I woke up and did not hate myself
It happens sometimes
4/24/23 edited to add: I had some trouble editing this email after publishing. I apologize for the typos/grammatical errors, and for not having a trigger warning at the top. Trigger warnings include: body dysmorphia, eating disorders, self loathing.
Yesterday I woke up and didn't hate my body. It's a thing that happens sometimes; a thing I seemingly have very little control over. But it's nice when it happens.
My body and I have been on quite a ride together. I was one of those annoying people who never worried about weight or whether or not my hips had the right dips. I ate what I wanted and took my clear skin and thick shiny hair for granted. Baby weight fell right off while breastfeeding my first three and I had a husband who celebrated my body regardless of what numbers were on the scale or which Sterilite bin of clothes I was fitting into.
That's not to say I didn't have insecurities. I was teased in high school for having small breasts and a (controlling, manipulative, abusive) ex-fiancé took me to a consultation with a plastic surgeon when I was only nineteen because larger breasts were his "preference." The two men (my fiancé was in medical school) drew on my naked body with Sharpies, then stood back, hands-to-chins in identical poses, while I sat, squirming, on a crinkly paper-covered exam table.
I worried about my long face, my prominent chin, my asymmetrical jaw. Prior to having jaw surgery, I hated my underbite with the passion of a thousand imploding suns, and between you and me, even after four sets of braces, two sets of reverse headgear, and two jaw surgeries, my teeth still don't close right. I have the torso length of someone who can't reach the floor when seated on a standard chair, but it's paired with the arm and leg length of a 7' tall NBA player.
Before my first therapy appointment for my (unofficially diagnosed) body dysmorphia, I was asked to fill out a form that asked how much I weighed and what size I wore during seemingly random periods of my life. It sounds triggering but for me it was fascinating. I had no idea how much I weighed in elementary school or junior high. I knew in high school because our swim coach monitored us to make sure we had enough body fat to have healthy period cycles, but it wasn't anything I was obsessed with. I couldn't tell you what I weighed in college or even when I was fitted for my wedding dress.
I don't remember feeling uncomfortable in my own skin until after I had my fourth baby, Ben. Because I'd miscarried his twin and hemorrhaged badly during the D&C and needed four pints of blood, I developed what is called "transfusion injury." Even though I was given the right blood type, my body developed antibodies to the donor blood and I ended up with some frustrating autoimmune issues.
When I broke out in my first round of full body hives, I believed the solution for such misery could surely be found in food. I believed in 'food is medicine' with my whole soul and would spend over a decade in an increasingly desperate quest to find the one true and only everlasting diet; the one that would restore me to full health and vitality.
Spoiler: It does not exist.
It was in this frantic state I broke up with my body. It wasn't a calm conscious uncoupling. It was no peacefully mediated divorce. It was a confusing, almost violent departure; a rend in the fabric that had made me, me.
Already, I had been grappling with the feeling that my body had betrayed me. I had expected to love being pregnant, had longed for it, hoped for it. I had romanticized maternity wear and hemorrhoids and mastitis; I day-dreamed about sending my husband for watermelon in the middle of the night and doing photoshoots in wheat fields with gauzy gowns billowing around my adorable bump. But instead, I was surprised with extreme Hyperemesis Gravidarium, a condition that caused my 'morning sickness' to last all day and throughout the entire pregnancy... all four times, all nine months.
And then? After surviving four difficult pregnancies and a near-death D&C bleed out, my body was going to give me the double bird and a string of Italian ombrellos to boot? I was going to deal with hives and fainting and my hair falling out and not having any energy? Really? REALLY?
So I tried to care for my tantruming body by attempting every single cleanse and diet and supplement under the sun. But all I really did was stop listening to it. What my body needed was rest and vats of anti-histamine cream. It needed nourishment, not a coffee enema.
[The premium newsletter this week includes several bonus paragraphs that go right here.]
If you followed my instagram account in 2019, I might have seemed a little manic. I found a lot of body neutrality accounts and leaned in hard to the intuitive eating community. I read a bunch of books (this one is really good even if it didn't end up being a miracle for me---affiliate link) and thought shouting a lot about what I was learning on the internet might help.
It didn't. Eating whatever I wanted was supposed to heal my relationship with food. It was supposed to reconnect me to my body and ground me as I paid attention to what it actually wanted. But instead, I seemed to spiral into an endless binging cycle. I gained quite a lot of weight, but tried very hard to convince myself it was how I was supposed to look naturally. This was just my body adjusting! I was finally allowing myself to eat and I was eventually going to figure out how to listen to my body again.
And maybe I would have. I don't know. My husband died and my world became untethered and I went spinning out into space. For months I had no idea when I was tired or if I had slept; I had no appetite and the thought of food made me sick.
I stopped eating for months. It didn't feel disordered, though it sure looked like it; it felt like something outside of my control. Something that was happening to me rather than a thing I was actively doing. I just wasn't hungry. It made me think of dates with Eric and how much he loved pasta. It made me think about how he'd bring me pancakes while I was working and how he seemed to know exactly when I needed a surprise chocolate bar. I didn't feel like I would ever be able to eat with any level of enjoyment ever again. Almost two and a half years later and I'm still not sure I enjoy it.
