FatGirl vs World

2014 was a rollercoaster....

You know, I've always believed in the therapeutic power of writing.  Even if I didn't publish a blog I'd write for myself.  It helps me gain self awareness in the present and perspective for the past.

I also believe in the power of the story -- the narrative that we either reflect (fact) or the one that we create (fiction).  In my old age (okay, I'm 33), I've come to realize that the hardest stories to write about are the ones we don't feel are our own, where things happen to us and we had no control over them.

A few people know the truth about this story: my spinal surgeon, a few friends, and my dad (he knows the gist, not the details -- so um Dad, you might want to stop reading now).

Doug Newburg has been scrambling my brain with his five questions:

1. How do you want to feel everyday or about your life in general?
2. When, where, and around whom do those feelings happen?
3. What gets in the way of those feelings or takes them away?
4. How do you get those feelings back?
5. What are you willing to work for? 

My mind has been bouncing around from between each question. They're so interrelated that you begin to find an answer to one and it starts spilling over to the other questions.

Answering "how do you want to feel" was much easier for me to answer in the negative -- I knew how I didn't want to feel: broken.

Flipping around the verbiage didn't quite work; the antonyms of broken didn't quite capture how I wanted to feel because I know there is no simple repair, no time machine to get back lost time, no erasing the feeling of being susceptible.

I thought about the times and places where I felt this "opposite of being broken" and came up with the time when I took a leap of faith (March 2011) and joined a boxing gym. I had only recently found my exercise groove, my diet groove, and needed to change it up a bit to deal with the plateau on which I had been residing. My boxing trainers made it very clear that my success required both my body and my mind. I couldn't let the narrative of being broken run the show. They taught me to fight for myself instead of fighting against myself.

Of those trainers, Randolph was the one that I bonded with for many reasons. I loved it when these young, jacked guys would come in to spar and he'd slip past each and every punch. More than anything else, he saw the fire in me and knew that if my body could do more that I'd let it (in other words, I wasn't one of those people who showed up just to burn calories, but I was there to learn and fight). He would only give me crap if I mentally checked out before I physically checked out (i.e., I had to at least try, even if I couldn't do as much as everyone else). Because of this (and his extensive training/certification), I trusted him enough to turn off my brain and let him take over.

I knew that the answer to both "How do you get those feelings back?" and "What are you willing to work for?" started in the same place and with the same person:



The good news is that my form is still pretty good. The bad news is that my conditioning is kinda crap (the respiratory plague could have a little to do with that). It's not as bad as he thought it could be, but I was winded 15 minutes in and my arms were noodles for 4 days after.

I am going back tonight.

How do I get that "opposite of broken" feeling back?
I get help from people that I trust and put in the sweat equity.

"What are you willing to work for?"
Myself.

Yes, I know that the more I work on Doug's questions, the more specific and detailed my answer should be, but for right now, it's enough to say that I'm willing to work for and fight for myself. Instead of working for and investing in everyone else, I'm just gonna hit the pause button to recognize that I don't need to prove my worthiness to anyone. I don't need to beg for their affection, approval, or attention. And if people don't know how I fit into their life, it's not my fault to cure or my burden to remedy.

The other day, a Twitter friend shared a photo of a family vacation.  She was an adult and was still going on vacations with her parents and siblings.  This made me sad. I really don't know how this blog post will come out, but I'm going to try to speak from the heart, not edit myself, and hope for the best.

Somewhere between my mom being an agoraphobic with panic attacks and my dad's work, we didn't go on many family trips when I was growing up.  Our big vacation was driving to Hilton Head, South Carolina when I was 11 or 12.  Most of our other vacations were weekend trips upstate, going to the beach, genealogy excursions to cemeteries, or family-related.  After mom died, we went on one vacation -- a week of camping at the beach with my extended family that was fairly disastrous thanks to a thunderstorm.

I'm not writing this to complain about not going on fancy or expensive trips as a kid, or complain that I've never been to Disney.  As an adult, I've gone to some amazing places and plan on going to more (4 words:  Costa Rican Sloth Sanctuary).  This, along with the upcoming holiday season, just made me think about the many fractures in my family.

