Four Bright nights behind me and I noticed today that I feel/look thinner. My first instinct was telling myself to just ignore it and keep moving forward. But I can't. Because that is what doesn't work. I have known for years that anyone noticing my weight is a trigger, and this time, instead of pretending I can handle it and everything will be okay, I am going to try and journal about it.
It's the classic excuse, "I'm wearing a fat suit to protect myself." This concept has so much baggage attached to it that it feels like a cop-out to even consider the idea. But as with every old wives tale, it is based on a profound truth. Women ( and, I daresay, men) having been using food as a weapon against being attractive. Because that is so often the catalyst for abuse, or unwanted attention. It's a shame that there is so much, chauvinism?, in our society that there is blame attached to being attractive. That to believe they are superior, some need to exert power over others, and in the case of men vs women, that if a woman is attractive she is just 'asking for it'.
What a sick society to be raised in, and how warped our perceptions can become when grown under that constant and unrelenting pressure. No one was 'woke' in the fifties, or at least those that were didn't have a large enough voice to reach the little girls and boys of the era. So I was raised to know I was 'less than' just by being myself. And when, as that bright, athletic, and curvy girl I attracted the attention of others more powerful than myself, well, what other weapon did I have than to cover up that girl and hide her inside a fat suit?
Not that I ever had the thought, "Gee, I guess I have to just eat my way into a body that won't draw attention, and that way I won't get hurt." No, that's not how it happens. This is how it happens. At the age of ten, you are 'asked' to dance naked on the bed, and afterwards you grab a slice of bread and cheese. Your dopamine receptors light up at the hit of highly processed flour, and for a moment you feel better. The link is forged between eating and feeling better. And just maybe, a part of you splinters off, and continues to use this tool of eating to help you feel better more and more often. And an addict is born.
The addict who will creep up the wooden stairs to the kitchen in the middle of the night to sneak food out of the kitchen. The addict who will walk three blocks in the rain to buy a loaf of French bread and eat it all in one sitting, by herself in an apartment in San Francisco. The addict who finishes all of the macaroni and cheese prepared for her young children over years and years and years. The addict who can eat half a large pizza on her way home from work at midnight. And finally, at 66 years old, the addict who wakes up in the middle of the night and creeps into the kitchen to find something, anything, to scratch that itch.
A lifetime of fighting, and being blind to why food had to be such a battle and such a curse in her life. A lifetime of feeling inadequate because she couldn't control her eating. A lifetime of missed everything because she didn't have anything to wear, or couldn't bear how she looked, or couldn't leave the house.
Some say that food maybe be the road to enlightenment for some, and that may be true, but at just this moment I am so mad, so angry, at everything. At the world, at my brother, at every doctor who ignored my weight for the symptom that it was of an underlying problem. And yes, at myself, that I wasn't smart enough to figure this out sooner. That when I heard, "you are what you eat" I didn't appreciate what it really meant and take action to heal myself.
And I am so tired of being mad. So tired of the fight, especially when I have the tools now to fix this.
I will come back and read this tonight before bed. If I have to be mad to get another Bright night under my belt, then so be it. Because trying to stay calm and ignore these feelings hasn't worked, isn't working, and I need, really need, to get this food addiction under control.
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