Oh, God, Please Don't Let Me Stay Here

Taken last night at the gym. 

Wow.  This is probably the bravest I have ever been. 

Positive and Hopeful

I thought about taking pictures this weekend.  I also thought about digging out my tape measure and getting accurate measurements of my stomach.  I could do the whole range of measurements but I rarely care about that when others post those numbers and I don’t imagine I am alone in that.  I didn’t skip these things out of not wanting to face them, but more out of a lack of time.  I was busy with friends and church and even napping once.  Plus I spent a lot of time cooking and some time cleaning and those things make me feel good about myself. It feels good to plan and to accomplish things.  It feels so hopeful.

Speaking of hope, it’s good to remind myself that I am a hopeful person about most things, most of the time.  I am the one who will always bat back your negative with a positive.  I always look for the happy ending.  I know it can be annoying to the person on the other end and I do try to temper it if they just want some commiseration.  I’ve noticed lately, though, that I’m more negative than I used to be.  I’ve got an angry feeling inside a lot and I don’t like it.  I’m willing to blame others for my problems, a lot of which include food issues, and I’m sitting on an angry go when it comes to money or doctors or customer service when it doesn’t go my way.  Kill them with kindness used to be my motto but I seem to be a dried out old hag anymore.  Kindness is more work than it used to be.  Even right now I want to tell you about all the ways I have a hard time being kind because someone made me this way.  It’s someone else’s fault.

Proverbs 18:21 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” It says some other stuff too, but the first part is the relevant part.  James 3:6 says, “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.  It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” Dramatic, yes, and yes, I am one of *those* people.  If you aren’t one of *those* people, or aren’t open to *those* people, disregard that.  Look instead here, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/14309026/?GT1=8404#.VpPkU3JgnGg, or read Evan Carmichael. If they don’t flip your skirt, a quick Google search will bring you thousands of hits on the power of positive speaking.  That’s how I found the link and Evan Carmichael, actually.  Whatever your preference, there is truth in the belief that we can control what happens to us by the words we use to define ourselves or speak about ourselves or think about ourselves.

I can see that it would be easy for me to complain here.  I’m nameless and faceless and who doesn’t love a platform from which to tell everyone how awesome I am and not awesome others are?  It would be so easy to tell you all the negatives I see in myself because of my age or my weight or other factors that I’m not quite ready to delve into.  It would be ridiculously easy to blame my failures on someone else. There’s no way to disprove it if you don’t know me.  However, I have no interest in that.  I'm tired of being mean to myself.  Doing that doesn’t change me and despite the vindication I may (falsely) feel, what I really want is change.  I do not want to stay here.  I don’t not want to be the same person making the same mistakes ad nauseam.  Blargh. 

Bring on the change. I’m not staying here.

Official Weigh In

I weighed.  It was awful but I did it, stripped down to nothing, right before a shower.  I can’t look at myself in the mirror like that. Rather, I don’t want to.  Anyway, starting weight is:

250 pounds, on the nose

I haven’t weighed this much since I was unhappily married.  My highest recorded weight was 253 pounds.  I really don’t think that three extra pounds means that much at this weight.  It’s not like you could tell one way or another that it’s there or not. 

God, this is a horrible feeling.  I remember sitting on my sofa with my husband, hair unwashed, wearing denim shorts and a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a tank top and thinking, “This is it.  My life sucks.” I was fat, just realizing what a huge mistake I had made in marrying this man, and not caring whether or not I was clean.  I can look back now and see some form of depression and defeat.  We had only been married for six months but I had been crying myself to sleep since day one. Six months in is when I gained enough weight to weigh 253 pounds.

I don’t feel like that girl at all now.  Mostly I am happy.  I have a nice life no longer married to him.  I do things with my friends often.  I have great hair that is always clean.  I no longer wear denim shorts.  I have a lot of hope. It’s just, it’s so hard to have hope about my weight.  Every day I feel like a failure when I don’t eat well.  For the record, I do eat well.  I know the nutritional goals and what constitutes healthy food. I love vegetables and not even only the ones covered in butter and cheese.  I love cooking healthy things and I eat that way every single day.  But I also love the unhealthy things, and those are the foods I eat after my healthy meals, when I’m no longer hungry. That’s what I mean when I say I don’t eat well.

I’ll just type it out loud – I’m a secret binge eater.  Most of the time, I binge eat. I don’t purge nor do I binge exercise.  I just eat enormous amounts of food a lot of the time, even when I’m full. 

If my weight is a horrible feeling, that sentence above is even worse.  It feels awful, horrible, sad, pathetic, and disgusting to know that is my truth. It is, though. This is where I am right now.