After Eric died, I dropped fifty pounds very, very rapidly. It wasn't healthy; it was alarming. But as we do in this society, people made remarks.
"Well at least you are looking skinny!" "Widowhood seems to suit you!" (with a pinch to my waist) "Looking more like a model than ever!"
Oh my god. Like, you're complimenting a trauma response. Can we just stop with this? With comments about appearance? You just never know if you're congratulating someone for regularly barfing in a toilet or wasting away because they're so depressed they don't want to live any more.
I didn't know what to do with any of it.
I still don't know what to do with any of it.
I've put some of that weight back on. And some days that makes me spiral in shame. Some days I tell myself, "We will not eat this week." And we don't. Some days I tell myself, "We are practicing radical self love and we are going to feed ourselves this week. We deserve food. We need food." But then I forget to eat because adderall is on backorder and my ADHD is raging and I don't think about my body or food or anything until I start shaking from low blood sugar at 8pm. Some days it all feels very body neutral (which I think is my nirvana ideal). Like it did yesterday. I listened to my ADHD feed-yourself alarms and ate. I did not spiral afterward. I did not total up the calories before bed. I just looked in the mirror and smiled knowing that Eric would still 1000% hit this. And also, even if he wouldn't (he would), I had value outside of whether or not my ass jiggled (it does).
It'd be nice if the end of this story was some glorious "I am all better! I love myself! Or am at least at peace with myself!" I am not. But it was nice to feel less mentally heavy yesterday.
I had a dream recently. It started out with me being able to see more of my own face from my own eyeball. You know how you can kind of catch a glimpse of your own nose sometimes? It was like that, only my eye had suddenly gone wide-angle lens and I could see my chin. I was lying in bed, only my room was an airy, sun-dappled space with downy white comforters and diaphanous curtains blowing in the breeze.
My chin had a hair growing from it; something I'd missed tweezing or shaving or laser-ing. But instead of panicking and running for the tweezers, I just... contemplated it. There was no shame. It just was.
The eye-camera expanded and I could see my lips and then more of my cheek bones. And there was no part of me that was cringing away in revulsion. I did not spend one second thinking about wrinkles or sagging skin or sun spots.
Soon I was split into two Jessicas. My point of view seemed to stay with the version of me that was sitting up and examining the still-lying down me. I couldn't quite understand why I looked so well. Lying-down-me looked so serene, so full of love, so happy. Nothing about my perspective screamed, "She needs a deep plane face lift!"
Suddenly, I knew this is how Eric saw me. Not necessarily younger or thinner or from some magically flattering angle... he just saw me for me and loved me for me. There wasn't anything wildly different from the lying-down-me in my dream and the me in real life. I still had gray hair, it was cut in the same way, my chin needed plucking, but all the other stuff... the things I worry about constantly that take up so much energy and brain space... none of it mattered. I just was.
As soon as I realized this, the sitting up me became Eric, and my own consciousness slammed back into the lying-down version, and then we were hugging and crying. It felt so real, like flesh and bone and beating heart real. I could feel his arms around my waist, hear his voice right next to my ear, feel his breath on my cheek.
I woke up right then, just as I always do, ruining what should have been a wonderful, lengthy reunion. I felt so much heavier, so much older. I had been light as air there, wrapped in his arms. Here, I was thrust, unwilling, back into a body burdened with a brain that cannot see its host clearly. And it hurt. I cried for that version of myself only he could see, for that glorious minute I got to see it, and for that space outside of time when we could hold one another again.
I've tried to keep the feeling of the dream with me. It's not easy, but I try to remember that none of this shit matters. My weight (whether up or down or in between), my cellulite, my saggy skin, my atrophied leg, my uneven boobs... absolutely none of it has any bearing on who I am on a core level.
When my brain tries to scoff and tell me none of the dream was real, I firmly remind it... that glimpse was real. After all, that's how I saw Eric, wasn't it? We were not unaware of our own or each other's short comings, we got our feelings hurt and argued about dumb stuff. But we shared a love that surpassed all struggle. A love that had me gazing at his profile as he drove us through the mountains to Jackson Hole, that loved it when he slapped his dad belly until it shook, that felt like home was cuddled up watching something dumb on TV with him, my head on his shoulder, his hand in my hair.
Anyway. I didn't hate my body yesterday and it felt like a pretty big deal. And sometimes, I can close my eyes and remember how Eric didn't hate it either. I know the solution is not a man loving me. If it were, I'd be cured already, because I have been loved more wholly and completely than most. But without him here to remind me, I am unmoored. I am drifting. And in this anchoress state, I have not treated my body well. So. Remembering grounds me. Not as well as he ever did, but maybe that's the point. Not that there's a point to senseless out-of-order death, but the point of my life. To find that solid ground on my own, to stand upon it, and know deep in my cells that I am enough.