Thinky Thoughts from the Weekend

You know how sometimes I get all navel-gazing introspective and write posts that are like 3 bazillion words long?  Yeah.  This one’s like that.  It’s also kind of disjointed – sort of a verbal barfing of some stuff I needed to write down in order to sort through, and now going back through to edit it just seems like TOO MUCH WORK.  So go get some coffee.  I’ll wait.

Back now?  Ok.

Michelle over at The Fat Nutritionist wrote a big ol’ post the other day about how she was not pretty as a child/young teen and then suddenly in her teens she became “pretty” and then as she got older she learned that she could put “pretty” on and take it off again.  (She called it being in “beauty drag,” and I’m TOTALLY STEALING THAT TERM.)  And she tied it all in with being fat, and how conventional “prettiness” offsets certain fat-related things she has to deal with, and how being “pretty” makes you more visible in the word and all kinds of other good stuff you should totally go read.  No really, go.  I’ll wait.

Back now?  Ok.

I read that post, and found myself fighting tears at the end of it, partly because so much of it echoed my own experiences: being nerdy, unpretty, etc., as a kid, and then realizing somewhere in my teens that the ugly duckling wasn’t so ugly anymore.  And partly I found myself fighting tears because I had one of those “click” moments, where disparate things in my brain suddenly come together and I have a complete picture, where before there were only miscellaneous puzzle pieces. 

I remember “turning” pretty.  Some kids turn 13, some turn 16, some turn “old enough to date” or “old enough to drive.”  I “turned pretty.”  I remember being super-young and in college, and looking like everyone else.  (I looked 20 when I was 12, no lie.  Even to look at old photos of myself, sometimes they’re hard to date unless my sisters are in them, in which case I can estimate my age based off of theirs.  Either that or the hair.  I can narrow my age based on my hair style, too.)  I remember talking with boys in college and not even realizing that they were flirting with me (thinking I was older), because I did not perceive myself as pretty.  It just wasn’t in my realm of experience.  And the first time a college boy asked me out, I was floored.  Really?  Me?  He thought *I* was cute?  (I had the good sense to tell him that thanks, but I was 14, and if he wanted to retract the offer, no hard feelings.  He was TOTALLY flustered, and did in fact retract the offer – which actually made me feel better, because I figured it meant he wasn’t a total perv.) 

I remember the year between 15 and 16, when I decided that I was tired of hanging around on the outside of things, and that I was going to be Different.  I remember watching the popular girls as though I were studying a nature documentary (which might not have been totally inaccurate – there was a lot of viciousness there), and “putting on” a New Me – a Me that fit in with those girls, but a Me that was certainly a construct.  “Be yourself” was not a motto I lived by.

Beauty became something I put on every day: I used to get up at 5am to fix my hair and makeup before leaving for school at 7am.  (And most of those days, I had one or two “normal” classes, and then a bunch of dance classes, which killed the hair and makeup anyway.)  And as I put on that New Me over and over, bits and pieces of it started to meld into my own personality.  It was like the attitudes and outlooks sort of seeped into my pores and became part of me.  For a long time, I could point to certain personality traits and attitudes and tell you which ones were organically mine and which ones were grafts.  Those grafts had become a part of me in many ways, but they were still somehow different – vaguely alien, like a bad movie about mind-melds or body takeovers.  And yet, I couldn’t ditch them: I expressed them reflexively, as though they had always been there.  (At this point, many of them are gone, and the ones that stuck have been fully integrated.  We are the Borg: resistance is futile.)

One of the things I absorbed was an astounding level of cynicism and rage (those are pretty much gone, now).  I was so, so, SO angry.  Just in general.  In retrospect, I think I was angry because I felt like I had to become someone else to be liked; I felt like my original self was not likable or good enough or cool enough.  And I was angry that the same sorts of people who were so cruel to me in elementary school – cruel enough that I used to go to the nurse’s office EVERY DAY complaining of vomiting so that they would send me home, cruel enough that my mother eventually decided to homeschool me (and my sisters) rather than allow me to have hysterical breakdowns in the car on the way to school on a semi-regular basis – the sort of people who treated me so badly were now the ones who treated me well, who accepted me into their inner circle, as though I’d always belonged there.  But I knew, deep down, that I didn’t belong there: I was passing for pretty.  I was passing for cool.  I was passing, and I knew that eventually I would be found out.

And I was angry that with the advent of my “pretty,” as Michelle wrote,
I was highly visible, something about me was now considered highly desirable, and I was no longer just vulnerable to attack — I was actively targeted because of the way I looked.
I developed (some might say OVER-developed) a “fuck-you” attitude.  From somewhere deep inside spiraled up the feeling, “If you try to hurt me, you might be bigger and stronger, and you might be able to hurt me – but the police will find you tomorrow by the scratches on your face and the fact that you will be missing an eye.”  There is an axiom about how there are no strangers; only friends you haven’t met yet.  I felt just the opposite: I assumed you were out to do me harm (emotional, mental or physical) until you demonstrated otherwise.  I developed an incredibly accurate sixth sense (which now serves me well in the online dating world) about who was a danger and who was safe, but I always preferred to err on the side of “danger.”

And I was angry that all that felt necessary to me: it felt necessary to assume the worst and hope to be proven wrong.  I was angry that when I was homely I was a target for humiliation, and that when I was pretty (but passing, I still believed), I became a different kind of target, for a different kind of humiliation.

I got angrier and angrier.  I developed that cold sort of rage, the kind that sits in your chest and causes people to avoid you (except those with the same cold anger – we always found each other).  That worked for me in some ways: I very seldom was (am) harrassed by men, and the ones who start usually back down in a hurry as soon as I look at them (with my patented Death-Ray-Please-Piss-Me-Off-I-Haven’t-Killed-Anyone-Yet-Today-AND-I-WANT-TO stare).  I was two people: the person who wanted desperately to be liked, to be cool, to be PRETTY, and the person who wanted everyone else to leave me the fuck alone.