Both of my parents had one of their parents die when they were young (my dad's mother, my mother's father).  Because of this, I don't think either of them had normal childhoods.  I don't think either of them grew up going on family vacations (my mom's father was in the Army, I don't think that relocating counts as a vacation). My paternal grandfather remarried and had more kids (so there are 4 from my paternal grandmother, 3 from my paternal step-grandmother for a total of 7 kids).  There was always tension in their family partly because of this.  My maternal grandmother didn't remarry or have more kids (my mom was an only child, and Nana never let her live this down).  She died when I was 8, but my mother's cousins filled in the void.

There was a main nucleus on each side:  my mother's cousin (by marriage) Sandie (who had a blended family as well) and my step-grandmother, Janet.  Because we all lived in the same little town, my grandparents and my mom's cousins knew each other and got along.  My aunts and uncles even went to school with my mom's cousins.  After my mom died, I didn't see my mother's side of the family as often because my dad gravitated towards gatherings on his side of the family.  After Janet was diagnosed with Alzheimer's (and as my cousins grew older and had families of their own) and after my grandpa died, that side of my family seemed to have lost some of the gravity that held us together.

We used to have ginormous family events at my paternal grandparents' house -- you know, the kind where every table and chair in the house was used so that we could all eat together.  There would be nearly 30 people eating together and almost nearly that amount of desserts.  We'd play basketball together before dinner and Trivial Pursuit after. As it turned dark and if it was still warm enough, the kids would play manhunt in my grandparents' backyard and the neighborhood.    These are some of my most treasured memories of my family mainly because I was blissfully unaware of many of the tensions and pain that ran deep on that side of the family.

As I got older, went away to college, and moved 250 miles from my whole family, I noticed that I became somewhat of the black sheep of my dad's side of the family.  My father wasn't the best at keeping me in the loop in regards to family events (people would invite him to things and assume that I got the message -- and I did, but usually with too little notice to do anything or after the fact).  As the years went by, I just felt further and further from my dad's side of the family because of the distance and because nothing and no one reeled me in when I was adrift (and I didn't seek it out for myself).  (Though, this is not beyond the point of repair. And there are times when I think moving back to NYC would help with reconnecting.)

Just as that was happening, I started reconnecting with my mother's side of the family.  They told me stories about my mother and helped me keep her memory alive.  I felt a very strong bond with them because of this. Sandie and her husband Joe also have one of the strongest marriages that I've ever seen.  I'm always in awe of the love they have for each other and how it translated into the relationships that their kids have with each other and with their own little families.  I feel the gravity from them, holding me close.

Within my own little family (my dad, my brother and I), it was never easy.  My mother was one part nucleus, one part puppet master, and one part cruise director. While she was alive, it felt like there was a shift between the daily life of mom, John, and I and then the time we had when dad was around.  At night, we either didn't see him or we got the message that dad was too tired or stressed from work and that we shouldn't bother him.  On weekends, mom always had projects for him to do, and we shouldn't bother him. John would go off and play with his friends and I'd be stuck at home helping.

It was only after she died that we were able to untangle some of the strings she used.  It was a huge revelation when my father told me that he didn't want the role of enforcer/punisher, but that mom had pushed him into it.  I think it was a big revelation for my dad to realize how my mom exaggerated stories about bad behavior, neglecting to tell my dad some of ways she drove wedges between my brother and I, or how she would often belittle us.

But the damage was done, and we took no time to repair it (i.e, no family therapy).  I was 13. My brother was 14.  My dad had a full time job and 2-hour commute each way.  The goal was to survive.  We did survive, but it was far from perfect.  The wedges that my mom drove between all of us remained, and continued to push us away from each other.  I didn't trust my dad to be the confidant and protector that I needed. Dad and I used to get into the worst fights because I felt like I was doing all the housework and my brother was doing none of it. I think my brother resented me asking for the help, that I was trying to control him.

I think my father is thankful that my brother and I were good kids -- we did our homework (usually), got good grades (always), didn't get into trouble, didn't become hooligans, and managed to get into good colleges.  But the truth of it is that when my mom died, my brother and I stopped being carefree kids. And what makes me the most sad out of anything is that we stopped being siblings.

My brother and I not only shared our parents' DNA, we also shared the common experience of growing up together and experiencing many of the same traumas as each other (unlike my brother, I didn't take a line-drive to the nose).  And instead of that uniting us, it really drove us apart.  I feel a pang of jealousy and hurt when friends talk about their close relationships with their siblings.

