The Price of Change

My life is an unusual one in many aspects. I know a lot of people believe that, but, in my case, it really is true. I have access to my past in a way that few people do because of the unique nature of how my husband and I came together. When people hear that I married a pen pal, I'm not sure what they imagine constituted the content of our distance "courtship". No matter what they may speculate on, it's almost certainly not the reality.

I have a large box of greeting cards, postcards, and letters that my husband and I exchanged over our year of separation. They paint a certain picture of how things were between us, but they are actually far less descriptive than may be expected. Most of them talk less about our thoughts and lives and more about our undying love and missing one another terribly. I wrote to him nearly every day in one form or another. He wrote to me less, but there was a reason for that. The printed material we have is revealing, but not nearly as much as the other materials that we kept.

My husband and I primarily talked to one another on old-fashioned cassette tapes. We didn't merely send a few hours here and there, we narrated our entire lives, played games together (question-based ones), talked about the mundane and the epic details of life, had fights, made up, cried (mostly me), and expressed joy. The full range of a life "together" is on those tapes. We didn't save every one of them, as it would have been economically unfeasible given the cost of tapes at the time, but we saved about 50 of them. This constitutes a broad cross section and hours and hours of our lives at the ages of 22 and 24.

I have been listening to these tapes over time and, while I'm delighted by my husband's old tapes as they bring me such joy, I'm fascinated by mine as well. The truth is that the emerging me, the one that went from being in control of her weight and her lifestyle habits to plummeting back to super morbidly obesity is right there. In fact, she deconstructs herself, tears down the psychological walls that gave her the toughness to make hard changes, and becomes a creature of utter vulnerability. When I finally got together with my husband, I was a nicer person, a better partner, a more rational, productive and constructive communicator, and one small psychological breeze away from utter physical destruction.

There are two instances on tapes in particular which I listened to which were utterly devastating in revealing what I had done to myself. The shocking part is that the process is so obvious, palpable, and can be pin-pointed directly to my technique of mental rewriting. I was actively rewiring as I spoke to my husband, and I was falling apart emotionally as I did so. It was hard, painful, and it tore down defensive walls that were hurting him. Until I listened to those tapes, I had no idea that I had started doing this to myself so early in my life. I also, of course, did not conceptualize it for what it was. I followed the process, but this was me "feeling my way through it." It was a process as it unfolded, not consciously undertaken.

I don't want to be cryptic here, but it is hard to detail the contents of hours of self-reflection spoken into tapes. The first stage of this is seen when my future husband and I suffer a conflict in which I am angry with him and confront him in an aggressive and "attacking" manner. When he asks me if I could talk to him about these problems in a way which is loving and supportive rather than hostile, I respond to him by saying that I want to do that, but I have no idea how. I tell him that all of the role modeling in my life and all of my experiences were carried out in the manner in which I dealt with him and that I would try, but I didn't know how just then to be the better communicator in the midst of heated conflict.

On another later tape, after some particularly stressful and difficult times in my life, I tell my husband that I believe that I am "sick" emotionally and psychologically and I'm not sure that I know how to get well or if it is even possible. I was at an acute turning point at which I realize that behavioral changes alone were not going to "fix" me in a meaningful way.

I was a staunch follower of behaviorism, a psychological philosophy which neatly addressed stimuli and responses in order to change, but it came crashing down on me that this sterile and ordered way of dealing with issues was not nearly enough. Yes, it helped me lose weight and gain a sense of control in my life, but it didn't deal with the deeper issues. I looked better, felt better, and had all of the trappings of external accomplishment, but I was filled with pain and lacked emotional control. No matter how disciplined I was, I was not happy and still dealt with people, and my then-boyfriend-now-husband in destructive ways. Behaviorism was not the answer, at least not the all-healing and encompassing one.

Surrounded by people who were as "sick" or "sicker" than me, I could not see how I behaved as anything but a reflection of "normality". My interactions with him and how I dealt with him, because he was and still is the most psychologically "well" person I have ever known, revealed the depths of my dysfunction. Those issues hurt him, and they hurt out relationship and I wanted desperately not to infect him with my "sickness". At that time, though I loved him deeply and completely and wanted nothing in life more than to have a future with him, I told him that if he didn't want to deal with someone as messed up as me, I would understand if he ended our relationship. Being the person he is, he said that my perspective was that he may catch my "sickness", but his was that it was possible that I might not instead catch his "wellness".