Michelle writes in her post about playing around with the levels of visibility she could achieve, depending on what clothing and makeup she wore or didn’t wear.  For me, makeup became a sort of armor.  The more aggressive and dramatic my makeup, the angrier I was.  I still have a specific look that I think of as my “fuck you” look, which I wore daily my last year or so in college: dark, blood-red lipstick, no blush or eyeliner, lots of black mascara.  I used to wear it all the time.  I still wear it on occasion, but those occasions are (thankfully) rare. 

I’ve been told by men I’ve dated that they were intimidated by me at first; that if we hadn’t met purposefully (on an internet date, for instance) or if we hadn’t been friends already, that they never would have approached me.  I’ve been told, in various ways, and always by men, that I’m incredibly pretty, but somehow distant on first meeting: that I seem out of their league, that they feel as though *I* think they don’t measure up.  They never are able to pinpoint something I’ve said or done – in fact, when I’ve asked, they’ve all responded with a variation on, “No, you were really nice and friendly and outgoing . . . it was just sort of an impression I had.”  And in fact, the only times I ever get hit on in random places like the grocery or hardware store are the times when I’m having a bad-ish day, when I’ve left the house in sweatpants or overalls, with my hair in a messy 30-second braid or piled on my head with a bunch of pins and – this is the one constant – no makeup on at all.  No armor. 

I wear makeup as armor.  Even when I’m not angry, even when my makeup is soft and pretty and stereotypically feminine, it is an armor that makes me both more visible and less approachable.  (Sort of like a puffer fish or an animal that draws itself up to be noticed – and avoided.  *wry grin*)  But the funny thing is, I’m not even conscious of it.  I don’t put on makeup to drive people away.  Most mornings I put on makeup to look pretty.  But in reading Michelle’s post I was suddenly aware of all these associations – associations that I didn’t even realize I had.  (Well, beyond the obvious “fuck you” makeup, anyway.)

And I wear makeup to counter the fact that I am fat.  Oh, not DeathFat, certainly.  But not thin, or even average.  And there is that part of me that still thinks I’m passing for pretty, that part of me that still thinks that my date will suddenly look up from his dinner and say, “Oh my god!  I didn’t realize you weren’t really pretty!  But now that I have better lighting – you’re totally not!” – there is that part of me that wears makeup as a deflection.  I have Such A Pretty Face.  See, society will forgive a lot of my weight if I’m PRETTY.  I’m treated better when I look pretty than when I don’t (and I don’t think I’m unique in that).  (True story: I have had people – more than one – say to me, “But you’re not fat – you’re pretty!”  *snort* As though I can’t be both, and if I’m one, I must not be the other.)  I figure my pretty face “buys” me about 30 pounds.  People treat me as though I’m about 30 pounds thinner than I am, as a general rule – when I’m wearing makeup.

And so I protect that pretty face with a certain ferocity.  Even though it makes me both more visible and (apparently) more distant – because it also makes me more acceptable and provides me with armor at the same time.

And all of this is coming up because of the change in my eating.  I eat to hide.  I stay fat to hide, and at the same time, I wear makeup to be visible, and at the same time I project an intimidating attitude (at least to men – women don’t seem to have that problem with me, but I don’t know if it’s the men’s problem, or if I project it more around men).  No wonder my brain is all confused.

But I wonder sometimes, if I will ever stop feeling like I’m “passing” for pretty.  It would be nice.  But it seems so foreign that I can’t even imagine the ability to imagine what it would feel like. 

See?  I told you I had Thinky Thoughts this weekend.

Bear With Me, Here . . .

I’ve got a lot of stuff knocking around in my brain.

I’m still thinking about the separate blog thing.  I definitely don’t want to run a weight-loss blog from here; I like the opportunity to do some serious navel-gazing self-reflection that I have here.  And there are some pros and cons to running something like that at all.

On the one hand, I feel like if I have to write things down, it makes everything a little more real.  It’s harder to ignore what I’m eating (and WHY I’m eating it) when I have to commit it to “paper.”  So that’s good.  And if I’m really going to commit to changing some things, well, writing things down also helps me spot the Crazy a lot faster.  (It’s harder to delude myself that a diet consisting entirely of lettuce and Jolly Ranchers is normal when I see it in print.  If I don’t write it down, I keep thinking, “Well, I’m just not hungry now.  I’ll eat later . . . ” but “later” never really comes.)  So those are both the pros in favor of a new blog.

I wouldn’t keep it all here, because I like having a place for dealing with more emotional shit, but also because I know I have at least a couple of readers with eating disorders of their own, and the last thing they need is to see calorie counts, weights, etc.  I’m not out to make anyone crazy(ier).  And honestly, I don’t want to be in the position of putting trigger warnings on everything.  I just don’t want to think about it that closely.

On the other hand, I realized today that many years ago, I was on a Kind-of-Not-Crazy Diet (at a different time than my previous Not-Crazy Diet), and then I moved.  I moved into a house with FULL-LENGTH MIRRORS ON THE CLOSETS.  Just like now.  And that’s when I went into full-on, batshit-crazy-diet mode, complete with lettuce and coffee and Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Pops. 

What’s that?  Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it?  Yeah, yeah.  (I think Winston Churchill said that, although I’m pretty sure George Santayana said it before him . . . well, not the “yeah, yeah” part.  That was probably the Beatles.  . . .  What?)

