by Anonymous
For as long as I can remember, there was something wrong with my body.
In one of my earliest memories I am three years old, standing in front of a sun lamp to treat a rash on my belly. In first grade, I had eye surgery and wore a patch for months. I had a benign tumor removed from my side when I was eight. By the time I left elementary school, I’d broken enough bones to put my mother on a first name basis with the radiologist.
There were other things – not exactly health conditions – that concerned my parents about their first-born. Like the fact that my hair didn’t grow much until I was four, one or my hips is higher than the other, and some of my permanent teeth never developed.
The message I took from all this was not that my parents wanted the very best for me (which they did). It was: My body is a problem that needs fixing.
One October day when I was 12, my mother applied mascara to my eyelashes. It might have been related to Halloween, but I’m not sure. What stuck with me was my father’s declaration that I was beautiful and my mother’s promise that I could wear makeup in junior high, the following year.
That’s when my weight became an issue. Instead of growing lanky like many adolescents, I seemed to go right from child to woman.
“You might have a pretty face, but no one will want you if you’re fat,” my dad warned.
“It’s genetic. You and I will always battle our weight,” my mother confessed. She constantly cursed her upper arms and double chin, and wore what she and my dad called “the garment” to make her slimmer.
When we moved to another state in the middle of eighth grade, I joined Weight Watchers, which recommended I lose six pounds. In a room of women three times my age, I learned about calories and fat grams and listened to stories of self-loathing and late-night binges.
Although I was constantly hungry, I shed the weight and reveled in my parents’ praise. It gave me confidence to make friends at my new school, attend my first dance and talk to boys on the phone. I attributed those and other peak experiences to my weight loss. Being hungry never felt so powerful and productive.
So from then on, when my self-esteem dipped, dieting was the answer. But no matter whether the scale was up or down, feelings of shame about my body never fully waned. If someone gave me a compliment, I discounted it. People don’t really see me. Wait until they find out how flawed I am, I thought.
Carrying these patterns through adolescence and into adulthood, I eventually questioned why they existed. I studied the media’s influence on body image, reflected on the events of my youth and read books like “Fat is a Feminist Issue.” Intellectually, I got it. I could talk a good game about body acceptance and America’s oppressive standards of beauty. But how I truly felt about myself didn’t change.
Around my 30th birthday, my husband of five years and I hit a major road bump that crushed me and would eventually lead to the end of our marriage. To manage the stress, I joined a gym and before long, saw results that pleased me. Not only did my mood improve, I started feeling strong and athletic for the first time in my life. And, without even trying, I began to lose weight.
My first hint that something was awry, came about six months later, when I decided to go running after taking an aerobics class. The month before, I had added an extra evening at the gym each week, and the month before that, I’d started doing both weights and cardio every time I went.
Taking my workouts up a notch usually gave me a surge of self-assurance mingled with a sense of protection. Exercise was an amulet. No matter what went wrong, it would buoy me. And in between, there were always hunger pangs to remind me that I was moving toward the solution to my problem.
But as I ran that night, conflicting thoughts spun in my head. If I did an extra 20 minutes of cardio now, would I need to do it every time? Maybe I shouldn’t set the bar so high. But think of all the calories it would burn. Wait, someone at work said my suits were getting baggy.
Afterward, in the shower, I looked down at my belly and pinched what seemed like more flesh than had been there the day before. Extra cardio would be a good idea in case I overate during the winter holidays, I decided.
By the following spring, I found it impossible to go a day without exercise and shut down anyone who suggested I take a break. Although the scale proved I had well surpassed the goal Weight Watchers set when I was 13, my body felt uncomfortable and distorted. My will to fix it was unrelenting: it interrupted me with phone calls in the middle of businesses lunches, woke me up for 4 a.m. runs, and whispered in my ear that I was nothing if I gave up the battle.
That August, I went to get a new driver’s license. Making my way through the chaos of the motor vehicles headquarters, I noticed people looking at me with concern, perhaps a second too long. Well, it sort of made sense. Who’s happy in a place like that?
But the enormous sunken eyes that stared out from my new license told me the truth about their pained expressions. Granted, the MVA isn’t in the business of glamour shots, but even so, I looked dreadful. Gray skin, thinning hair, facial creases like an old woman. Things that I couldn’t perceive in front of a mirror, suddenly came into focus.
I would like to tell you that moment brought me to my senses, whereupon I stopped exercising and began eating well. But the truth is, it took the gym saying I could no longer return, plus the intervention of a stranger in order for me to surrender. Then, it required two hospitalizations and six years to reach what I consider a state of recovery.
I feel fortunate to have come so far (half of anorexics don’t), but some people ask me what took so long. Here’s what I tell them: Although my behavior was destructive, it was the glue holding me together during my most difficult chapter yet. Replacing that with a better way to keep it together can take a while.
Every day for the rest of my life
I will remind myself:
This container of my being is
A gift, not a burden,
Sometimes an answer,
Never a problem.