During a long-running conflict over interactions with an ex-girlfriend of his who we were both still in communication with, I engaged in another long and tearful period of self-revelation. It was this tape that was pivotal in the sequence of tapes I was listening to that made it clear to me that I was now practicing the "reflection" phase of my rewiring as well as having an emerging awareness of patterns. While listening to this tape, and realizing what my 22-year-old self was doing, I started to weep. There was a truth that I have been rejecting that was undeniable after what I'd heard my younger self say.

This truth is one that I have not expressed in this blog because I have largely rejected it to date. My husband said to me quite some time ago and on several occasions that he believes that I regained weight because of the way in which I tore down my defensive walls and made myself greatly more vulnerable in order to be a more suitable mate for him. The woman he met was superficially "stronger" than I feel I am now. She exhibited mental toughness that I feel I no longer possess. As my mother used to say, I didn't "take any guff." People were intimidated by me, and that made sure they didn't find a soft spot from which to hurt me. I stood alone, and I made my own way.

Instead of being hostile, defensive, and keeping people out, I became positive, loving, and accepting to let him in. Unfortunately, this change opened me up to a world of suffering. Though he did not hurt me, what was to come when we finally got together physically and moved to his home area, absolutely destroyed me. I had put down my emotional shield and sword, and I got slaughtered.

I resisted this truth for a variety of reasons. One was that I did not want to "blame" him for my weight gain in any way. I felt that even considering his observation as the truth would be tantamount to doing so, albeit in an indirect fashion. Another was that I felt it was wrong to not take full "responsibility" for my fatness, especially since doing so allowed me to hate myself and confirm a poor image of myself.

Another tape revealed the completion of my alteration from the tough and combative "bitch" I was when I was upset to what I was by the time our distance courtship reached its conclusion. I was combative with my mother's verbal and emotional abuse when my then-boyfriend and I came together through our pen pal relationship. By the time I was packing up and leaving to join him in his home area, I was not engaging angrily with people anymore. When my family dealt with me with hostility, I would calmly say, "there is no need to be hostile." They would angrily mock me for having taken on this new pattern of behavior. I had changed fundamentally.

The reason I'm writing about this is that I have a record of myself which is detailed, covers a long span of time, and is historically undeniably accurate. As a record of personal change, it cannot be doubted in any way. I can see how changing to become a better person in one way took away the fragile structures which held my weight maintaining and loss habits in place. When I could not fight back, I had to seek solace and comfort. I couldn't cope by being angry and hostile, so I turned inward and ate and self-hated. The price I paid for the changes I made was that I got super fat again, and I stayed that way for over two decades because I couldn't turn back to what I was without damaging the relationship I had with my husband or hurting him and I couldn't move forward because I didn't have the self-understanding required to build new coping mechanisms.

My husband was right. The changes I made did have a profound effect on me such that I regained weight. Of course, that's not the end of the story, but it is a very important piece of it. This piece reveals that we operate in balance in our lives and that the ability to operate in the world in a particular fashion is impermanent. When a critical change occurs and the balance is upset, the ability to make positive choices can crumble like a house of cards.

The truth is that I let down dark, spiky and hurtful defensive walls before putting solid, stable, protective mechanisms in place. I did not know that I was attempting to address this very problem over the past three years as I have lost weight again, but I had a strong sense of the price I'd have to pay this time when I lost weight if I didn't dig down deeper than simply deciding to "eat less" and "move more". Yes, I needed to change behaviors, but I needed to know why I engaged in those behaviors in the first place and what changing them was going to mean to me emotionally.

A big reason that I explore the psychology of weight loss is that I was terrified of losing a lot of weight again and then regaining and I wanted to make sure that that did not happen again. I knew identity would be an issue and that I'd have to work on building a new one. I knew I was losing a source of comfort and would have to find other ones. I knew my routines would be lost and I'd have to find more productive ones. I knew that I couldn't dismantle one critical aspect of my life (that with food) without building others simultaneously or I'd be at risk again. I just didn't know that I was actually attempting not to repeat a particular mistake that I'd already made 24 years ago.

The Worth of a Normal Human Being

I've been away from this blog for awhile and I apologize to those whose comments languished for a little while in moderation. I've completed the third transition to a temporary domicile since returning to America. Each move requires adjustment, not to mention very practical considerations such as packing and unpacking. Settling into a new space always requires adjustment, especially since each time there is overlap with the owner.

In this case, we are staying in my father-in-law's house while he stays at the cabin we began our return in. We were there for 2 months. He plans to stay for 3 and we'll be in his place until we find our own and start paying rent again. While I'm not looking forward to the large bites that will be taken from our savings when that happens, I am looking forward to being autonomous again. Living in other people's spaces means living by their rules and in a space shaped to suit their individual desires.