ANYWAY.  To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I can look at those mirrors and NOT aggressively pursue weight-loss, and I don’t have the money to have the doors replaced right now (yeah, I actually thought about doing that).  So I’m back to the idea that if I had to show the world what I was doing (even if no one read it), I’d be too embarrassed to ACTUALLY be as disordered as I would probably wind up otherwise.  (And no, I wouldn’t just lie.  I don’t know why I feel like that would be EVEN WORSE – especially since I’ve lied about my eating habits in real life – but I do.)

And I’ve already been messing with the Not-Crazy Diet: keeping the criteria and adding calorie counts back in, that sort of thing.  I’d like to not go overboard with that, especially without realizing it.

I’m kind of coming out in favor of a diet blog, here.

So I’ve been looking around at some diet blogs though, and SERIOUSLY WTF is up with some of these names?  There are SO, SO many that are honestly just horrible.  Names like “Fight the Fat” and “Escape the Weight” and “Running from the Muffin Top.”  (All those names are made up, btw.  I didn’t want to link to anyone in a derogatory manner.)  But honestly, I can’t help looking at those names and thinking, “but what about when you’ve lost the weight, and you’re stuck with a blog name that is so negative and self-hating?” 

Yes, I’m aware of the irony surrounding someone like me trashing on self-hate.  Shut up already.

It just kind of makes me sad that so often people are framing weight loss as a fight or an escape from something or as running from something.  What about running TO something?  Or resolving to take care of yourself just because it’s your body and YOU ONLY GET ONE?

(Again.  Yes.  I see the irony here, since my aggressive weight-loss efforts are TOTALLY motivated by the fact that I currently hate my body and yes I know it’s disordered and all that.  I KNOW.  But – and this is key – that doesn’t mean I have to REINFORCE that belief, you know?)

Um.  I forgot where I was going with that.  My brain, it is not all here today.  Soooo . . . I guess that is all.  For now.

Well, THIS Isn’t What I Planned on Posting Today At ALL

I was going to post about this fancy-schmancy new diet I’ve been following – the Not-Crazy diet.  I wrote about how I got to thinking about things, and how I was pulling things that worked from past plans, and altering things that DIDN’T work in past plans, and all that jazz.

And then I started to post some specifics, and my chest got all tight, and my stomach knotted up, and I thought, “But what if I post this and don’t live up to it?”

I’ve known for a long time that I do not like being accountable to others about my diet and my weight.  When I went to Weight Watchers and weighed in, I saw other women who were overjoyed when they lost weight and discouraged but ready to recommit when they didn’t.  And I never felt that way: when I lost weight, I felt RELIEVED.  As though I’d passed the test, gotten an “A,” managed to prove my worth one more time.  THAT week I was worth something.  And when I gained (or just didn’t lose), I was crushed.  I’d barely hold it together through the subsequent meeting, and then go home and sob into my pillow for hours before breaking out the Ben & Jerry’s, because CLEARLY I couldn’t even do something as SIMPLE as losing .2 pounds.

And when I thought about that later, I always said to myself, “Well, obviously, I’m afraid of failure.  But WHY am I so afraid of it?”  And I never really had a good answer.  Oh, I had a lot of answers – I just never stumbled on that One answer, the one that resonated in my gut and made me think, “YES. THAT.”

And today, when my chest tightened and my stomach clenched, I thought, “Ok, how about if  I don’t sabotage myself by posting every damn detail, but seriously, WTF is wrong with me?”  And the answer floated up from somewhere inside, “Because I will be ashamed if I can’t do it right.  ‘Doing it right’ is what I DO.”  And I felt the PING in my spine, in my stomach: it’s not a fear of failure that stops me.  It’s shame.  Which I realize is pretty much the same thing, but the two things have two distinct feelings in my body, and it’s the latter that is the crippling one.

I still see myself as that kid with unlimited potential.  And when I don’t live up to my own (admittedly extreme and maybe even crazy) standards, I don’t feel discouraged with a determination to recommit.  I feel ASHAMED.  In the same way that I would feel ashamed if I broke a promise to someone.  In the same way that I would feel ashamed if I lied about something.  As though I have presented myself as one thing, when in fact I am another.  I am PERFECT, goddamit, and any failure to live up to that standard is something to be ashamed of. 

And the first thing is that those “admittedly extreme and maybe even crazy” standards DON’T SEEM that crazy to me, deep down.  I mean, I recognize RATIONALLY that eating 12 bajillion grams of protein every day and exercising EVERY DAY and NEVER eating ice cream AGAIN are absolutely crazy.  But it was crazy that I could read before I was 2, and that I got a perfect score on math I’d never seen.  Crazy has not been a barrier in my life, ok?  At least not in my formative years.

And the SECOND thing is just that – I have a PRECEDENT for being crazy in a “perfect” way.  For my entire early life, I was “perfect” in a way that was deemed valuable.  It was absolutely a fluke of genetics, in the same way that my younger sister has a body that our society deems “perfect.”  We both, in our own ways, won the genetic lottery, and we’ve talked at length about how those different lotteries affected our lives (and our respective neuroses).  And we’ve talked about how our minds were shaped by the way that my “perfection” came early but faded, and the way that she started off without “perfection” and acquired it at puberty. 

Um.  Nice tangent there, huh?  It’s not like the subject makes me uncomfortable and want to deflect it at any cost.  😉  But it is relevant, so I’m leaving it up. 

ANYWAY.

That’s where I’m at right now.  Realizing that the whole “fear of failure” thing isn’t really THAT so much as feeling ashamed.  Feeling like an unwitting fraud: as though I were holding something valuable, and I put it down, and NOW I CAN’T FIND IT, even though I said I had it.  Or worse: like a lottery jackpot winner who spent it all, and is now broke again, reliving my glory days. 