In more recent times, my brother has had his wife (and her family) and his kids to focus on.  But even when they were just dating, I feel like my brother treated his future in-laws with more care and respect than my dad and I.  He preferred the shiny new thing to the thing that was broken and needed repair.  That sometimes left Dad and I alone to shoot the shit together.  Quite often dad and I end up talking about the past.  But it's hard for me to say what I always want to say because I know they hurt (not because they're arrows pointed at anyone, but because they are surface wounds).  Things weren't perfect back then and we were all hurting in our own ways.  But I regret that we didn't have family therapy.  I regret that we let this terrible thing push us apart instead of bringing us together.

So holidays are always sad times for me because I feel not only estranged from the family (extended and nuclear) that I was born into, but also because I've yet to create one for myself (see previous blog post).

In the last post, I alluded to the book that I'm reading, by Doug Newburg(that he so graciously shared with me): The Most Important Lesson No One Ever Taught Me.  He asks of the people he works with these 5 deceptively simple questions:

1. How do you want to feel everyday or about your life in general?
2. When, where, and around whom do those feelings happen?
3. What gets in the way of those feelings or takes them away?
4. How do you get those feelings back?
5. What are you willing to work for? 

Less than half an hour after learning that my mom died I asked my grandma if I could use the phone and if she had a phone book. Everyone was in the living room crying.  I felt like I was suffocating and the world was imploding at the same time.  My fingers flipped through the pages and down to his phone number.  He wasn't my boyfriend, wasn't even a close friend.  He was just the boy I had a crush on ever since I moved to the school district in first grade.


I didn't need his pity or his condolences. I just needed his voice.  I needed the way his voice made me feel. And because he was (and is) a good person, and because he was (and is) gentle and kind, he took the call and gave me something to cling onto.  I knew in that moment that my heart, though broken from the loss of my mother, was reparable.  And because he was good and kind, he even came to my Sweet 16, and danced with me at our senior prom.

While the teenage me fancied him to the point of scribbling our names together and whispering goodnight to him before I fell asleep, the person I am now is so very thankful to have had him in my life even though nothing ever came of it.  Why?  My crush didn't crush me: instead, he helped me through the worst part of my life just by being himself. (I was reminded of him by the calendar — today is his birthday.)

I think it's because of this (and also my personality) that I willingly, happily, and sometimes even recklessly fling myself at love, even if I know it's unrequited, puppy-dog, never gonna happen love. Of all the different iterations of Robby, the one that I most adore is the courageous lioness created and emboldened by love.

However, if you know me or have read my blog for any time you know that (1) I rarely talk about my personal life and (2) I tend to talk about the past and not the present.  I am going to stray from that to share a few revelations that happened this weekend (partly in response to this article):

1) Being single prevents me from being the joyful and loving person that I like to be. I'm my best person when I get to love someone.  I'm my best person when that love gives me the confidence to shine (she was there all along, but just needed a venue).  And for me, that joy is in the details of sharing a life together with someone in both meaningful and trivial ways:  to bring someone into my family, or to just read books on opposite sides of the couch, stealing glances every now and then.

2) All of my crushes have helped me understand what it feels like when someone's interested in you and what it looks and feels like when they're not.  Unfortunately, many guys view dating as a battle of who can care less. Not my thing. Woo the crap out of me cause I'm worth your time and energy.  And you know what? You get steak in return.  Woo --> Steak.

3) I love love love being proud of the person that I am with.  I love giving compliments and encouragement.  I love bragging.  I love basking in his glow.  I love it when he does the exact same thing for me.

4) Everyone says that I'm intimidating and come off as dominant (as if those things are bad in a woman).  I'm really a kitten.  I like it when a guy takes the lead, makes the first move.  It's not about machismo or anything like that.  My kinda guy is willing to take a risk.  I'm intimidating because I am self-aware and confident; I come off as dominant because I'm not willing to let any man make me small just so he can feel big.

5) Other people say that I come off as needy, emotional (and try to shame me about being that way).  Well, damn straight I am.  It's way worse to think that you don't need the people around you (also, other people need to feel needed and not just a fashion accessory).  It sucks when you feel like a convenience to someone versus them thinking you're a missing part of their life (even if that's a small, temporal part).  It's way worse to shut down your emotions because you're too afraid of feeling them or because you've been bloodied and beaten up by love before.

