I recently went to my gastroenterologist for a consulting visit before my scheduled procedure in April and I was so honestly happy with the outcomes.
When I began the process of seeking out treatment for my stomach issues (which are related directly to my anxiety, have been persisting for years, and likely were made more difficult due to my ED behaviors), I was really nervous and didn’t know what to expect. A family history of GI-related illnesses (Crohn’s, celiac disease) runs in my family, and I had been experiencing symptoms for the past few months that were indicative of something needing to be done.
At my first appointment, the standard thing went on–conversation about symptoms, family history with the help of my mom who came with me to the appointment, but a minimal discussion of my mental health conditions and my history of an eating disorder. I got a few tests spread out over those next few months–an MRI that came back normal, despite not feeling normal and often having nausea and other issues.
So I scheduled an appointment to meet with my doctor during a week off and I went alone to discuss the unaddressed issues of my eating disordered behavior in a more complete way.
She didn’t take my weight at all, validated my mental health symptoms as a likely cause of my gastrointestinal issues, and gave me a recommendation for medical food that would help.
We discussed Overeaters Anonymous and the fact that it’s unnecessary and unhelpful for me (something that doctors, in my experience, never feel, especially when fat patients are sitting in front of them), discussed my family’s relationship with my disordered behavior and my lack of ED treatment (due to weight stigma and denial that what I had was an eating disorder at all in the first place), and she reviewed my previous tests and came to the conclusion that my ED has had no long-term adverse affects on my body.
It is likely that I do have IBS, and she noted that I may benefit from biofeedback so that I can get better at aligning my hunger and fullness signals with my executive functioning.
Because after a few years of binge-purge cycles, I learned how to recover, but my anxiety is a persistent issue. I still struggle with executive functioning, and sometimes will get so busy or bad at time management or just be too anxious to eat, and my hunger signals will go ignored and eventually shut off until they are no longer in my awareness.
It sometimes would result in me skipping meals for hours, and bingeing once I can no longer ignore the ghrelin entering my stomach and telling me to eat, causing me to double or triple up on food, as a way of answering for my missed meals.
I left this appointment having articulated all of this to my doctor, and feeling heard and validated in that understanding of my behavior as it relates to my GI function. And none of it was attributed to my fatness, I was not asked to answer for my weight or reduce it, and I am so grateful for that.
This comprehensive understanding and being able to talk to a doctor about my eating disorder history and be understood and not stigmatized for my weight all at once was probably the best experience I’ve ever had with a medical professional since realizing that I needed to recover from BED/OSFED.
It is difficult enough to be a fat patient in any medical office, but when that doctor visit has to do directly with your eating behavior and the potential for weight stigma is higher than normal, bracing yourself for both subtle and not-so-subtle fatphobia is stressful and traumatic.
I didn’t think finding a doctor who was understanding of my history of eating disorders across the spectrum WHILE also actively not being fatphobic would happen for me. These small things add up for us folks who deal with weight bias from virtually all other corners of life in this world. Thank you so much, Dr. S!
An open letter to men in recovery: stop using “Rule 62” to dismiss women, comorbidity and intersectionality.
To ring in 2020, I spent New Year’s Eve with my friends who are sober–most if not all of whom are qualifying members of Alcoholics Anonymous (I am not; however, I understand the fellowship and framework quite well).
I was discussing sobriety with a man I had just met upon walking in the door to my good friends’ house on the water on the south shore of Long Island–the designated gathering place for 50+ sober people at any given time on a holiday such as July 4th, MDW, and this year, NYE.
I mentioned the unfortunate lack of consideration for folks with eating disorders like myself in the program of AA–especially considering that so many women (approximately 50%) experience comorbid symptoms of eating disorders and substance abuse including alcoholism.
The man in question simply said, “Rule 62,” and looked at me blankly.
Rule 62.
Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.
Rule 62, for those unfamiliar, is a rule that has found its way into recovery circles as unspoken tradition.
The backstory, from what I understand, has to do with tradition four (“Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A./E.D.A/whateverA as a whole.”) in anonymous programs, which discusses the idea that individual meeting groups can operate on their own volition without involving or compromising the integrity of the fellowship as a whole.
When AA was expanding, a group attempted to be “all things to all people”–they resolved to take care of meetings, residential treatment, and other facets of recovery life all under one roof–and realized that their goal was way bigger than they could manage in the context of the AA program.