*laughs*  And all that sounds SO MAUDLIN.  And I don’t really FEEL maudlin about it – or rather, the maudlin part is balanced out by a sense of detachment from the whole thing, by the feeling that it’s just another interesting problem to be solved. 

Another interesting problem to be solved.  Story of my life.  *grins wryly*

In Which I Ramble Incoherently About Perfection and Failure

I don’t even know where to begin.  There isn’t really a beginning to begin at.  I’ve just had some crap rolling around in my brain.  (And I haven’t forgotten the book review – come back Friday for that.)  So, in no particular order, here we go.

Monday, Charlotte posted something that started out as lying about one’s age, but down toward the end, she mentioned being what used to be called a “precocious” child/teen, and which is now often called a “prodigy.”  She wrote:
The problem with all child prodigies however is that we grow up. What was remarkable at 12 is normal at 20 and old hat by 30. For a while, in my 20’s, I lied about my age simply to buy myself more time to fulfill everyone’s expectations of me. I was afraid to grow older and not be able to keep pace with the impossible standard I’d already set for myself.
To which I say:
YESYESYES.  THIS.  YES. 

I have been marinating recently in my own feelings of worthlessness – not in a self-pitying way, but more because the longer I sit with them, the deeper I have to dig to answer the question, “But WHY do I feel this way?”  And I think part of it is exactly what Charlotte is talking about.  I was definitely a prodigy (the technical and TOTALLY POMPOUS term is “profoundly gifted” – think “Good Will Hunting” and “Little Man Tate”).  I started things early, finished things early, excelled without trying.  I earned a perfect score on the SATs – twice.  And I did it when I was 8.  (The school district made me retake the test after the first score, because they declared it “impossible” that I could earn a perfect score on material I’d never been exposed to.  Frankly, I don’t know how I did it either – though I have some theories – but I did.)

But where does a person go from there?  Because it is DEFINITELY true that what was exceptional at 8, or 10, or even 18, when you’re in school, is just not a big deal at 25 or 30, after you’ve graduated.  And the hard part is trying to believe that it’s not due to any failure on my part.  It’s not that I’m any less smart; it’s just that real life doesn’t reward the same things in the same ways as school does.  I know that intellectually, but emotionally, it’s tough to really believe.  There’s a part of me that thinks that if I just tried harder (at what? no idea), worked longer (doing what?), spoke louder (because EVERYONE loves a know-it-all, right?), I could be Special-with-a-capital-S again.  I know that’s not true, and yet I keep thinking that if I could just do BETTER again (better than EVERYONE ELSE, that is), my life would all fall into place.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped being Special, and became . . . smart.  It’s sounds (and is) awful to say that it’s not enough, but . . . it’s not.  It should be, but some part of me desperately misses the praise and adulation, the admiration, the slight awe (yes, really – I was THAT smart) that people used to look at me with.  People still think I’m smart, but it’s different.  The playing field is more level.  (I imagine this is a minor version of what it would be like to be a former child star: the total admiration/awe/fascination, followed by the “Where Are They Now?” specials.)

And then there is the societal expectation that you “live up to your potential.”  But when your potential is effectively unlimited, how the fuck do you live up to that?  You can’t.  In a way, an unlimited potential guarantees failure: you can’t EVER fulfill all that potential.  No one is going to discover the cure for cancer while running for President and curing Third World hunger on the side.  And even as I write that ridiculous scenario, there’s a voice in my head that whispers, “YOU could have.  You COULD.  But you didn’t.  You failed.”

It’s an interesting side effect, this deep-seated belief in my own failure (and by extension, my own worthlessness).  Even looking back, it isn’t anything I would have predicted, either as myself or as an outsider looking in.  But it does elevate even the smallest screw-ups in my head: “You ate a bite of ice cream while you were trying to eat healthier?  Well, of COURSE you did.  You never could live up to your potential.”  “You don’t wear a size 6?  Well, of COURSE you don’t.  You always fail at taking care of yourself.  You never could live up to your potential.”  “You aren’t taking PERFECT care of yourself?  Well, of COURSE you aren’t.  You never could live up to your potential.”  Ad nauseam (and “nauseam” is the PERFECT word, lemme tell ya). 

I expect better from myself: I expect PERFECTION.  Not moderation, not competence, not even exellence – PERFECTION.  Because for many, many years,  I WAS perfect in a way that society told me was valuable – and I’m not now.  I think for me, that’s the crux of Charlotte’s statement about how what was extraordinary at a young age is no great shakes as you get older.  Nobody gives a damn about whether or not you test well when you’re 32.  (And no, the irony of going back to law school at this point in my life is not lost on me, LOL.)

Anyway.  I’m not sure how to wrap this up.  I guess I hadn’t really thought about it in terms of childhood crap until reading Charlotte’s post the other day.  So I’m percolating.  I have a lot to think about. 

Thanks, Charlotte!  (No, really.  No saracasm.  I’m glad for that post.)

 

*If you have a kid who is so gifted it scares you (as I scared my mom – seriously, who reads at a high school level when they’re TWO YEARS OLD, and at beyond college level by the time they’re 6 or 7?) go buy yourself a copy of “Guiding the Gifted Child.”  I read it as an adult, and it changed my life.  Just knowing that I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t a Grade-A FREAK,  made a HUGE difference in my life.  Things like dealing with spiritual and social questions . . . seriously, it changed my life.  Just to know there were enough people out there who were like me to justify a BOOK.  A whole book.  I still don’t know that I’ve met anyone QUITE like me – although I’ve learned to appreciate that different experiences give different perspectives, and I’ve learned that due to experience, other people know more about certain things than I ever could – but it was comforting to know that I wasn’t alone.  Just take my word for it: go buy it if you think you even MIGHT need it.  (Hey, I had the whole, “How do you know God is real?” conversation with my formerly Catholic father when I was seven or eight.  Most people start thinking about that crap toward the end of their teenage years.  If you have a smart kid, a SUPER-smart kid, get ready.  It’s coming.  They have more on their plate sooner than you realize.  Go buy this book.  SERIOUSLY.)