This place is rather different than the others because it is familiar. I didn't spend a lot of time in this house before I went off to live in that Asian country, but I did visit all too frequently... far more so than I would have liked at the time. The seeds of the changes which lead to my regaining weight were fertilized here, though I imagine they were already planted none too shallowly in my psyche. I'm not sure if they can ever be dug out and removed, but I can continue to hope.

I used to be extremely bitter about how I was treated here by my in-laws and, at that time, felt it was an indication that I was worthless. Since I was raised and conditioned by experience to believe that others were entitled to assess my value, I embraced deeply the notion that I was inadequate. Now, I know that it had nothing to do with me. 

A lot of people say that sort of thing when they want to explain that others are mean to you because they are acting out on their own problems. That's true. However, that's not what I am talking about. In this case, these are people who are so self-involved and socially inept that they have no clue that they are behaving poorly and making others feel bad. Sitting at a dinner table with them, supposedly as their guest, and having people talk as if you weren't in the room would clearly be an epic act of rudeness to most people, but not these ones. They are most comfortable with each other and will focus on each other because they do not know any better. I'm not sure they even realized what they were doing on any level.

So, now when they act in a self-involved manner, and they do so less now than before because life has changed for them, too, I take it in stride. I see it for what it is, and it's not a reflection on me. I'm actually a little surprised at how I've completely let go of the bitterness and anger that I had about this for so many years. I think part of the reason for that is maturity and self-reflection. Part of it is also that my husband has become so much more clued in about the truth and has been supportive of my viewpoint (he has changed, too). Another is that I've lost weight again and that sense of worth that was lost because of the way I was treated due to my body has returned.

When I say things about my "sense of worth", I in no way mean that I'm the greatest thing on the planet. I mean that I no longer believe I'm a sub-human piece of garbage that deserves to be looked upon with disgust and disdain or treated as invisible. My "worth" in my estimation is that of a normal human. If you've never been super morbidly obese or if you did not grow up fat, you can't know what it is to walk around day after day feeling as though you are nothing and contemptible. You haven't been conditioned by thousands of external cues, both subtle and gross, that make certain that you know that you are a pariah in the eyes of the world.

A lot of people will say "get over it". A lot of people lack much depth of understanding and sensitivity. Those same people will cry and say how sad they are if they learn that a child was verbally abused and told he or she was stupid and worthless by an angry parent for years. They'll know that cripples that person's esteem in a way which the adult may never fully recover from. They can understand how the abused may seek abusers in relationships in the future because they associate love with abuse.

However, they fail to see that being fat and being mocked, derided, and belittled day in and day out for your entire life has exactly the same effect. They don't see it because their prejudice against fat people is too great for them to set aside and find compassion. It is a powerful and painful way to have grown up, and it is the ugly ground upon which all of the seeds of my psyche were sown.

How It Began

I grew up in a family of four. Each one of us was obese, though my father, at times, approached being merely "overweight". Much of his weight issues were a beer belly, a memento of being an alcoholic. Though we didn't know it, each one of us had an eating disorder. Most of the time, the only "disorders" people see when it comes to food are those in which people don't eat enough or throw up what they eat.

A lot of people think that the only psychological problems related to a bad relationship with food are connected to trauma or abuse. I did not start to overeat due to trauma, but rather because it was normalized for me. I was thin as a kid up until 4th grade when my family's habitual overeating caught up with me and I got fat. Had that behavior not been "normal" within my family, I believe all that followed would have been different.

Once I became overweight, it became a much broader issue as I became defined by my body and other issues complicated the matter. After my weight marginalized me and I became heavily objectified as a result of my body size, food became part of a more sophisticated and byzantine psychological pattern. Once fatness defined my life and food became the only ally I could trust as well as a hated enemy, the routine overeating turned into full-blown disordered compulsive eating and bingeing. What started as mere patterning as a result of being the child of parents who overate routinely (due to their own issues, most certainly) turned into emotional reliance.

The patterning was started by my mother, who, as I have said before, fed us poorly (mounds of white bread, potatoes, whole milk, cheap fatty meat, salty canned vegetables and fruit in syrup) and too much and complained when we didn't eat what she prepared. For example, she would bitterly complain if she sat and peeled many potatoes and the bowl remained largely full by the end of the meal. It never occurred to her to simply prepare less. As a child, I had no awareness of what was happening nor the consequences of eating as my family did. Since I'm 47, there wasn't nearly as much propaganda or talk about food and body size in education at that time. Even if there had been, I'm not sure that it is the responsibility of a 10-year-old to figure out how to eat properly. At that time, there was just the food pyramid, in its primitive form.

