"Please no more therapy/Mother take care of me/Piece me together with a/Needle and thread/Wrap me in eiderdown/Lace from your wedding gown/Fold me and lay me down/On your bed."
-- Polaroids by Shawn Colvin
They say the best offense is a good defense. If this is true, I've got the best game in town.
I am pretty much ready for battle at any moment - anticipating literal and metaphorical blows from every direction.
It's exhausting.
The stranger rushing for the subway doors, trying to push his way in front of me. Not so fast buddy, although I don't let on, I see you, and turn my back ever so slightly so you're boxed out. You're in a big hurry and I know you think you're more important than I am, but you're not.
The casual acquaintance whose probing questions always leave me feeling just a little bit worse about myself than before I sat down with her. I steer the conversation, keeping it firmly focused on her, letting her exhaust her favorite topic of conversation - herself - until she is the one with more questions than answers. I leave fatigued but with ego intact.
And myself. I stifle introspection with worry and anxiety, focusing on what will most likely never come to bear. But I'm prepared for it. And when that doesn't entirely cut it, I throw myself into work. There is always plenty to do. I could work 365 days a year/24 hours a day and never be "done." In nonprofit, you can always use more resources, more creativity -- there is no such thing as enough or too much.
Thankfully for my health, I've stopped escaping into food, previously my numbing agent of choice.
I can't pinpoint the day that I started to use food to self-medicate but what I do know is that I was a shy and anxious child. I cried a lot. In one early grade, I cried every single day at school, so much so that my teacher that year, who was more than a bit scary in my eyes (and I think objectively so), dragged me into the closet one day, closed the door and asked, somewhat tearfully herself, "Why do you hate me?" Protip: I'm no child psychologist, but I can tell you that dragging a crying kid into a closet with you, closing the door and yelling in her face isn't exactly going to stop the tears from flowing. And I kinda remember thinking that at the time too, even at, what, 7 years old.
I don't know how, when or why it happened, or what triggered in my little brain, but I can look back and see that when my overeating started, the crying pretty much stopped. As I became softer on the outside, building up layers of protection, I became harder on the inside. More closed off and fixated on trying to control whatever I could, and whatever emotions or situations I couldn't close off or control, I soothed with food.
De-fense, de-fense.
I'm not exactly sure why soothing yourself with food works, but I'm here to tell you it does. And I have over thirty years of practice, so I'm really good at it. I can also tell you it's a form of self-abuse and self-hatred. In many ways, you are literally killing yourself slowly by your own hand.
I don't know if I'll ever be entirely done self-medicating with food -- old habits die hard -- but I can tell you I don't do it as much anymore, and that's just as much by accident (literally) as it is by design.
When I had my first concussion, I became obsessed with trying to maintain a sense of control and stasis. I felt terrible, and spent my days really simply just trying to feel better, or, at best, maintaining. I didn't want to slide backward. I started eating more healthfully, convinced that the right nutrients would help my brain heal. I also had a neck injury that made me feel like I was choking all the time. Consumed with worry, I was rarely, if ever, hungry, and although that didn't stop me from overeating before, what did stop me from overeating at that point was fear. I found myself thinking, "If I eat too much, I may feel sick, and I can't go backward."
Candidly, it was essentially another kind of eating disorder. Food became scary to me. I found myself eating really small portions so I wouldn't choke, and only eating things that I knew well and that I associated with good health. With food on the DL, I needed to find other ways to deal with my emotions. I started this blog and discovered not only an outlet for my complicated, sometimes scary, ugly thoughts and feelings, but a way to connect with people. Acupuncture helped me find a connection between mind and body, two things that I had kept divorced from one another for so long.
Over time, as I began to feel better, it dawned on me that I wasn't eating as much for comfort anymore because food was no longer a source of solace for me. Overeating and food had played such a major role in my life, and now I feel like I don't have much use for it anymore. Its kinda run its course. I've retired its number.
And as I've given up overeating, and have lost weight as a result, I struggle with my identity. Being overweight is such a huge part of how I see myself that I sometimes find myself lost. Although I am by no means slim, or even close to the weight that I want to be, I find myself grappling with questions big (can I still blame the fact that this person doesn't like me on my weight?) and small (where do I buy clothes now?).
More and more, I try to not be so critical of everyone and everything, especially myself. I don't claim to be particularly successful with this, but I'm trying. As the song goes, "We all got holes to fill, and them holes are all that's real." Some wounds are best left to heal on their own, some we help along.
I think I'll always struggle to find the right game plan, the ideal balance of offense and defense. But I've had some amazing coaches and teammates helping me figure it out. And I guess all that matters is that I'm in the game and not on the sidelines.
As long as I have my helmet. And some full body armor. And Dr. Phil on retainer.