This group came up with 61 rules and sent them to AA as a manifesto or proclamation for beginning their ambitious program. Then, they realized just how daunting a task it would be to take care of every single person’s needs in the realm of addiction treatment–and before scrapping the idea, they came up with rule 62.
So, what about it?
Last week, I read a really powerful and thought-provoking opinion piece in the New York Times about the patriarchal foundations and history of AA as an organization. We all know the names Bill W. and Dr. Bob, two men who were alive during the first world war and became alcoholics due to a perceived spiritual malady that they believed had to do with an inflated ego and sense of self, as well as a lack of presence of a higher power in their lives. They were their own higher power for the duration of their relationship with alcohol and drinking–which, as the NYT article suggests, is the essence of white male privilege.
They sought to recover from this sense of ego, but did it also heal their harmfully separatist sense of rigid gender roles and toxic masculinity?
Alcoholics Anonymous itself has, seemingly ironically tried to be all things to all people; opening itself to women, people of color, people with doctorates, average folks, and everyone in-between, but how can it do that if it still holds itself in the principles, practices and ideas of a world that was designed by and for white men? How can a fellowship with such a marginal number of women attending compared to men even say that “anyone can do it” if they have the capacity to be honest?
The problem is, this claim is dishonest in and of itself.
Rule 62 was meant to be an ego-check on a group of alcoholics who thought (mistakenly) that their individual group’s program could be a one-stop shop for recovery. When they failed, they wrote this rule as a way of softening the ways that their ambitious and admirable mission had not gone to plan. Well intentioned? Maybe.
In this conversation in my friend’s kitchen, Rule 62 was used to dismiss my very real concern about the harm still being done to people like me in the rooms who are not having their eating disorders addressed–a problem backed by statistics, as I shared before.
I know, I know. If AA were to take on eating disorders too, they wouldn’t really be AA anymore. But this is 2020; and we really need to start accounting for the more than half of the fellowship that needs access to a safe place to express the comorbidity of their alcoholism with other issues like disordered eating and, in the case of my region, opioid abuse. By not being sensitive to issues that clearly and empirically intersect with the problem of alcoholism, there is an imminent danger of making full recovery inaccessible to so many members and potential members.
“At least you’re not drinking” (I hear this one a lot, too!) isn’t good enough anymore. Eating disorders have an unbelievably high mortality rate, especially anorexia nervosa. And I’d venture to say that MOST eating disordered alcoholics can relate to the feeling that alcohol sets off their ED, and vice versa. This is serious.
It’s not really a coincidence or an accident that this “rule” is probably most often bestowed upon women, as it was done unto me.
Having an ego and unwarrantedly flaunting your ability to quote a book that is, dare I say, just as fallible and subjective as we all are is…confusing, and honestly, a form of gaslighting imo.
Women don’t need to be powerless, and we don’t need to be told not to take ourselves so seriously. The world outside of those church basements and sober gatherings already does that to and for us.
Now, I know that this individual’s use and interpretation of Rule 62–like the fallible interpretations of a lot of things in AA and other anonymous groups–speak to the person, not to the fellowship as a whole, hence, the fourth tradition. Hell, Rule 62 was created so that a bunch of people who created a plan and failed, like any human might do, could laugh at themselves and not be bummed that they hadn’t succeeded. We all need a little of that in our lives, certainly.
But I wonder how many times this rule has also been used to drive women into silence about the things that bother them about the world that they live in; things happening inside and outside the rooms. Because the fact is, we absolutely need more power in the world at large and in the daily context of our lives, not less.
And that’s not going to come to us when we are told that the realities of the things we face–pay gaps, the motherhood tax, harassment, assault, violence, dismissal, diet culture, body shame, objectification, legislation made against and about our bodies, repeated interpersonal abuse and marginalization–aren’t serious, problematic or important enough for the men who claim to be united in recovery with us (while, might I add, segregating themselves OFTEN) to take seriously.
I’m a member of a recovery fellowship that isn’t AA, but since AA laid that foundation, I’m addressing it directly, I guess. Any if not all of my closest friends are members of AA. Some of them may cheer me on for saying this, and some might not. That’s okay. However, if anonymous recovery groups, and recovery as a whole, isn’t the same boys club that it says it “used” to be, I’m going to need some of the recovering men I see, know, and love, to start proving that. In fact, I demand it, because (gasp!) I take myself seriously. Out of nothing more than self-respect.
