Out of all the emotions that I experience on the regular, grief has to be one of the hardest for me. Growing up, grief was always portrayed as something that happened after someone died. That the only time it was appropriate to express your grief was when, for example, my grandfather died. Any other time a feeling or an emotion came up that felt similar to grief, it was often brushed away and I was told I was being ungrateful (if I didn’t get something I wanted) or that I was being overly emotional (if something important to me was destroyed or taken away).
I grieved my smaller body over and over again. I still, to this day, have grief over the fact that it’s gone and never coming back. That was difficult process, to accept, to understand what that meant for my identity. I’ll often catch myself looking at my face, like REALLY looking, and not even know who’s staring back. She’s not familiar to me – she almost scares me because she doesn’t belong. She has age spots and chin hair, winkles and fine lines. She has a double chin and graying eyebrow hair. I don’t know who she is, I think that’s part of the problem. She’s taken over what I see everyday and I have yet to understand why she’s there and how long she’s going to stay. She’s an intruder in my mind, yet, I have no way to getting rid of her. It feels like a really bad sci-fi movie where my face is being taken over by an alien being. Sometimes I smile at her, sometimes I tell her she looks cute today. But most of the time it’s like paying a complement to a stranger on the street. I look in the mirror to put on makeup or to do my hair, but again, it feels like I’m doing this to someone else, NOT me.
I guess it’s part of the process of letting go of who I used to be. I don’t want to let go – I’m sad and I’m going to miss her terribly. But it seems life is nudging me along, forcing me to accept what I refuse to. That a part of me still has hope she’ll return and all will be better in the world again. It’s almost as if I have some sort of allegiance to the old me and by acknowledging the new person I’m becoming, I’m somehow betraying her. That sweet little girl, innocent child and troubled adult was me. I knew her well. And now that I’ve done the inner work to heal, she can no longer exist. It’s impossible to go back to who you were before healing – trust me, I’ve tried. And so I cry and I feel her pain in my body. I sense her wanting to go back to the way things were, because back then, I, at least, had some control over who I was and who I presented to the world. And I’m sad for her because I know it was no way to live. She was killing herself trying not to feel the pain from the trauma of her childhood and abusive marriage. It was the only way she knew how – and I know that my anorexia was fueled by this pain. I see that now. But it doesn’t make it any easier to let go of her. She worked so hard to function. She worked so hard to be normal. She worked so hard to make sure she was loved, well liked and well behaved. She did everything she was supposed to.
I don’t want to say good-bye. I don’t want her to leave. I was the only one who really loved her. Everyone else just used her. She deserved so much more than what life gave her. Leaving her feels like the worse type of abandonment in the world. But I can’t move on without letting her go. I have to grieve the adult she once was. She no longer exists except in my mind. She did what she had to do to survive, even if that meant falling into the despairs of anorexia. To her, that was easier than dealing with being abused on daily basis by someone who was supposed to love her. She did her best and for that, I am forever grateful.
I know these thoughts are front and center because I decided to weigh myself again. I like to weigh myself during milestones – it was my 2.5 year anniversary of starting recovery. I part of me was curious; would the number change at all? Spoiler alert: it’s still the same – 245 lbs. I’m not sure why I expected it to be different. I’ve switched over to summer clothes with the warmer weather and I know the same leggings I wore last summer felt looser. It most likely due to the fact that my winter and summer leggings are just a different type of material, but I immediately thought it indicated that my overshoot was coming off. And it hasn’t and if I’m being honest, at this point, it’s not going to. And now we circle back to grief. This time instead of grief for my smaller body, I experienced the grief of staying exactly the same. Give or take menopause and general aging, I am within my set point weight now. And that’s that. There are several schools of thought about why I didn’t lose my overshoot – some theories are that
-I don’t accept myself the way I am now
-I’m not living life, just waiting for my overshoot to come off
-That there is a reason why my body isn’t releasing the overshoot/doesn’t feel safe
-That I haven’t properly processed my unhealed trauma, etc.