6) At 33, I fear that I've realized a lot of this too late. But also that particular fear is a bit irrational and a bit common among my generation. There are other things that feed into this fear, but they're all things that I have some control over and can change. That's a whole other blog post.   But just as I've been stuck in my weight loss/health gain/athletic life, I've been stuck in my personal life.  I've realized that to fix both that I need to find hope again.  I need to heal a little bit and also remember that on the other side of this fear (re-injury of back, being a spinster) is the life that I want.

What am I willing to do in order to be the person that I want to be?  (Yes Doug -- your book is getting to me in some unexpected ways).

See Part 1 and Part 2 for both my disclaimer and review.  This is the third and final part of the my review.  Thanks for sticking with me through not just all the material but all of my tangents. 

---

DOWN SIZE:   12 Truths for Turning Pants-Splitting Frustration into Pants-Fitting Success 
Spiker shared one of my favorite quotes by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj "Make love of yourself perfect."  The great thing about the quote is that it's not saying "love yourself perfectly," it's asking us to temper how we act towards ourselves and how we think about ourselves. Throughout the book, Spiker addresses body image issues and the different ways they can play on our psyche. 

Then Spiker really raised the bar for me -- saying that I had a profound point about how we're trained to scrutinize our bodies for what's wrong:  (in his worlds) "How do you tell yourself to accept your body when your body is not acceptable?" How do we "transition from beating ourselves up to bringing ourselves up?" 

Self-compassion/lovingkindness is hard to practice and even harder to perfect, but so very worth it.  Spiker quotes studies that point to a correlation between self-compassion and oxytocin (one of the most powerful chemicals that our body produces in regards to how safe and connected we feel towards others and towards ourselves).  Self-compassion doesn't mean that we make excuses for ourselves, it just means we don't beat-ourselves up for not being perfect. 

Spiker wants his readers to ask themselves what really matters in this whole weight loss/health gain journey.  His anecdotes hearken back to the intrinsic motivators more than any number on a scale or race time.  Why are we doing this to ourselves if it's not to live a joyful life?  What does that look like for you? 


Perhaps this is the greatest lesson of Down Size -- when it comes to weight loss/health gain, maybe losing weight is just a cool side effect of reducing the amount of noise in our lives that prevents us from living authentically, living enthusiastically, living connectedly.  When we get rid of what's extraneous and holding us back, what then are we capable of doing, who then are we capable of being? 

I don't know about you all, but I'm interested in meeting that version of me. 

In Part 2 of Down Size, Professor Ted Spiker says that we need to inspect ourselves both subjectively (perception) and objectively (data). 



For months, I've been carrying around the reminder card that I needed to get my annual exam at the gynecologist (it was dated early this March; my GP physical is due in December) (Also -- only 17% of women get their annual? whoa.).  It's no big deal -- except that my nurse practitioner (Flynn) was the first person in the medical field to really make a big deal of my weight loss. Like a really big deal, hugs and all.  She's an athlete, an instructor, and a really awesome and supportive person.  



It felt like a mix of going to the principal's office and going to confessional.  But there was catharsis in being able to say that I knew the why and the how of the weight gain. Because I knew how I got to that place on the scale, theoretically I could retrace my steps and find my way back down.  Thankfully, I know that I have her support. It means the world to have supportive, pragmatic, and honest medical professionals on my team. 

I realize that isn't the case for everyone.  I think it would be understandable if I had a distrust of doctors based on my past experience with them and the failures in my mother's diagnosis and care.  But I never held my mom's death against the entire medical profession, just those few people that so supremely messed up. At the end of the day, medicine is a practice that requires both the practitioner and the patient to work together to establish and achieve goals. That may take trying out a few doctors.  (Tangent:  if you don't invest in the doctor and trust them by telling them the truth, how can you get anything worthwhile out of the process? I know far too many people that tell white lies to their doctors. In the end, they're only handicapping their doctor and reducing the level of the care they receive in return.)

Even if you don't have an issue with doctors, getting to the doctor for an annual physical may still seem like a chore versus an act of self care.  For instance, the other day my dad let me know that he was going to his annual physical (hi dad! not trying to embarrass you here).  And I said "Love you! And thank you for loving yourself." He asked me how going to get his physical was "any indication that [he] loved [himself]." I tried to re-frame the concept by pointing out that when people love their cars and want them to last long, they perform routine maintenance and tune-ups.  That's what annual physicals are.

My blood work should be back the end of the week.  I requested that they do a full panel (including hormone levels, Vitamin D, STDs, etc.).  The next appointment that I need to make is for a dermatologist.  I haven't seen one for a while.  I need to find one that understands that skin picking is an issue that I'm aware of, have tried all sorts of treatment, and that management is just as good as a cure for me. 