Let’s begin with a story. A few months ago, I was part of a HAES group on Facebook that centered fat bodies. I was SUPER excited about my new yoga wheel, which would make doing a bunch of different poses more accessible to me and my size 18-20 self.
I posted a picture of me in shoulder stand on my wheel with the caption of “my fat a** doing yoga” and honestly, I realize it was–not my finest moment as an ally.
There was a mixture of messages; people equally glad for me to be able to do yoga accessibly, something that is not often seen because yoga has been co-opted by thin white bodies that make an effort to push out and not represent fat folks.
But more quickly and more frequently, I got messages and comments from people larger than me, giving me critical feedback about why yoga wheels aren’t always accessible for people who live with butts even bigger than mine; or why seeing the word “fat a**” (which I now fully recognize as a slur that sometimes reminds people of being bullied) triggered them. It wasn’t necessarily mine to reclaim from the beginning. And in my post, and in all my excitement, I managed to center myself while marginalizing other folks.
Your missteps and mistakes aren’t about you
No one was saying my body was not or is not important–but I failed to note that my body, despite its not-thinness, queerness, and not fully-ableness, is the most represented one in the “body positive” and even in the fat positive community. I failed to see that even if and when you are a fat person, you can still benefit from thin privilege without being thin. You can still be affirmed as a “good fat” by the society we live in; the very same one that preaches that thin is healthy, thin is virtuous and good, thin is best. Because smaller fat people are closer to being thin than people who are, say, “infinifat”; and they are given more social currency because they “fit.” And I don’t mean to say “they,” like I’m not one of them. I am.
Neglecting to put a TW or a CW (trigger or content warning) stirred up a lot of feelings for a lot of people–put me in contact with the moderators–and left me feeling defensive. I did not want to have to mark and label my own body as “triggering”, especially after fighting with it for almost two decades through binge eating, restricting, dieting and exercise abuse.
I fought and fought and fought with people for my own worth and validity–had over 400 comments directed at me, my message, and some even at my body. These were hurtful and painful and did a really, REALLY huge number on my mental health for a few weeks. I had to grapple with the fact that I had hurt people, no matter how unintentionally, and not try to level the playing field with hurting them again even if they were hurting me back.
Comments like “someone the size of one of my legs pretending they have the same experiences as me is laughable” — objectifying me and sticking into my head over and over again, awakening my eating disorder for the first time in what would have been months.
Then came the supporters, who I didn’t ask for–less nuanced in the social justice aspect of fat politics–who would post and then dip out of the group in ‘solidarity’ with me; and I began to feel like these people were giving me a representation that wasn’t true to who I am. They were supportive, and well-meaning; but misguided in some areas of this language and this work. This is where it got even more stressful.
The “all lives matter” rhetoric coming from those who share equal marginalization with me as a 2X/3X sized person was really disappointing–I didn’t and do not stand by it and it was uncomfortable that it even went to that space.
I had to shut it off for a while after so many conversations with the moderators about reparations, my errors, and my own feelings of being disrespected. I was SO uncomfortable and scared and wounded — and sitting in my own place of reference waiting for someone to patch me up and dust me off and tell me I was 100% right and demanding emotional labor from others — something I have learned better than to do, honestly.
It would have been so easy to frame this in the narrative that ‘callout culture is toxic,’ but that waives my accountability and my need to center and repair my relationships with those who experience a lot more difficulty in their life from a psychosocial space than I do.
I am a tremendous believer in the idea that impact ALWAYS outweighs the intention of our actions. We can mean well, but if we harm people, we are ultimately responsible for that. I drafted an accountability post a few weeks after this happened, in an effort to repair the emotional viscerality of the situation, but my mental health and consulting with the admins kept me from posting it to the group.
This doesn’t necessarily accurately represent ALL bodies, but it is helpful in understanding where to put yourself–especially when understanding that there are bodies that experience varying degrees of size discrimination in accessibility, fashion, social situations, etc.