I Can Do This

 I’ve been slowly but surely falling off the wagon.  It’s hard to create new habits when I’m not sleeping more than 5 hours a night, and stress is giving me stomachaches so severe that I have trouble keeping food down.  And frankly, I’m too damn tired and stressed to care.  So my mood has been getting bleaker and bleaker, and I KNOW I would feel better if I ran some anxiety off on the treadmill, but at 4:30 in the morning I just don’t give a damn.  So I’ve been watching myself as though through a glass, knowing what’s coming, not wanting to deal, but unable to halt the descent.

Which is why I’m so glad for all of you guys.  Today MizFit posted this.  And I thought, “I could shake things up by NOT FALLING OFF THE DAMN WAGON.”  And it was a nudge. 

And then Attrice posted this.  And I thought, “I have to stop beating myself up.  I have to remember that where I am IS OK.  I have to remember that if all I can do is walk around the block, it is ENOUGH.  And I have to remember that losing weight and getting fit won’t magically make these days disappear altogether.  There will still be bad days, and they will still feel like this, and I will get up and work out and eat right and take care of myself because now, more than ever, my body needs it.”

And THEN The Family of Things wrote this.  And specifically, she said this:
It’s often too easy for me to break promises to myself [regarding food and exercise] (with the excuse of, “Well, who am I hurting?”), but I’m trying to honor those promises now with the same focus I would honor promises to anyone else.  I should give myself the same respect I would another person, right?
I had thought about my own stuff in those terms before, but I hadn’t thought about it that way in a long time.  It was a good reminder to me: I wouldn’t break promises to others, even if I was tired and stressed out.  I might have bad days, but I would do my damndest to follow through, and if I failed one day, I would redouble my efforts the next.  So why am a shooting myself in the foot?  Why do I think I’m not worth the same effort I would put out for someone else?  That way lies madness. 

So I came home and watched  some TV, and requested a jury-duty postponement (because they want me to report the week before escrow closes on my condo), and got some things done, and decided to go to bed early and get up and go to the gym in the morning.  I don’t feel like doing weights, which I’ve been doing MWF, but I decided that something is better than nothing, and if all I want to do is zone out on the treadmill tomorrow, then screw the weights.  (I actually prefer running to lifting when I’m stressed: there’s something meditative and hypnotic about the rhythm of my feet striking the ground/belt that lulls me into mindlessness, even when I’m watching TV on my iPod.)

I will concede that chicken and broccoli for lunch today was a BAD idea, though.  My body is too tired and stressed to digest more than simple carbs.  So I’ll do my best to choke down some pasta at lunch (because right now I’d just prefer not to eat ANYTHING, and one meal is better than none, right?), or maybe some chocolate soy milk with protein powder.  And I’ll go run off the anxiety.  (Or walk.  Depending on how much or little I’m eating.)

So I just wanted to say thanks.  You should all know that you make a difference, or at least you did to me, today.  I can get through the next few months, a little bit at a time.

Baby Steps

“I’m baby-stepping down the hall, I’m baby-stepping into the elevator . . . ”  What’s that?  You haven’t seen What About Bob?  What’s WRONG with you?!  Go now!  Rent it!  Watch it!  I’ll wait!

Are you back?  Good.

Every time I read a study telling me something new, I feel like a failure all over again.  Rational?  No.  Powerful?  Yes.  Specifically with exercise; food doesn’t bother me as much, because I already have my own (warped, but entrenched) ideas about food, and something as insignificant as mere SCIENCE isn’t going to change my views.  I’m just sayin’.

But exercise is a WHOLE ‘nother thing.  I don’t know as much about exercise, nor do I have as many firmly entrenched preconceived misconceptions.  (What?  At least I’m honest.)  So when a study comes out saying that all I need is 20 minutes 3 times a week, I’m all, “Woo-hoo!  I already get that!  I am SO. HEALTHY.  Go me!”  But then when the NEXT study comes out saying, “Oh, never mind, we really meant 60 minutes 5 DAYS A WEEK,” I think, “WHAT?!  What’s wrong with me?  EVERYONE ELSE is doing it [yeah, I know they’re not, either – that’s just what I think]!  I’m a miserable failure and might as well QUIT ALTOGETHER.”  (Those were both actual studies that I’m too lazy to go track down, but hey: I make no pretensions to running a well-researched blog, ok?)

See the issue there?  (No, not the one where I should stop reading studies.  That will NEVER happen.  Pay attention for a minute, will you?  Sheesh.)

No, the issue is that what I’m doing hasn’t actually CHANGED from one study to the next.  The only thing that’s changed is my attitude.  In the first example, I will keep busting my little ass for 20 minutes 3 days a week – until I get cocky and think that I could probably do THIRTY.  OOOOOOO, BIG ATHLETE, RIGHT HERE.  So then I do 30 minutes 3 times a week for a while – and then I think, why not add the other 2 days?  Now I’m up to 30 minutes, 5 days a week, right?  And then eventually I add another 15 minutes 3 of those days, then the other 2.  Then after a while I figure, what the hell, and round all 5 days up to an hour, at which point I feel like I am KICKING ASS.  I might even throw in an extra class on Saturday, just because I CAN. BECAUSE I AM THAT GOOD.  THAT’S RIGHT.  BRING. IT. ON, BABY!!