Disclaimer:  Back in July 2013, Professor Ted Spiker sent me an email asking to interview me in connection with a book that he was working on.  He has come across FatGirlvsWorld and wanted to chat about some of my experiences.  Our email correspondence went on for a little bit.  In January 2014, he showed me the first draft of how he was going to weave my words into his book.  It wasn't until Dacia showed sent me a tweet that I realized that the book had been published (and that many of my friends had also been interviewed (**waves to Dacia and Tina**).  My review is not sponsored (i.e, I purchased my own copy of the book and was not compensated for my time/thoughts) and as always, unfiltered.

Getting down to 188 lbs was awesome.  It was the culmination of a lot of work and dedication.  I was exercising on a regular basis, watching what I ate and logging about 85% of my weekly meals.  I was cooking for myself and enjoying trying new recipes.

And then I (1) got complacent and took a "break" (yeah, y'all know how that goes) (gained 5lbs) and (2) got injured (I hope y'all do not know how that goes) (see below).  I haven't had any consistent effort in the gym since hurting my back in February.  I went to the gym twice last week and spent the long weekend either in bed or walking around in pain.

FGvW would say "don't worry; focus on what you can do."  Robby, however, is all whiny and depressed. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd feel a loss of self, of identity without being able to work out and be strong.  I also feel like I have nothing new to say and/or that everything I do say is either "I'm injured" or "I'm depressed."

So yeah, you see two paragraphs up where I say I went to the gym? Well I made the mistake of jumping on a scale after a weekend of...shall we say.... indulging...

One of my favorite Sesame Street skits was Grover/Frank Oz's "Near & Far" -- where he demonstrated the meanings of near and far.  You were either one or the other.  There was measurable difference between the two things.  By the end of the skit, Grover is exasperated from having to repeat himself so many times.  I don't know why, but I just thought it was so silly.

It wasn't until I got older that I realized that some things can be both near AND far -- just like the title, and not near OR far.  Sometimes perspective collaborates with our minds to play tricks on us.

This past Saturday marked 20 years since my mother passed away on September 27, 1994 (see "I'm a sensitive soul, though I seem thick skinned"). I spent the week leading up to it in NYC with dad. (I also got to see some friends while I was there too.)  So many times, I am struck by how vivid and tangible that period in my life feels (I carry it with me everywhere I go), and at other times, it seems so distant (and I'm able to set aside the burden of some of those memories).

That morning, my dad went to church, then we went to my mom's grave.  My dad placed red roses in the vase; I cleaned up her headstone and put a few roses and a stone on top.  I had asked dad if we could then go to Robert Moses Beach (a place where I felt especially connected to mom) so I could honor the day in my own way. 

It wasn't until I was texting with my brother driving to the beach from the cemetery that I started getting emotional.  I thought about how my niece and nephew would never get to know my mom, or that mom would never get to know her grandchildren.  (People often say to me "mom is looking down on them from heaven" -- but that's not what I believe at all.  I find zero comfort in that.)  I thought about what dating would have been like with mom around (I have a sneaking suspicion that mom would have flirted with my suitors).  I thought about not having mom there with me if I ever gave birth (She may have just given the doctor the heave-ho so she could be the first to hold her grandchild).  Then I realized how I'm sad about things thing may or may not come to pass.  Then I wondered if I've been subconsciously avoiding or sabotaging myself because I fear losing those things as well.

Dad didn't follow my advice in picking the easternmost beach.  He kept driving further west.  He then parked the car and we walked for a while along the beach.  We had hoped that since it was the end of September that it would have been empty, but it was an unseasonably warm day and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  Eventually we found a place where people weren't swimming as much (right near the traditionally clothing-optional area), and I committed to the ocean the remainder of the dozen light pink, light purple, and white roses.

Later, dad and I agreed that maybe it wasn't the best thought out plan, as the ocean decided to take some and brought the others back to the shore.  Though it may seem inappropriate on such a solemn occasion, I couldn't help but laugh.  I think mom would have thought it was funny as well.

Two women down the shore picked up the roses and I let them know what I was trying to do.  They understood (and one of them had also recently commemorated 20 years since her own mother passed) and gave me hugs.  One of them said, "Maybe this is just a reminder to let life come back to you."

Touché.