“Small fat” privilege definitely makes up a lot of the voiced experience in many of the movements that body positive or body neutral people have access to, and this itself is not ideal. I want to do my best to be a better ally and simultaneously voice my experiences as an “in-between fat” person (because the current “measure” doesn’t really describe me well), and hopefully somewhere along the way, others can identify with holding space for their in-betweenness–at the same time, I want to stand out of the way so that bodies that don’t look like mine can speak, move and do the work that they need to do to free themselves without sizeism, healthism, or fatphobia. Centering less normative voices is an action–one of many–that can counter the “white and slim thick is normal, nothing else” that goes on on the internet. Nobody is free until we all are. Education on how to do this is not owed to me, but I am absolutely willing and ready and eager to be told where to position myself in this process.
The amount of gratitude there is to express for dialogue; past, present, and future, is boundless. My deepest apologies for harm done and for all that I have neglected to do in this learning process.
That being said…
One thing that I refuse to do is to drown out the voices that hold me accountable with toxic positivity. In the past, I’ve justified and made excuses, but toxic positivity is something that seems to be replacing ‘callout culture’ and it isn’t for the better. I see this mostly among able-bodied, small fat, white, cis/heteronormative writers and influencers–and it’s far more toxic than ‘callout culture’ itself.
Toxic positivity is a term that comes from the mental health realm, in addressing stigma associated with mental illness. It looks like those well-meaning messages and words of good intention that come from people who don’t share your experience or have no idea what they’re talking about. They offer suggestions like “have you tried going outside”, tell you about how kale or pilates saved them from depression or start a lot of sentences with “should.” Know the type? The friends and family who are just trying to make you feel better about being anxious or depressed, but are really just adding to the stigma, incompetence, self-doubt, frustration or stress you feel if you experience symptoms of a mental illness.
Toxic Positivity in Accountability Culture is Similar
What I mean by “toxic positivity” when it comes to responding to your audience is responding to accurate, valid or critical thought and criticism/feedback with “you’re being negative,” or “positive vibes only!” and other such language. What this does is ultimately silence and dismiss the person who might be trying to help us learn and grow as an influencer and an ally. Toxic positivity demands only affirming or validating responses from those in its circle, and sometimes literally blocks out the rest and dismisses them as “haters.”
But our ‘haters’ can often teach us about what we need to do to be better, and they don’t owe it to us to be kind or gentle about it–especially if our actions are harmful to them. You might come out of a mistake a little (ego) bruised. But. you grow through what you go through.
Being called out, confronted, or asked to pass the mic is uncomfortable and immediately launches people into the defensive–I know that from my own experiences of screwing up, and not just in the time I mentioned; it has often been uncomfortable for me. At the same time, it has also shaped me. This goes for my interactions about race (because I have a blind spot as a white person), gender identity (because I have a blind spot as a cis person), and disability (because I have a blind spot as an able-bodied person. It’s no one’s job to hold my hand and educate me, but it is my job once I have been told how a certain view, voice or amount of space I am taking up on other peoples’ behalf or at their expense is harmful to them–to educate myself and not demand anything from anybody until I know how to act right.
I have no reason to apologize for my body, but I do have to apologize and make right on it if I force people to hear what I think, see what triggers them, or listen to words that are harmful to them without their consent. I don’t just get to tell people to “stop following me” if something I do or say triggers them–because it’s my responsibility as a justice-oriented person, activist and feminist not to perpetuate the same messages that do harm to marginalized people whether they follow me or not.
It is, first and foremost, a privilege to be able to say any of the above toxic positivity responses–because it means likely not having had to think about the person who’s experience one is responding to. That is the essence of privilege–not having to think about it. And calling folks out isn’t necessarily toxic–individuals who call out can become toxic when they start attacking others’ humanity and forgetting that there’s a person on the other end of the listening session, but the act of calling someone out for being less than mindful is, imo, perfectly acceptable in a world or in a learning community that prioritizes justice and representation. The only thing that will make that justice restorative is time, and a whole lot of listening. And that’s what these ‘conversations’ (which can sometimes look and sound and feel confrontational or tense) should look like–listening sessions, where the privileged listen and the marginalized speak about harm done and reparations to be made.
So I know I just wrote a really important post like…four days ago. But churning out stuff on this blog has become my default coping mechanism lately.
I have seen and taken in a lot of information today. This past weekend, I watched a documentary on the life of Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors, who died of a heroin-induced heart attack at age 27.