(Not that I would ever actually even THINK something as cheesy as that last part.  Nope, not me, nosiree bob.  I just, um, WROTE it to make a POINT.  Yeah.)

But the other scenario is the polar opposite.  In the other scenario, I’m cruising along with my 20 minutes, 3 times a week, feeling like, “Hey!  I haven’t gotten regular exercise in GOD KNOWS HOW LONG, but this is do-able!  I can do this!” and then I read That Other Study.  The one that says, “Hey, dipshit, you might as well be doing NOTHING for all the good you’re ACTUALLY DOING YOURSELF, you DELUSIONAL TWIT.”  And I look at the recommendations for 60 minutes, 5 days a week, and think, “I’m barely getting 20 minutes on 3 days!  I can’t do 60 minutes 5 days a week!  Who am I kidding?  I’m not an athlete.  I’m not even particularly healthy.  All I’m doing is wasting an hour a week on the fucking treadmill when I could be doing something else.  Screw it, I’m going home to eat mac’n’cheese.”

See what I mean?  Sometimes I read well-intentioned articles on Baby Steps, and they often say things like, “Just focus on 60 minutes TODAY!  Don’t think about tomorrow!  Just do today’s workout!  Think about tomorrow, tomorrow!” 

Know what?  Fuck that.  Sixty minutes is TOO DAMN LONG if you’re just starting out.  I need a SMALL goal.  Frankly, I’m enough of an overachiever that I need a goal I can EASILY BEAT.  Because if I can do 30 minutes instead of 20?  Watch me.  And when I’m used to that amount of time, and it no longer seems like an accomplishment, I’ll look for something else, something bigger.

But when I’m starting from ground zero, that 20 minutes, 3 days a week isn’t about health – not really.  It’s simply about proving to myself that I can do something – and anything will do.  The idea of Baby Steps as an external path to your goal is a good one, but if your INTERNAL shit doesn’t line up, you won’t get there anyway.  That 20 minutes, 3 times a week? That’s for the INTERNAL part.  That’s for the part that doesn’t really think I can do it, the part that has to be convinced with something so easy, so simple, that I’d have to work at NOT doing it.  See what I mean? 

This all came up because someone asked me to look at some writing s/he was doing (you know who you are – :D), and part of the writing touched on setting yourself up for success.  Sometimes that means ignoring all the conventional wisdom.  (Obviously, there are occasional exceptions to this.  If you have diabetes, and you’ve always lived on sugar, I wouldn’t recommend cutting out 1 ice cream a day and calling it a win.  Then again, I’m guessing the fear of imminent death by sugar would be a WAY better motivator to quit eating it than say, wanting to wear a bikini on the beach.  Know what I mean?)

ANYWAY.  Now I’m just rambling.  But seriously.  Sometimes Baby Steps means setting ridiculously low goals, just so that you can prove to yourself that you can meet them at all.  And that goes for more than exercise (although exercise is an awfully convenient example, what with the numbers and all).  It goes for just about everything you’ve ever felt like a failure at. 

Seriously.  If you think you’ve failed, set your goal lower.  And lower. And LOWER, if you have to.  Find the goal you can meet, no matter how low, and then start building back up from there.  Because if you really don’t believe you can do it . . . well, you know, you’re right.  So find something, ANYTHING, that you can do.  And then do that – JUST that, and don’t beat yourself up about not doing anything more.

Trust me on this one.  You don’t want to end up crying in the bathroom.  😉

What Are You Getting Out of Your Situation?

Some years ago I heard a speaker say that whatever situation you were in, if you weren’t changing it, you were getting something from it.  If you’re not losing weight, you’re getting some sort of positive reinforcement for not losing.  If you’re exercising too much, you’re getting something out of it.  If you’re drinking, if you’re stuck in a bad relationship, if your house is a mess, WHATEVER, you’re getting something out of it.  Because humans, she remarked, are not biologically hardwired to do things we get no benefit from.

I remember thinking that she was dead wrong.  I remember walking off in a bit of a huff, thinking to myself, “I don’t get ANYTHING out of being overweight!  It’s horrible!  I’d change it in a heartbeat if I could!  And I’d do it without being compulsive about it!”

But I think she was right.

See, after I stomped off (metaphorically, anyway), I really started thinking about it.  Not in a positive way, mind you, but rather in an “I’ll prove HER wrong!” sort of way.  So I started wracking my brain to come up with ways that I benefitted from staying right where I was.  At first, I couldn’t think of anything.  And then I started thinking of reasons why SOMEONE might benefit, but not me, no sir.  And then some of those reasons, as they floated up to the surface of my brain, hit closer and closer to home. 

Do you ever have those moments where you recognize something about yourself, or in yourself, that you haven’t wanted to see?  Have you ever had a moment where a statement came out of your mouth or a thought flew through your brain, and you were straight-up HORRIFIED to realize that it was in there, buried in your psyche, but at the same time, you KNOW there’s a part of you that really feels that way?  It was kind of like that.

If I don’t lose weight, I don’t have to deal with any of my other problems.  I don’t have to deal with the day-to-day stresses of life, or the disappointments or the hurt.  I don’t have to deal with any leftover issues from childhood or any leftover issues from adulthood.  Because everything can be attributed to hating my body: I’d be happier if I were thinner, I’d be less stressed, more athletic (THAT’S a joke, right there), more liked, more loved, more perfect.  And I know from this place in my head that if I were perfect physically, that my life would automatically be perfect, too.  I’d never get hurt, get betrayed, feel depressed.  I’d never be lonely or sad or angry again.  I’d be the perfect person, with the perfect life, riding happy shiny unicorns into the end of the rainbow.