I cannot stay here.

I Cannot Stay Here

I received a phone call from my doctor yesterday.  “ASCUS cells,” she said.  Questionable cells, these found in a cervical swab.  I got that same phone call three months ago, same results. Today’s phone call delivered the follow up results and as any good doctor will tell you, this is not great news.  Two bad paps in a row for a woman aged 43 who also has HPV – this requires a biopsy. 

I was walking out of the gym with a friend when I got the call.  I was calm and rational.  I didn’t believe then and I don’t believe now that I have anything about which to worry.  I am fine.  However, to prove that I am fine, I must have tissue from my cervix snipped off. There is nothing that be done about that, no numbing of any kind.  Just a snip or two or three with an instrument that looks a lot like a tiny ice cream scoop and some doctor at the end of your body with his face planted in your vagina saying, “It just feels like cramps.  Small cramp.”  Fuck you, doctor.  You have no idea what it feels like.  I do.  This will not be my first biopsy although it will be my first at 43 with an HPV diagnosis.

My friend stood silently by while I received the news and asked my questions of the doctor.  “Let’s go get something to eat,” she said once I hung up the phone.  “My treat.”  Of course we went because how would I cope with any bad news (or good news) without eating something?  How would I get through anything, at all, without cramming food into my face until I can feel nothing but self-loathing and disgust? 

That point, right there, is why I am here. I’m 5’10”.  I weigh close to 250 pounds.  By close I mean 247 or so although I should know my exact weight because no one likes to read a blog where vague photos and numbers are all you get for a starting measure.  I’m more muscular than most women, particularly in my legs, and my frame is large for a woman.  Despite this, I am considered obese. When you get a look at my stomach and back, you will agree.  I’ll have photos up soon, and measurements too.  I won’t like it but I’ll do it anyway. 

After dinner, and by dinner I mean chips and salsa and a taco salad, shell included, my friend and I parted ways and I drove home.  I called my mother and sister to talk to them about this news. I did not cry.  The drive home took approximately twelve minutes.  I disconnected my call as I entered the house and then dug out a box of macaroni and cheese, not the good kind but the kid kind with the powdered cheese food.  Add milk and butter and waa-lah! A delicacy! I set the water to boil on high flame because I wanted the water to boil faster.  I cut a slice of whole grain bread as thick as my hand and covered it in butter then ate it.  I ate a slice of cheese.  I ate some M&Ms.  When the macaroni and cheese was done, I ate the whole pan.  I burned my finger on the stove top to get one noodle that fell over the side. The burn did not stop me.  I ate that noodle, too, plain, with no powdered processed cheese food. 

I went to bed with my jaws aching.  The M&Ms were of the peanut variety and chewing that many of them made my mouth hurt.  I was breathing heavily and could not get comfortable in the bed. I  can only sleep on my side anymore because it’s the only way I feel like I can hold my fat in, with a pillow between my arms and legs and along my stomach.  I read a book for a long time, until my eyes watered.  I got up to pee once or twice and knew that the movements to propel me from the bed were not smooth or graceful.  I had to heave a little to get out of bed because my stomach was so full.  When I finally did sleep, I woke myself up snoring. The snoring bothers me a lot because I’m taking a trip with some friends soon and we will share a room.  When they see me, they will see the weight gain, and when I wake them up with my snoring, they will know I am having trouble because I am fat.

If you are reading this and you conclude that the two events above are related, thank you.  Thank you for believing that I have problems dealing with emotions and that fear and sadness drove me to eat until I loathed myself.  I appreciate the kindness there, even if you sneer or feel horror or revulsion at what I’ve done, at who I am. The truth is, though, I’m not sure you are correct in your conclusion. I’m not sure that I eat anymore to avoid emotions or celebrate events.  I think I’ve done that for so long that now I just want to eat to eat.  Now anything is just an excuse for more food.  I don’t know what to do about that.  I have no idea how to find a root cause anymore. I’d love to think I could dig deep and gouge it out, as painful as it might be, so that I can finally begin to heal.  What terrifies me is that a root cause is no longer there.  I’m terrified that I’m just this – obese, with HPV, facing a biopsy from a doctor I’ve never met, knowing that he will be staring at my fat, really fat, disgustingly fat vagina and I have nothing to say about it except, “This is me.  This is who I am. I am sorry.”

So that’s why I’m here, writing to whoever reads this.  I don’t want to stay here.  I don’t want to be just this, just another fat statistic, a person looked upon with derision and sadness.  I want to be more than that. I want to conquer this.  I want to win. 

I cannot stay here.