Better Living Through Elevators

I take the elevator more now. Not because I’m lazier, but because the mirror holds surprise and delight.

When you’re big, you’re constantly inconvenienced, judged, or flat-out not accommodated because of your size. It imprints deeply what your size is, and the consequences it causes you. Society never lets you forget it.

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I have all of that plus the nomadic experience of, hundreds of times in four years, having to flag down a flight attendant to ask for a seatbelt-extender. And everyone hears. Everyone knows. It’s humbling in all the wrong ways.

I still remember the first time I didn’t need an extender, and I thought the belt must be bigger than normal — because it certainly couldn’t have been me.

That’s because losing weight doesn’t erase the negative imprint of living in bodies society refuses to accommodate.

It doesn’t matter that I have spent about 1600 days trying to achieve my newfound health. That’s not sufficient for changing a lifetime of thought-shaping.

Changing the mental messaging, killing that imprint, requires confronting those thoughts head-on through experiences. Not just once, but time and time again, day after day, constantly beating down old self-perceptions by forcing myself to experience new defining moments, however small and fleeting they may be.

Experiencing things which once hurt you, or hindered you, and not being hurt or hindered, seems to water down micro-traumas over time.

Negative imprints are a learned pattern, and unlearning them require pattern absorption too. 

So, when I get home after a 7-kilometre walk now, I don’t need to take the elevator — yet I need it.

I need my moment of the elevator opening, so years of imposed-trauma blink away for the briefest moment, as I’m reminded I’ve changed in so many ways. 

Five seconds. That’s all.

Doors slide open, the mirrored wall is right there, and I see myself in the context of the outside world — not my home — wearing real clothes, after walking the walk that had been my goal for years, and looking cute after I’ve finished it. That’s how I look after a walk that would have left me in agony, if I could have even completed it, just 2-3 years ago. Every time, I smile wide-wide-wide.

If I could bottle that pride, I’d be a millionaire.

It’s a feeling you must earn. I don’t know many people who’ve lost 130 pounds. I certainly don’t know anyone who’s done it with four years of slow, constant commitment that moves the needle every friggin’ month, month after month, year after year.

But most of the time, I’m inside my head as the person I’ve always been: the person who’s been insulted, demeaned, devalued, broken in confidence, broken in spirit. Those things don’t just go away.

They’re like the ocean. Some days, they’re loud and crashy. Other days, they’re calm and quiet, without a ripple.

Maybe those feelings will never leave.

Maybe the old ‘I contain multitudes’ phrase is akin to a curse, like the Chinese proverb of ‘may you live in interesting times.’ It only sounds good until you’ve lived it inside-out. Then you’re like “Oh… I get it now.”

But the lived pain, and the empathy it creates within, are critical to who I am, both as person and as a writer.

The poet Rumi writes a lot about how pain and joy are relative, and how your capacity for joy is only as great as your capacity for pain, but you never know the expansiveness of those sensations until you live them.

Some people never feel such things because they’ve never been challenged to reach them.

I never had to go looking for pain. Far more than I’ll ever need has come my way. Joy, well, I’ve gone looking for that but let’s say she’s good at hiding.

I don’t frequently feel amazing, but when I do, of late, another feeling comes into play as well — “I didn’t know good felt this good.”

Serotonin, adrenaline, joy — I don’t know. They’re feelings I don’t live with at a base level, but they’re increasingly familiar for me.

These days, I’m working hard to force myself to register the good emotions, the happy moments. I try to linger inside them.

If I’m out, walking, and I feel good, I add another block, listen to another song, find another bench. Because it’s not about the steps, it’s not about the clock, it’s not about the plan.

It’s not about anything more complicated than feeling good.

That’s it. My goal: Feeling good.

What gets me there, and how can I stay there for longer?

So, I take the elevator more often now. Once a day.

One lift at a time, I’m changing how I see myself in the world.

And I like it.

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