By the time I had an inkling of what was going on, I was trapped in an intricate web of psychological dependence on food from which I could not extricate myself, particularly not without a good support system or the awareness and insight that comes from education and maturity. By the time it was made clear to me that I had a problem (i.e., being fat and therefore eating too much), I was too indoctrinated by routine, family culture, and biological inclination built by habitual overeating and too young and lacking in the psychological tools to climb out. This was how my disordered relationship with food grew.

A lot of people talk about how once you become an adult, you suddenly are "responsible" for what goes in your mouth and can no longer "blame" your parents. To me, this is like repeatedly breaking a child's legs until their bones are distorted and weak and telling them when they reach 18 that they are now supposed to be capable of running because they should be capable of finding whatever it takes to simply be different or "better". Forget the past damage and just overcome it all now that the calendar has turned to some magic number. It's just not that simple.

It has taken me many decades of my life to get to where I am now and I continue to pick at and untangle knots in the web I was trapped in. I still feel stuck to it in spots and occasionally feel sucked back in and trapped, but most of me is free most of the time. The one thing that I implore anyone who is trying to lose weight to do is to stop oversimplifying and talking in Yoda-isms ("there is no try, do"). There's a reason most people regain weight after they lose it and I absolutely believe it is this oversimplification and denial of the complex psychological issues that go into changing ones relationship with food. You can't do it forever with the mental tools of brute force, abuse, pat and trite mantras, a stick-to-it attitude, etc. Eventually, for most people, the psychology that got them fat in the first place will re-assert itself and they will regain.

Make it as complicated as it is and take the time to understand that it's just not so simple for most people. You didn't get messed up in a day, week, or even a year. You got messed up over a lifetime. It isn't a short-term problem and it can't be fixed with a short-term solution (and I count dieting culture as a part of "short-term").

Julie

In a previous post, I wrote about my experience in high school with a girl named Julie who delighted more than others in tormenting me about my weight. I also mentioned that she had joined Facebook, though she had not requested me as a friend. Several days ago, she did request me as a friend and I accepted. This answered a question that had been on my mind since other people had discussed getting her to join our former class online. That question was, "was she now fat?" If you have read my other post, you will understand why this was something I would wonder about.

The main issue with fatness is that anyone who is very fat will likely avoid posting a picture of themselves. Julie's profile picture is the default grey box with white silhouette that Facebook gives everyone and she had not posted pictures of herself in her albums. However, someone tagged her in the background of a picture of two other people and revealed her current appearance. She has become extremely obese, likely close to or as heavy as I was at my highest weight.

My response to this is absolutely not a sense of triumph at the justice meted out by the universe. While I am happy that my life has been going so well, I find that I don't need others lives to be comparatively worse to feel satisfied with who I am and how I live. I mainly feel sad for her, though I'd be lying if there weren't a tiny little seed that is gratified that it is very likely she can't help but have some empathy for the fat girl she tortured in high school. I don't want her to suffer as I have, but I do want her to understand what it was like to be me and never treat another person as poorly as she treated me. Empathy is a powerful teacher and if she had to get that fat to ensure that she never hurts another fat person again, I think that is not the worst outcome.

I'm aware that I may be reaching conclusions with little more than a photo of a very fat woman as evidence. Just because she looks to weigh well over 300 lbs., it does not mean she is unhappy. Happiness, like health, is not directly related to weight. She may fully embrace bodily acceptance and be happy with who she is despite her size. However, I know too well how unlikely that is for many reasons. First of all, society makes it extremely hard to be happy at a high weight. Even if you have no health or mobility issues as a result, you are constantly reminded that you are a blight on society. Second, someone who does not post pictures of themselves and used their young, thin daughter's face as their profile picture (only to withdraw it later) is not demonstrating much in the way of bodily acceptance. For me, one thing which I forced myself to do at one point was to start putting my face out there for people to see. This was a form of accepting my appearance. Finally, Julie spent many of our youthful years using my fat body to elevate herself. There is little chance that she's now just peachy with a body which exceeds my high weight in high school.

Seeing this person who brought such misery to me in my youth end up fatter than me has been a complex emotional experience. I didn't expect necessarily to be basking in schadenfreude, so it's no surprise that I'm not doing a happy dance that my former bully is currently living out my former nightmare. Mainly, I find myself having to push a little harder to find my empathy for a fat person. This is something which has come easily for me for nearly everyone else with weight issues because I always had 100% understanding of their suffering. In her case, I think I'm having to push myself to find that kind place in myself for her. I feel little for her either way. That is, little happiness at what could be seen as a proper comeuppance and little sorrow that she is likely suffering. Considering how much glee she took in inflicting pain on me in my youth, I think I'm doing pretty well to be in neutral about her right now.