For a while I challenged myself with respect to the above reasons, and to be honest, I don’t think they apply to me anymore. I always felt like my final weight would be where my body would be happy, not necessarily where I would be happy. I gave over full control to her, understanding that she ultimately made the final decision when it came to our body size. But I still couldn’t let go of the fact that the majority of people lose their overshoot. They do! Especially since my pattern of weight gain was similar to those who lost their overshoot. But a majority of them saw overshoot weight loss 2.5 years into recovery. It was small, slow and every so slight, but none the less, it was overshoot weight loss. I haven’t lost a pound in 2 years and 2 months. I remember trying to be grateful at that – old me would have been ecstatic If was able to keep my weight the same for over 2 years. But it’s bitter sweet because settling in at this larger size comes with pain I don’t want. Yes, there is the emotional pain of wondering why my body decided it didn’t want to lose the overshoot, but it’s also the physical pain that comes with living in a larger body.
My heartburn came back and I had to re-start my medication. My doctor said it literally was, at least in my case, my stomach pressing on my ribs which in turn, was causing issues with pressure on my valve; it’s weight related. I’m also sore, all the time. I’ve had to purchase a new mattress and pillows to accommodate my heavier body. I need to stretch 20 minutes everyday, and while that’s a wonderful thing, if I happen to skip it, I can’t function well for the rest of the day. I love to walk, but can’t go for longer than 30-40 minutes because despite the fact that I’ve spent hundreds on specialty shoes, my feet and legs just can’t handle the weight for long periods of time. I still get tired so easily. The other day my daughter was bored and didn’t know what to do. When I suggested playing with us, her family members, she gave excuses as to why she didn’t want to do that. Her reasoning for me was that ‘I was always saying I was tired and lying down all the time’. She’s not wrong, I lie down all the time now. Sometimes I feel guilty, but I know that rest is paramount to healing my body both from my anorexia AND the abuse I suffered at the hands of my husband. My body was running on cortisol for over half of my life. My body has to get used to doing things without the surge of energy those hormones produced. But it doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty for not being able to physically do things with my daughter. I had more energy when I was anorexic than I do today. It’s HARD WORK carrying around weight. I don’t care what anyone says, for me, that has been excruciatingly difficult to come to terms with. I hate that my energy hasn’t returned. I hate that I still have to rest so much. I’m literally missing out on life because I can’t physically do the things I want because I’m carrying around 100+ lbs than I used to.
I also grieve the love I won’t ever get. You know, the love they talk about all over TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. The love that the relationship guru’s go on and on about. The love that you can receive from someone ONLY after you love yourself first. That’s what I grieve. I grieve missing out on half of my life without that type of love. Sometimes I wonder if people who have it are full of sh*t – like really? I also wonder if there really is a man out there who does like fat? Do they really? I see enough videos to know that there are plenty of men who hate fat. Plenty of men who divorce their wives because they got fat. Plenty of men who leave their marriage to find a women who is skinner than their ex-wives. But does he exist? I don’t think he does, at least not the men who were raised in the same generation I was – they are superficial and fat phobic and don’t really look at the fat girls. And I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than to be with someone who hates my body, who is only with me for my body or who has some sort of fat fetish and doesn’t really want the person behind the fat. And then I cry – I cry at the loss of the skinny body that did get me through the last 20 years. I cry at the sham of the marriage I had. I cry that those closest to me hate what I look like and ask me at every opportunity “how much longer is healing going to take – you are still fat”. I hate that my husband shattered, and I mean shattered my entire existence with the slow and deceitful hidden abuse at his hands.
So I grieve – I grieve a loss. That’s all grieving really is; being sad that you lost something. It’s ok to be sad about losing a body that was societally acceptable. It’s ok to be sad about having to live in a world that thinks my very existence is disgusting. It’s ok to be sad that I feel pain from carrying around extra weight. It’s ok to be sad that my marriage wasn’t real and that I suffered emotional abuse and trauma. It’s ok to be sad. It hurts like hell. My body aches with the sorrow of everything that has happened, but it’s ok to be sad.