This morning, I was listening to his posthumously released spoken-word album An American Prayer, to the track “Curses, Invocations” — he ends the poem with the verse, “I will always be a word man…it’s better than a bird man.”
Words are healers for so many of us.
But I digress. This is all somewhat connected, I promise. I was walking through NYC this morning and afternoon, listening to people on the train, finding myself in resentments toward people I didn’t know, and frustrated at how rude people can be, especially on mass transit. Sweating, trying to get to an interview on time, and noticing people struggling and thinking about all the assumptions we make about others dawned on me a lot as I walked through Manhattan trying to find where I needed to be.
When I got home, my brother called me and told me to Google Demi Lovato’s name, and that she had been hospitalized for a heroin overdose just hours ago.
Like I said, I know it’s only hours-old news, and I was already in your feeds just days ago. But writing about this, news that shook me really hard, is the way I’m going to process it all right now. Bare with me, please.
The first thing I did when I read the article about Demi’s overdose was text my friend Lexie to ask if she’d heard. A conversation ensued.
A while ago, we’d both shared our frustrations over a Twitter storm she was involved in about pulling a ‘prank’ on her bodyguard that involved being touched nonconsensually.
I pretty much at that moment decided that Demi, in my eyes, was cancelled. I was really upset that a person who was such a fundamental part of my recovery would do something like that and shrug it off so thoughtlessly.
I didn’t take the time to think about the invisible struggles that people are often going through when they lack self-awareness the most. I judged a person who, in all honesty, I didn’t know and couldn’t have known was making errs in judgment like she did, probably because of shame.
And worse, I wanted her to feel shame because I’d like to think, that as someone who is deeply invested in justice and love and compassion, that anyone I chose as a role model would do better. But I realize as I am shaken by what is happening in her life, that she is human. A human who is sick and suffering, just like so many of us.
Most people know somewhat about Demi’s eating disorder relapse last year after breaking up with Wilmer Valderrama, and the recent release of her song “Sober”, in which she bravely admits to relapsing in the area of substance abuse, had a lot of people in her corner encouraging her to find recovery again.
Even in the recording of this song, it sounds nothing like Demi’s voice. I gave it a first listen today and the first thing I thought to myself was, she sounds so scared, so ashamed, and so broken.
During this conversation with my friend, a fellow person in recovery from ED and other mental health issues, we both shared the possibility that maybe Demi hasn’t been truly okay for a long time.
And that’s more than okay.
I don’t know Demi Lovato personally, but I would be kidding myself if I failed to admit that she has been an integral part of my recovery and my own resilience. Her strangely appropriative relationship with the LGBTQ+ community hasn’t always sat well with me, but she has also done something that a lot of people can’t or won’t–shown up for herself and for millions of others in the face of the darkest struggles a person can go through.
Demi Lovato embodies vulnerability and courage.
She has successfully been the representative of “its okay not to be okay” for a really long time. Even after her relapse was reported last year, that was the message that I think we all got–that it’s okay to falter and keep working on ourselves. There is so much power in being honest, but it’s imperative to always be following up on that with the people who need it. Because these attitudes and behaviors aren’t always visible to the entire world at all hours of the day.
Some of us may not think the person doing best needs check-ups; but I can assure you, connection is the very thing that keeps recovery alive.
Like Demi herself has said in the past: “Recovery doesn’t get a day off.”
None of us, despite whether we are one of the 65 million people who follow her on Twitter, knows Demi’s life day in and out. Since she has shown up as the face of recovery for this generation–a person who has seemingly overcome self harm, self hate, drug abuse, childhood trauma, bipolar disorder, alcoholism and an eating disorder–so many people have looked to her for inspiration and found it; myself included.
I remember seeing her at IZOD Center in 2014 and sobbing uncontrollably as she sat at the piano and sang “Warrior”. I cry every time I do a cover of the song myself, because so much of it is my truth.
I, too, have had to recover from depression, crippling anxiety, abuse, codependency and an eating disorder simultaneously. I know that it often doesn’t happen all at once, and that the parts of your behaviors that aren’t “as severe” can seem like an okay thing to cling to because that’s the trade off your brain makes.
Once you are in recovery from one thing, your brain tries to sort the rest out, prioritizing your vices by which one will kill you last until they’re all no longer useful.
