Spring Time...

I keep alluding to how this one photo shoot, with a dear friend and talent, meant so much to me and was so impactful. It's not because it was used to illustrate the issues I care for... it wasn't even because it was my birthday.

On that day I just felt good... truly, wholly, and completely good about myself in my body for the first time since October/November. That day my friend helped me feel the most myself I had felt since before Covid. That is not a feeling I take lightly or thought was possible...

2020 hosted too many mental and emotional Olympics but for me I was doing “alright” until the last two months of the year. In the last two months of the year everything I tried to muscle down, swallow, process, “work through” came up to and immediately through the surface, my very fragile surface...

And when that happened, all the bad survival habits I regress to when feeling threatened (such as poor communication and reclusive) ceased... They all ceased which is good, but I picked up a new habit one I was not expecting nor familiar with in myself... emotional eating. Now this isn’t some outlandish habit, plenty of people have done or do it, and we all have moments of it from time to time which is arguably “controlled” and leading to no problematic effects...This was not the case for me. For me, I couldn’t see that it was happening. I was blind to a difference in my eating habits and I honestly don’t know why. Perhaps because I was finally talking to my loved ones again, opening up, and that equated to progress ... so perhaps the capacity to notice wasn’t there.

Either way, I wouldn’t recognize the consequences of it until after the new year. When the new year began, I of course restocked groceries and prepared to maintain my “normal diet” which maintained my previous weight and usually results in some mild weight loss with activity. Most of us have some winter weight on us at this point and that’s all I was prepared to tackle.

February, I went to the gym and after working out weighed myself out of curiosity because I felt heavier, felt like something was off despite good eating habits and being active for 2 months...

I found out I was almost 200 lbs.

Scales always jar me a bit, being weighed at the doctor and such and I always manage to find a way to be unsatisfied with the number which is why I don’t live by scales... but this did something to me that would stick with me, something that would provide perspective but only after dragging to the lowest point mentally and emotionally regarding my view of me.

I have dealt with the same nagging body insecurities plenty of us do, as well as body dysmorphia at my healthier weights/physiques in the past, but this didn’t feel like that. It was worse and not even because I had a drastically different appearance, which to me I definitely did. It was this awful combination of all the worst things I could think about myself and the fear of the consequences of those things being true. 
(feel free to reread that sentence) 

I was overwhelmed by the thought of combatting multiple obstacles : the weight, the cause of the weight, the weight seemed to be really resistant (aka sticking not burning) likely due to additional stress, the consequences of such substantial weight gain on my health...

I could feel the new physical limitations of this body and it was sending me through all sorts of mental hoops. There were things I couldn’t wear, things I couldn’t do, and now negative truths I couldn’t escape. And all the bad survival habits I did make progress on returned, my depressed mood returned, my reclusiveness retuned...and I beat myself up further for being so affected by this weight. It seems so so trivial to my logical brain but I truly didn’t recognize myself and I didn’t like myself enough to even want to change which is a very foreign place for me to be. It’s not my MO at all and that was terrifying and for a while, paralyzing.

So what did I do...

Nothing. I was in that place until I wasn’t. I had no foresight no idea how this would go because I was tired from 2020, not fully recovered from those stressors/challenges and most of all unprepared for this particular battle.

March came around and I made a decision to fake liking and loving myself for the entire month. Yes fake. Because no I wasn’t going to just wake up and be better or wake up and no how to process this in a healthy way. So yes I faked being comfortable every day for the month March, wearing outfits I styled (that fit), wearing lingerie, doing small creative projects around the house, trying to feel like myself  and trying to celebrate 28 years on this earth despite not being a fan of the woman in the mirror...

The day before my birthday,  I got a text from my friend, photographer and beautiful soul offering to shoot me as a gift. My instinct was to decline because I didn’t want to capture this body, this me, I was unhappy like this.... but I was faking it. So I faked some more in hopes of the best. I agreed and I showed up hyper aware of my body but left lighter internally...and I want to be clear it wasn’t just shooting that did it. It was our friendship that made that experience what it was. It was how open we are with one another, how our creative energies weave through and feed off one another, how I’m inherently comfortable with her and I can forget “me” and allow creativity which is one of my purest love forms to prevail.

That day showed me a lot, and it didn’t take away the difficulty of everything I’ve detailed for you but it gave me a break. And sometimes a break is what we really need but can’t always give ourselves.

I'm still overweight and uncomfortable, but my life is no longer paused and I'm faking significantly less. I’m loving me in this form and learning to love this form while working my way towards better HEALTH  not a better form.

Like I said, not the most interesting testimony but one worth telling, for me...

xxO,

The Third Voice