The irony of course, is that I’ve BEEN thin, so I know first-hand that no matter what my outsides look like, my insides are still the same.  I’ll never be inherently athletic, I’ll still have bad days, I’ll get angry and sad and lonely sometimes (and sometimes a LOT of times).  I KNOW all that.  But the memory is a funny thing.  Even though I remember being thin and unhappy (unhappy in a different, ED way maybe, but still unhappy), some part of my brain REFUSES to acknowledge it.  That part of my brain believes with all its might that THIS time will be different, that last time shouldn’t be an indicator of the future, that THIS time I will be PERFECT, GODDAMMIT.

And as long as I don’t lose the weight, I don’t have to deal with the reality that I still won’t be perfect.  As long as I don’t lose the weight, I can hang on to my fantasy.  As long as I hang on to the bingeing, I’m safe in my self-hatred.  I don’t have to change.  I don’t have to do any self-examination.  I don’t have to do ANY of that, because I can just believe that my only problem is the number on the scale (or on the measuring tape, or on the tag in my pants).  It’s a convenient scapegoat, a brilliant dodge. 

Not only that, but if I don’t lose the weight, I blend in.  I can dodge male attention if I want to (no, I was never assaulted and my dad never touched me – I have no idea where that particular issue comes from), I can blend into the background, I can avoid calling attention to myself.  I don’t have to answer any uncomfortable questions about How I Did It (TM), or listen to people tell me how much BETTER I look (which always makes me want to go cry in the bathroom) now that I’m So Much Thinner.  I don’t have to deal with the women who either badger me relentlessly for my “secret” (which in the past was, “stop eating and exercise 2 hours a day” – big fucking secret there), nor do I have to deal with the jealous women who have tried unsuccessfully to lose weight making catty, backhanded compliments (that result in more bathroom crying – I’ve gotta work on that).  I don’t have to listen to people tell me how Good I’m being in an effort to have me reassure them that they too, are Good (and of course, they always deny that – what kind of fucked-up games do we play in our heads??).

All of those scenarios call up all kinds of anxieties and painful emotions, and if I don’t lose weight, I don’t have to go there.  I don’t have to learn how to deal with it.  I can just hide from those emotions and not have to confront them.

That same speaker said that until you figure out what you’re getting from your situation or behavior, you can’t figure out if you REALLY want to change.  You have to know what you’re giving up in order to make an informed decision, because otherwise the setbacks you encounter will just unhinge your progress altogether. 

I really want to change.  But when I drag all that shit out into the light, the waves just rise up against the black sky and crash down over me, sending me spinning under the water. 

Guess I better learn to swim in the dark.  (But I really, really hate the dark.)

SO. EXCITED.

Lately, as I wrote before, I’ve been trying to “build a better mousetrap Marste.”  I’ve been thinking a LOT (probably to the point of navel-gazing) about who I want to be, blah, blah, blah.  Keep that in mind.

I keep thinking that I need to run intervals.  Everything I read says they’re good for me.  Everything I read says they’ll help change my body faster.  Everything I read says I’m a bad person for not doing them (ok, not really that last part).  But here’s the thing: I hate them.  Haaaaaaaaaate them, in my whiniest voice.  Hate hate hate.  I LIKE steady-state running.  I LIKE getting on the treadmill, plugging in an episode of LOST and running for 43-47 minutes (hey, I only run until the end credits start).  I LIKE it.  I don’t want to think about intervals while I’m watching the castaways run from things on the island (which always makes me run a little farther, btw: I’m helping them! I’m running, too!  Watch out for the polar bears!!!  LOL).

Also core work.  I need to do more.  But I don’t wanna.  I hate the plank.  (Though I kind of like the prone jacknife on the stability ball – mostly because it’s a crapshoot as to whether or not today is the day I will eat floor, and I find that sort of entertaining.)  But I HATE the plank.  A lot.  It’s booooooorinnnnnnggg.  *cue more whining*

And I’ve been thinking about going back to Tae Kwon Do.  But . . . well, Buffy and Alias are both off the air, so I don’t get to see the moves I’m learning on TV anymore.  And I’m not acting, so I don’t need it for my resume.  And did you know that to get the high belts you have to *gulp* HIT PEOPLE?  And sometimes THEY HIT YOU BACK????  Horrors. 

So I’ve been thinking.  And it occurred to me that dancing, ballet in particular, is ALL ABOUT the core work and the interval training.  See, I haven’t been able to go back to class without triggering some SERIOUS ED issues: standing in a room surrounded by 90-pound dancers who are all trying to go professional just makes me insane with self-hatred.  I quit dancing about 15 years ago, and for the first 8 or 10 years I’d try to go back every once in a while, but never could.

BUT.

I realized that now?  I’m NOT THAT GOOD.  I won’t be in the class with the 90-pound dancers who are trying to go professional.  I’ll be in the beginning class with the moms and the “nine-to-fivers” who are just trying to get some exercise!  Which means I won’t weigh twice what everyone else does!  (No, really.)  AND?  I got a raise, so I can almost TOTALLY afford it.  AND??  There’s a kick-ass studio not too far from my house!!! 

That’s right, baby.  I’ve come full circle.  See, when I was little, and I started ballet, it was the ONLY THING I’d ever done that was hard.  REALLY hard, not “give me a day or two and I’ll get this” hard.  REALLY.  HARD.  It did not come naturally, and frankly, it never did, even after years of doing it.  (Jazz, on the other hand was TOTALLY natural, but ballet?  NOT. SO. MUCH.)  I was never great at it.  I was proficient, I was competent, but let’s just say that the New York City Ballet was NOT going to be beating down my door anytime soon.  And I LIKED THAT.  PLUS?  Ballet is TOTALLY girly.  And I am ALL. ABOUT. THE GIRLY.