I liken it to playing something I call “symptomatic wack-a-mole,” because it can seem like just as you’ve got one symptom of your mental illness cared for and patched up, another one rears its ugly head.
And it’s not always as easy as “I’ve got this.” In fact, most people who can confidently say “I’ve got this” all by themselves, don’t really “got this.” Macklemore is a really good example–and one of my favorite recovery advocates to produce raw, unfiltered art on the realness of recovery.
At that concert four years ago, I had no way of knowing whether or not, at that exact moment, Demi was okay. Even Nick Jonas, who performed right beside her, has told media sources that sometimes he glances at her wrists when they see each other just to make sure she’s “okay.” Even then, that’s only a snapshot, a relative piece of wellbeing that makes up a recovering person’s ‘okay.’ Just like most of my family or friends and especially not strangers on the internet or even sitting around me at the concert that night had no way of knowing whether or not I was truly okay.
The best way to find out if someone is okay is to ask them. When you’re finished asking, listen.
When you are held up and expected to represent an entire community of struggling, sometimes even broken people, self-care can be so hard. And the shame of falling from that image is even more tough to cope with. And when people depend on your success, your voice, and your triumphs to make a living, the burden only gets larger. And pretending, inauthenticity, and half-truthful recovery can only propel a person so far until those old vices start to get in line and fight for first.
The one thing I was really floored by is that Demi is now (at least according to the reports) using opioids/heroin. A lot of people believe that heroin use is a dark, scary, last resort, unheard of ‘point of no return’ type of drug problem. But it’s way more common than we try to convince ourselves it is. I live on a literal island where the opioid epidemic is at its worst in our entire country. And it is grueling and scary and heartbreaking all the time.
As someone who shares a lot of struggles with Demi Lovato, I said to myself when I read this that she probably feels so powerless right now. Lexie pointed out that she felt that Demi still, to this day, despite recovery, probably feels this unstoppable desire to be perfect.
Being given the assignment of poster child for mental wellbeing is emotionally exhausting a lot of the time, and sometimes–I know from experience–this work can be counterproductive to our wellness in a lot of ways. Perfection was and likely still is the first thing I was addicted to. So many of us with eating disorders live this truth to its fullest extent.
I hope that with this instance of relapse, despite how public it is becoming, we can have conversations with each other about the invisibility of illnesses like addiction and mental health (which undoubtedly go hand in hand). Awareness is great, but often not enough. We must move from awareness into action.
We cannot treat brokenness, addiction, or shame without compassion and vulnerability. I have seen some really, really awful things in the comments of the articles I’ve surveyed about Demi’s overdose in the past few hours (Looking at you, TMZ).
This may be an opportunity for Demi to get real and even more raw with her art. Thus far, her sobriety has been a public event, so much a part of her label-created image as an ex-Disney starlet. Her powerlessness as a celebrity, and as a celebrity in recovery, is so much bigger than herself, and the stakes are high. I think the pedestal on which she has been placed is holding her back more than anything, and I hope that she can find peace and freedom on her own terms as soon as possible.
Until then, it’s on us to let her heal, check in with ourselves and our loved ones as we cope with the realities of things like addiction and disease of the mind. Demi Lovato’s words, her image, her humility and her courage have all taught me first and foremost that no matter what we believe in, we must first believe in our own worthiness.
Writing this post is like writing a breakup text, or something. It’s really hard.
What’s even harder is having to admit that this is something that’s been coming for about a month. I’ve made decisions out of denial, shame, fear, and anger–leaving very little room for prayer, acceptance, tolerance, gentleness, self-compassion and love.
For the past month, I’ve been floating around in a sea of self-doubt, shame, uncertainty, unresolved trauma, and ultimately, fear. I’ve refused to be alone with myself, lost myself to so much service and self-sacrifice, and along the way, forgot to self-care and self-love. I worked too quickly, rushed my process, said yes to things I wasn’t ready to commit to. Believe it or not, there is such thing as being selfless to your own detriment. It’s a sort of pattern I have, and it always catches up with me.
In working through some really tough trauma experiences, I experimented with my own boundaries in a way that proved fatal to my own wellbeing. And as much as I want to resent the rest of the world for that, that decision began with me and ends with me. The real emotional blank spot came when I realized that I didn’t at all truly believe I deserved love; true, authentic and unconditional love–because I am far from “normal”, because I am broken, but most of all, because I live in a fat body.
