Losing Pounds? Losing Wounds.

I wonder, sometimes, how life knows to get the timing just right, so that, if you’re paying attention, you can use the synchronicity to really gain some wisdom.
Luckily, I tend to pay attention.
Tuesday has been “headtrip day” for two weeks now. Yesterday was jam-packed — a night of chatting with one of my best friends immediately after another trip to the headshrink, and then this morning I got to watch last night’s The Biggest Loser.
And I’m not sure where to start, so let’s do the Tarantino end-middle-beginning-takes-you-to-a-new-ending thing, shall we?
Shay, of The Biggest Loser, is the biggest player in the show’s history, beginning at some 470 pounds or so. She’s trying to heal after being raised by a heroin addict mom who died young and left her in foster care, shopped around for the rest of her life. She’s 30 now, and realizing her life can start over. Knowing her weight is ENTIRELY about her level of fuctedness, she commented, “Each of these pounds is a wound.”
…Which turned the lightswitch on and I remembered my conversation with JT last night, about how I’m having a really hard time getting my game back on with the weightloss thing because of everything that’s been coming at me — what a time of chaos. Also, summer has made a valiant return, and knowing how seasonally depressed I get in the winter, I’m trying to seize the end of the sunshine, hamstrung by the shorter days, but also trying to get everything done I feel burdened to get done. Oh, and I’ve begun writing again. It’s just so hard for me to get everything settled enough to find a routine that works.
Now, keep in mind, I get my 3-4 hours minimum of activity per week, which is classified as a “healthy” lifestyle. I eat better than I ever have, but still have further to go, right? But I’m still better than most — just with too big of portions for me to lose weight. I’m maintaining my weightloss and living a tasty and literally “full” life.
But, as I was telling JT, I’m 5 pounds from breaking the weight I became around 18 years old — and when I do that, I undo ALL the physical harm that has happened since my life went from averagely-sucky to “You’re gonna need therapy for ALL this shit” when I hit 18, after my mom’s attempted suicide, stupid love, and all the drama and near-death events, etc,  that would follow for years.
Every one of these pounds is a wound.
And when I get past that emotional boundary, past the 200-pound mark, back into the territory of “normal” people, I prove to myself that I have literally overcome all that came at me in all those years.
Deep down inside, I don’t feel I have, and I wonder now if it’s part of why I’ve been stagnating at this weight for so long.
I don’t remember who I was before my life railroaded with my mother’s suicide attempt and the years of depression and self-hate that it’d spur for me. I don’t remember the girl I was in my teens… not really. I remember the insecurity was there even then, because I was still “heavy” fat, I just wasn’t “fatty-fat-fat” fat.
Every one of those pounds was a wound.
Every candy bar was a hug. Every sugary tasty drink was a soft sigh. Every extra helping was a wink and a hug. Every layer of fat was a blanket to wrap myself in against the harsh coldness of a big, bad world.
I’m realizing now that I haven’t been ready to heal all those wounds. Not yet.
This therapy I’ve begun is dredging up issues that are making me realize, I guess, just how much my eating really was a response to serious emotional challenges that just NEVER FUCKING STOPPED for 16 or 17 years. When there were lulls, I was so depressed* that it didn’t matter that the barrage had stopped, because the wounds had begun to fester and puss.
The walls I put up, man. Oh, the walls. When your method of coping is one that produces shame, you need to hide yourself. You need the walls. You need to be stoic in public, and beneath contempt in private. Because that’s how shame rolls. Trust me. I know.
I know far more about myself now than I care to share with the likes of you in a place like this. This is what I know.
But I don’t know everything, not about myself, not even close. The amount I’ve learned in the last year — since the one-year anniversary of blowing my back out and the biggest personal learning curve in my life — makes me shake my head in wonder.
I just don’t know how one person can absorb all that in a year. You know how you put a sponge in water, it soaks up everything it can, you pull it out, the gravity sucks half the water back out? For a moment, the sponge absorbed it all, and then it washed away. I kind of feel like that. I’m an overloaded sponge. Knowing this, I sometimes wonder what has washed away, what I’ve forgotten that I swore I’d remember, that I’d learn from.
So when my therapist asked me last night what I hoped to gain from my sessions with him, I just didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t really thought of a specific goal. What do I want to be? I want to be better. I want to be better at being comfortable with myself. I want to feel better about myself, not be so aware of the insecurities and fears I’ve been long trying to overcome. (And have made incredible strides with, really. Incredible.)
But, most of all, I guess I just want some guidance making it through the last of my journey.
It’s not 5 pounds I need to lose. It’s not 50 pounds I need to lose. It’s many years of wounds. That’s what I need to lose.
At this point, it’s proving harder than just getting on a bike. Yet, at the same time, it’s not harder than that. THAT is all I need to do. Work. It’s inarguable, it’s science. That’s weightloss; work more, eat less.
But right now? It’s about the wounds. I’ve proven I can melt my ass. I know I will do every bit I’m of mind to do. I’ve not known why NOW wasn’t the time for me to do so… until now. Knowing? Priceless. I’ve long known I was scared to break that boundary, because once I’m not so obviously damaged with that big “200-something” weight, then who will I be?I just haven’t been willing to admit it, not really.
You don’t have a fucking clue who I’ll be, nor do I. And I can pretend to be as excited as I want to be, but deep down inside, I’m still scared. You don’t realize the foggy, hazy dream we lifelong fat people have of our thin selves — it doesn’t exist because we can’t imagine how we’ll look. We don’t know what our bone structure looks like, or what’s possible for our features when all that fat vanishes.
Doesn’t change the fact that I *will* make the weightloss happen in entirety, it just acknowledges that I finally maybe understand why it might not happen right now.
And I’m okay with that.
*Incidentally, probably 70% of my depression, I now realize, was made far worse by bad diet and no exercise. As soon as I was exercising three times a week and eating less sugar, taking vitamins, I had to go OFF my anti-depressants within three months, because I’d regulated my chemistry myself. I still have ups and downs, but they’re natural ups and downs.

4 thoughts on “Losing Pounds? Losing Wounds.

  1. tradilou

    You really spoke to my heart. As a 200+ girl making a change in the way I eat and exercising regularly now, I tend to sabatage myself when I see change because I am scared of letting go and not knowing who this “skinnier” girl will be… Well written.

  2. Bob

    Wonderful and very thought provoking. It is very difficult to shed pounds when you are constantly under stress, albeit physically or emotionally. Thank you for sharing this information, as it has given me more insight into my weight struggles. -Bob-

  3. Rebecca

    My friend forwarded this article to me and I found it inspiring. I started following your blog, then I followed you on twitter, and now I am writing a blog of my own. I am embarking on a big challenge and about to make life changes. It didn’t start here, but this was a little push I needed among many. Thanks!
    .-= Rebecca´s last blog ..Cleaning Up =-.

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