So that’s the plan!  I’m going back to dance class!  Woo-hoo!  I’m so excited I’m practically jumping up and down!  This month, I’ll probably just buy new shoes and clothes, because that will set me back an easy hundred bucks right there.  And I’ll check out a few studios, watch some classes, see what the teachers are like (and if they’re any good).

I’ll still be going to the gym, because I’ll never have a dancer body- if I really get into shape, I’ll have more of a Jessica Biel body, so that means I’ll still need to do upper-body work (which, oddly enough, as opposed to core work, I like).  And of course, I have to watch LOST, so that means treadmill time.  (No, really.  That’s the only time I’m allowed to watch it.  It’s a grown-up bribe to go to the gym.) 

(Although ballet is actually a GREAT triceps workout.  Fifteen years after quitting, I STILL have visible triceps, thanks to dancing.  And quads you could bounce a quarter off of.  But now I’m rambling because I’M JUST THAT EXCITED.)

BUT!  Next month, fingers crossed, twice a week I’ll be sucking in and tucking under and pointing THROUGH my foot, not WITH my foot, and grand battement-ing without collapsing my spine, and landing lightly andandand . . .

(Oh yeah, and doing core work and interval training.  Whatever.  ;D)

Yeah.  SO. EXCITED. 

HEE!  😀

I’m So Blown Away I Can’t Even Think of a Post Title

I don’t watch reality shows.  Frankly, I hate them: the humiliation quotient is just too high, and I find that more often than not they just upset me. 

But I logged into a Fat Acceptance blog today (I read them semi-regularly, but always faithfully when I feel bad about my body – they’re a helpful reset tool), and I read this.  I read the post, clicked on the link, and cried for the entire 7-minute clip.

What was it?  A clip from “Britain’s Got Talent.”  A clip in which an older woman, “unattractive” by conventional standards, basically gets up and blows everyone away.  And the folks are SURPRISED that she’s any good.

Go read the entire post.  It’s not long, but it’s powerful.  Watch the video (linked to in the post).  Read the comments, if you have time: there are some great discussions happening there. 

On a related note: I find it sort of poetic that the song Susan Boyle sings is “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables.  That song is about a life that’s essentially over – a song sung by a woman who’s dreams have died, whose life has passed her by.  And Susan Boyle is, on the surface, the stereotype for those things: a little bit old, a little bit fat, a whole lot “past her prime.”  She is singing a song that fits her – except it doesn’t.  Because she wouldn’t have tried out for “Britain’s Got Talent” if she’d given up on her dreams entirely.  A woman whom society would view as an object of pity, singing a song that society would think she’d actually feel – but she doesn’t.  I think that’s a beautiful irony.

Gone to Ground

I seem to have gone to ground the last several days (not to mention the week that I was gone).  I’m not 100% sure why, although I know some of it.  For a while I was really struggling not to just sabotage myself completely, struggling not to binge and starve and sleep.  I’m not sure what triggered it, but I’d guess part of it was the stress of the last month or so (ShoWest is ALWAYS stressful – so is ShowEast, for that matter), and part of it was feeling like I’d fallen off the workout wagon AGAIN and that made me a bad person.

All that kind of self-indulgent crap.

But I’ve noticed that the “down” periods between the “normal” periods are becoming shorter.  It takes me less time to recover from them, to pull myself up by my fingernails, set my jaw and decide that I will not be beaten.  And my productive periods are longer, too.  I can go longer before the crash, longer between the periods of depression and rage.  I *think* that’s a good sign.  Maybe after a while they’ll just slowly stop showing up altogether.  That would be really nice.

I’m tired of being this person.  I wasn’t always; for a while (at least a year or two in elementary school ;)) I was pretty normal.  There have been extended periods of self-discipline in my life.  I’m not sure where that person went, but I want her back.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “building a better mousetrap,” only in this case, it’s more about “building a better me.” 

I did that in college: spent the better part of a year thinking about what I wanted, and then just . . . CHANGING somehow to get it.  Created a whole new me, out of my head.  And it wasn’t a facade – or rather, it wasn’t after a while.  It was like vines growing up around a tree, until they actually embed themselves in the tree and become part of it.  (Well, some kinds of vines do that.  Other kinds kill the tree.  But let’s not go there.)  I’d put on this suit of vines, and after a while it was just PART of me. 

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.  About who I want to be – not in the abstract, but in the very minutely specific.  Do I want to be someone who gets out of bed at 7:00am or 8:00am?  Do I want to be someone who works out every day or just a few days a week?  Do I want to be someone more active than I’ve been in the past?  If so, how?  Do I want to hike? Dance? Go back to martial arts?  If I want a skill, how good do I want to be?  Do I want to dance semi-professionally?  Do I want a black belt? 

But even more than that, if I imagine myself as I would want to be, does THAT person have a black belt? Does she work out every day? What does she eat?  Does she like sports?  What kind of job does she have?  Does she stay in or go out? How often? How many friends does she have? From where?

And I’ve slowly, slowly been starting to sort out that person.  Just in the last few days I’ve had the internal conversations about not wanting to do something, and then the comeback thought – I’m going to build a better me.  Like a robot or a doll, only less creepy, LOL.   I’m building a whole new personality, a new body, a new mind, a new way of dealing with the world.  Obviously to a certain extent I’ll always be the same person, but I’m tired of this specific person.  I’m tired of the maladaptive coping mechanisms and the low self-esteem.  I’m tired of feeling like I can’t accomplish anything.  I’m tired of feeling like I’m not enough.

I’m not sure that putting on a new suit of . . . of “personality” I guess, is the best way to do it, but it’s worked for me in the past.  I like to know what I’m evolving toward, LOL.  I wonder who I’ll be this time next year.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be me anymore.