I didn’t realize the stigma that came with living in a fat body until I lived in one myself. This sounds so unbelievably ignorant, especially because I can account for a working understanding of other oppressions–sexism, homophobia, and mental health stigma to name a few. But fatness is something I have been taught to fear the most, because in the dynamic that I come from, fat is seen as the worst thing that can happen to a person.
At present, I have a lot more clothes that don’t fit me than clothes that do (triggering), I live and work with the food and exercise police (really triggering).
Fat phobia is real and it is pervasive and it is unacceptable. Truthfully, when I was restricting (netting 700 calories per day) between ages 12-15, I was never, not even once, regarded as sick.But now that I am “fat,” I am viewed as someone who has simply just “stopped caring” about her appearance, stopped trying. In “existing while fat”, I am not entitled to an “eating disorder”; I am merely regarded by diet culture as lazy, insecure, unhealthy, and lacking self-esteem.
And in a sense, this outsider appraisal of my appearance with respect to my behavior is somewhat spot on.
I have stopped caring about diet culture, stopped caring what the scale says, stopped measuring, counting, obsessing, stopped prioritizing thinness over compassion. I have given up on spending 95% of my time trying to manipulate my own body to look like someone else’s. This is recovery, right?
I’d like to say yes–because those are steps in the unlearning process that I have taken in full stride. For instance, I no longer exercise for exercise, but for movement. I no longer count calories and I eat what I want to when I want/need to. But as I have done so, I have changed my body shape; but having always been a “normal weight” even in my most disordered behavior patterns, I’ve never had to contend with the thin ideal from a body that opposes the thin ideal in every way imaginable.
I’ve ditched the diet sh*t, but not the internalized fat phobic body shaming self-hatred that comes with existing in a society that values and privileges thinness above all body types. This, for me, has created more dysmorphia than I ever remember experiencing, even when I was restricting or bingeing the most. I still struggle with exercise aversion, eating in front of my family, hiding food, and saying no to food just because it’s there. This relapse has been one big emotional bottom, with all those behaviors occurring intermittently between.
In seventeen months in recovery up to this point, I didn’t fully unlearn or overcome the perfectionism that I used to protect myself from the world for such a long time. From behind these walls, I came to believe that everyone deserved love and credit and compassion–everyone except me.
But now I’m trying really hard to learn to be gentler with myself, to take care of my basic needs and first things first. This is going to come with being more thorough and honest than I’ve been since these patterns presented themselves, since I deemed them acceptable. They are no longer acceptable, and are creating so much unmanageability in my life that I cannot see my own worth, cannot access balance. And I’ve been healing through life long enough to know that that’s not living.
The one thing I can’t seem to straighten out is that when I make the admission of relapse and people ask me “What can I do?” “What can I do to support you?” I don’t have an answer for them straight away. I have so much love in my life right now that got harder to see when I was struggling. I just know now that I want to get unstuck, and learn different. I want to do better. And that begins with taking responsibility for myself because nobody else can.
I just want to say thank you to all the people who have been there for me so far for this past week, for these past few months, and for all the support coming to me. I know I can do this, and that I will. I appreciate and love every single person who reads what I have to say, and lets me share my journey with the world. It’s all part of the process.
I’m still wondering how I didn’t stress eat full boxes of whatever was in the cabinets last Tuesday.
I’m still a little afraid of the realities that so many people (myself included) may have to face right now as Donald Trump becomes much more than a possibility.
I swore up and down I wouldn’t get political here and I’ve been thinking about how appropriate it may not be for this context but I do believe that the personal is political.
Nothing makes me feel better than a good selfie.
And as a queer person, I take this very personally.
Let this sink in:
As per his comments on marriage equality last night; I want to be able to not be forcibly electrocuted and protected from legally sanctioned violence against my body before I even consider a marriage license.
The heteronormative institution needs to stop suggesting that marriage will shut us up, that that’s the end of our wanting to be seen as human, that that’s all they need to “give us” in order for things to be leveled out without considering our humanity and the root of our existence.
Let me repeat: my safety from both institutional and individual discrimination and physical violence is more paramount to me than a piece of paper.
