the Soul before this point, having been depressed for a majority of my adult life, but no. I was not prepared for what was to come as I tried to achieve that PERFECT TRIANGLE. I was never good at geometry so I should have known not to attempt health free hand without a compass.
You know how when you shift your feet, if you are not stable and grounded you lose your balance? Well, when you weight lift you become more stable in your daily movements, you twist your ankles less, you catch yourself before you fall, you become physically grounded. The same happens with yoga, as with other sports practices. It’s something about repeating the same movement over and over, making teeny tiny tweaks, that makes you so familiar with how your body operates, that you begin to move like a machine without thinking about it. It’s like oiling an engine. Deliberate movement can aid almost all bodies, both abled and non. But we aren’t really taught to do that with the other parts of ourselves really, are we? Not in the same way.
Mentally?
Emotionally?
OHhhhHhHHH BUT BuT but I journaled. I meditated. I went to see a shaman. I faced myself. I even looked in the mirror at my hoo-ha. Burned some string between two candles to separate myself from past lovers, past selves, my own toxicity. I oiled all the other parts of the triangle, trust me.
Have you? Have you really?
I looked at the grimy parts. The rotten parts. The parts I needed to hide, skirt and shrink away so people wouldn’t think me even weirder. Part of me sort of liked them. It was a bit frightening, a bit empowering in how maddening those parts were. Maybe I liked it in the same way I like picking my skin, was I expunging something?
I did try to focus on the positive – fake it till you make it right? And honestly, that is part of it. It really is. It is proven that you can rewire your brain with thought. But that rewiring will never take if the negative looms larger than the positive.
Then certain people come along and push, and pick, and jab. Friends, Lovers, Foes, that random lady who stands way too close to you in the grocery check-out line. They convince you, that negative you, was right all along. You knew it, you KNEW IT. You have always known it. It is all true, every single terrible thing you’ve ever thought has now been confirmed by [insert traumatic experience/or person here]. So what do you do?
Hide. Time to hide. Squirrel away. Nothing to see here. Who me? Who are you looking for? She is gone. She has left the building. We are taking over because she must be protected at all costs, because we told her, time and again, we told her all that stuff for her own good so she would know and not get her hopes up…but she did. We knew.
The sides of the triangle rip apart. You thought it was so stable, strong even. You lose your balance. So what if that one side was a bit shorter than the others? You didn’t realize they were all like that, short and disjointed.
That you were disjointed.
The type of darkness you enter this time is different. You no longer have ideations. It’s something new. Everyone who has Depression knows that when your old pal appears sometimes he looks the same, other times he wears a mask or gets a new suit. And sometimes he brings a friend. This time he brought a few. It wasn’t even ideation, I had to live moment by moment if you can call it living, I was breathing, eating, shitting. I could not imagine past the next few minutes. I really had never felt like I was about to die in the way I did during that period. I think I did die, a part of me.
The only thing that gave me comfort was texture because it would help soothe the numbness, because lots of numbness is painful, the lack of feeling can feel like torture. I clung to the texture of blankets, weaving my fingers through the yarn. I savored the feel of my bare feet on cool sheets, of certain foods playing over my tongue making me forget just how many cookies I’d eaten. I’d finally feel rage as I pushed and pulled weights. Until I lost my literal balance and injured my body, again, in another way.
I never stopped trying to harness the body side of that triangle. I thought “if I can just get this weight off the other part will snap into place.” And it’s an idea I still can’t seem to let go of.
But no. My health has become much more than what my body looks like since this all began. I’m on a new path getting angry at doctors, at science, as fashion, at work, at myself, at the world, and ultimately at how I will likely never view myself in another way because of how my generation and those before me have been conditioned to tie their appearance to health. I’ll get glimpses of that kind of health, of that triangle, but I’ve come to accept my triangle will never be what I’d like. Yet I must piece it together again, I deserve that much.
When I’d gone to that shaman I mentioned, her name was Polar Turtle or some such…she was out there, in a great way, the way you want to be out there because if you were maybe you’d feel at home. She looked at me deeply right when I sat down and asked where I was? I wept. I didn’t understand, I was so frustrated because I was sitting right there. Wasn’t she meant to guide me, she’s the trained wise woman…that’s why I am here Polar Squid Lady, come on!
That visit to the shaman was the Spring before the gain. Back when I thought I knew what health was.
She was right. Where was I?
I hadn’t even scratched the surface.
too fat to be italian 