Benefits of marriage are wonderful and important and huge. But not being beaten or murdered on the street and denied medical care in a crisis because someone is too self-important to assist me are a priority right now.
Until donald trump sheds his complete and utter indifference toward me and other people like me, many of my friends, and my partner; he is not an ally to my community and so many other communities that are feeling the fear of his vitriol, no matter how fast or how furiously he seems to be backpedaling.
Right now it is easy to say “calm down” or “don’t worry” when you are white, a cisgender man, straight, and/or Christian. Your privilege includes the privilege of not living in fear, not imagining how much you have to lose. Privilege is not being sent a check in the mail for having any one of our culture’s decidedly normative identities–privilege is not having to think about it.
At the same time, my identity is one of the ones with a target on its back; but I live with the safety and privilege of knowing that I am not going to be ripped from my family because of my immigration status or labeled a threat to national security for my religion and that is something that I take really seriously.
I care because it affects more than just me; but I care enough to listen and enough to know when to shut up and let other groups who are part of the whirlwind of threats and vitriol to tell the world that they are tired and scared, too.
Think about being emotionally tired all the time. Not even having the wherewithal to be angry about it. This is where so many of us are, myself included. And I’m not sure, personally, where to move or how to keep moving.
That doesn’t mean I’m not going to wait and see. I have had many talks with many people, a big one being with my family.
On top of the exhaustion and anxiety that this pressing reality of my own oppression and the oppression of so many others, life is just constantly happening to me at the moment. My partner and I have decided (not entirely mutually, but I’m working on my part in this) to give each other some space.
And of course my anxiety is screaming “WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME?” when that is not the case. Space doesn’t have to be a cop out, an “I’m gradually gonna let you down easy” or a way of saying “wait until I figure out if I actually want you anymore.” It is something that all humans crave as much as they crave intimacy.
I just happen to have trauma that forces me to assume the worst when someone doesn’t want to be around me all the time.
My best friend and I went to Long Beach (New York) to walk for a while. We caught the sunset and the moon.
As many of you know from my story, my dad left in the middle of my childhood. He stayed in my life, but he was preoccupied with beginning a new family that I didn’t adjust to; a massive interruption in what I considered to be normative in my environment. He was also in a space of what constantly seemed to be rage and anger, that I took to mean that something was wrong with me. My body responded by eating and blaming myself for every small detail. I took these patterns with me to grown up life.
Being given space hasn’t just been something my partner took to benefit herself. Speaking only to my own experience (so as to be as fair to her as possible, because I can’t really speak to what is happening for her)–it has only been a week, and I’ve had to grow into this. I don’t have a choice.
And it’s not the end of my world. It’s the beginning of a new one, where I like myself and my own company a lot. It’s a time to see friends I haven’t seen in years or months because I’ve been either too sick or self-absorbed or submerged so deeply in codependency that I couldn’t stand the idea of being alone in my own head or my own body.
But now that I have had to sacrifice being sick and scared for the very act of loving my partner from a distance right now, I am learning a sense of self-sufficiency (slowly) that I haven’t had in a long, long time.
Seriously y’all: get yourself some of this!!!! Bath and Body Works aromatherapy in Eucalyptus Tea. I took a bath almost 12 hours ago and I still smell good.
In the past seven days, I’ve taken more baths and gotten my nails done twice and seen more friends than I’ve seen in a few year back here at home. I’ve written in my journal more often. I started attending a support group. I’ve had difficult conversations with very tough people that hurt and triggered me deeply, and I’ve survived them. I’ve made more connections and experienced more support and love than I’ve possibly ever felt.
I’ve also started tweeting three things I’m grateful for every day; as part of this month’s Recovery Warriors challenge. I used to do it all the time but now it’s more important than ever; when I feel like I have so much to be sad and anxious about.
My sense of security, even in a world filled with the possibility of denying my existence, is intact at the moment. And I owe that to making every effort to remain peaceful despite it all. Because we have to. I have to. The world needs me, and if I’ve learned anything in the past week or so, it’s that the only person I can guarantee will show up for me every single time is myself; but that doesn’t mean I have to do it alone and self-rescue my way to surviving.
I am on a journey to Make my Spirit Great Again; and thank you for coming with me.
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Recovery is only possible with connection! Email, @ or follow me:
Twitter: @caitsrecovering
Royally Incomplete 