The Skinny on Physicality

In a previous post I talked about The White (skin), The Blue (eyes), and The Blonde (hair), but I put off delving into The Skinny.  The physicality.  Shape, size, weight.  Or rather, the lack of it.  I have always been skinny, tiny even.  My brother and I joke that we can sit on a couch, eat a box of donuts, and at the end, weigh less than when we started.  The gift of high metabolism.  As with the white, blue, blonde, I was never much aware of this physical fact of self when I was young.  I was blissfully free to be whatever I wanted, my dreams and imaginations never interfered with by pesky physical traits.  

I started middle school at about eighty pounds, high school somewhere around ninety.  And of course, it is impossible to be a kid in middle school and still remain unaware of your physical self and the judgments it produces in others.  I became acutely aware of my long, gangly limbs, my awkward skinniness.  On the other hand, I discovered that my physical self seemed to blend perfectly with my emotional adolescent self – shy, quiet, unassuming.  Being physically small helped me to be emotionally and personality-small, to hide, to blend in, to not make waves. 

It wasn’t until college that my skinniness became sexiness, became an identity that I could use to manipulate attention from others.  It gave me plenty of attention, positive and negative, from guys and girls alike.  Girls inwardly sneered, jealous in the middle of their own struggles with weight.  I had two roommates my sophomore year that conspired in their mild eating disorders, sometimes eating only carrots for days on end (I swear an orange hue was slowly tinting their skin), other times taking huge doses of laxatives after meals.  My natural skinniness always kept a barrier between us; it was necessary for them to keep my skinniness at arm’s length, away from their ravenous bodies and hungry emotions. Guys at parties and bars, men I didn’t know and had never spoken to, would scoop me up into the air, high above their heads, using me as a prop to boast of their strength.  Looking back, I remember how disconcerting it felt to be suddenly swooped into the air by strange, unfamiliar arms; I was no longer a person, just smallness, just an element in their ego-play.  Yet still, I reveled in it, my skinniness making me the center of attention.  Another time, as I walked across the street towards a bar, dressed in a short skirt and high heels which made my already chicken-thin legs looks even skinnier, I was suddenly accosted by several male voices, screaming at me to “eat a hamburger, you skinny bitch!”

As it did in middle and high school, my tinyness worked in perfect symbiosis with my personality.  Now, it allowed me to play the victim, the helpless young girl who needed to be rescued by the strong masculine.  I needed a guy to fix me, to complete me, to hold me together.  So I naturally attracted guys who needed something small and fragile in order for them to feel strong and worthy.  They played the hero, I the damsel in distress.  I play-acted this fairytale love-affair over and over, with guy after desperate guy.  It always ended the same – his need to control me as an object took over, I became a possession, a prop.  The suffocation strangled in, and when I could no longer breathe, and it no longer felt wildly romantic and tragic, only frightening, I would bolt free.  I continually ran away with vodka and bars and male attention, leaving a shattered, suicidal shell of a man behind.  Until the last guy, who was there as my ephemeral savior finally switched completely from a man to vodka.  Then I could no longer run, for the codependent controlling guy was the only thing that still picked me up, wrung me out, dolled me up and boozed me up again, making me feel pretty and important and needed.  Finally, the cycle came to a screeching halt; the guy was gone, and I was finally alone with my vodka, alone and so lonely.

The road to sobriety was not just about putting down the vodka.  It never is.  It has been a redefining of my physicality.  A friend of mine once described to me the image she holds of our first meeting: I was sitting on the kitchen counter at our friend’s house, curled into a ball with my knees tucked up under my chin.  I always sat like that, knees pulled in, making myself even smaller and less noticeable.  The image haunts me; I can still feel that ghostly need to be small, to not take up space.  Getting sober has required that I learn to fill up space, both physically and emotionally.  I have had to learn to stand up for myself, literally practicing in therapy sessions to stand tall, to feel myself enlarge.  To give myself permission to take up space, to tell myself that I deserve, require, and warrant space.

Not only have I always had a high metabolism, but I’ve also been sick a lot in my life - not just struggling with the disease of alcoholism, but with endometriosis, celiac disease, and a general high level of sensitivity to many things that most people don’t have (all perfect fuel for my victim persona).  Add to that the cigarettes I smoked for fifteen years that made my appetite non-existent, and the vodka that fueled me for days on end without eating, and I was a very skinny and unhealthy ninety-two pounds when I entered rehab a few years ago.  Since then, I have been learning how to take care of my body.  Previously, I related to my body only through the infliction of pain.  It was all an attempt to escape the emotional pain that lay deep within my cells.  Escape, or distraction with physical pain; anything was better than finding myself face to face with those cripplingly painful emotions.  As I emerged from my drunken fog, I found that switching to a mode of life-affirming self-care was petrifying.  Learning to listen to my body, to descend back into it, was baffling.

After putting down the alcohol, and slowly, diligently, courageously facing the emotions, I have also gradually moved back in to the physical residence of my body.  I quit smoking.  I started eating regular, healthy meals (amazing what keeping your blood sugar levels steady will do for ya!).  I started seeing a naturopath, who had me pouring amino acid pills and protein powder and digestive aids and neurotransmitter precursors down my throat, all in an attempt to regain some sort of normalcy in my system.  I quit eating gluten (see my last post for all my complaints and struggles with that nonsense of a process).  As my intestines have started to heal without constant glutinous assault, I have begun to absorb nutrients again.  While all of this is spectacular, and I was feeling healthier and better than ever in my life, it also meant that I was gaining weight.

For someone who has defined herself through tinyness her whole life, I did not swallow (pardon the pun) this well.

Again assimilating the lessons I learned in recovery, I pushed forward, taking it one day at a time, repeating to myself that it’s not about the weight, it’s about being healthy and how I feel.  It’s about learning that it’s ok to take up space, to exist physically.

I hadn’t weighed myself since we arrived in Hawaii six weeks ago.  As I’ve explained previously, I have absolutely fallen in love with food here.  I ravenously pour through recipes, through articles on nutrition, through studies on gluten, on amino acids, on antioxidants and medium-chain triglycerides and omega-3 fats.  I spend hours creating recipes with whole, organic, and super foods, and devour the results.  Being an addict, I am a master at rationalization, and told myself that it was ok to gorge myself, because a) I was exercising for the first time in my life (riding my bike, running, swimming, paddle-boarding) and b) it was such healthy food!!!  So when I got on a scale last night - my curiosity got the better of me – I was shocked when I realized I’ve gained weight.  No doubt some of that weight is muscle – exercise is changing my shapes around, filling out muscles I never knew I could have.  Nonetheless, I wasn’t expecting weight gain.  I felt deflated.  That old part of me that created myself solely through your judgment of me crept back in, needing to be physically perfect in order to feel like I existed.

(To repeat the ending of probably all of my previous blogs), after the initial upset and feeling like my life was over (oh the dramatics!), I slowly began to breathe.  The process of recovery is rather simple: praying for the courage to face and walk through the fear, then taking the first small step into it.  I will face the petrifying fear I hold of taking up space.  Learning to expand into emotional space was the same process: debilitating fear of what "your" reaction and judgment will be, followed by immense relief and healing when I find I don’t need or care about your reaction.  I need only honor that frightened little girl inside me, take her hand and lead her into strength.  So I trust that learning to occupy physical space will net the same result.  Slowly, I will let go of needing to be small in order to create a personality or fulfill some lost man's search for masculinity.  Instead, I will delight in being healthy.  In having muscles.  In being able to breathe during a run.  In flying down a hill on my bike (and laboriously grinding up those pesky hills).  I will exhilarate in the ability to wake up energized, in hiking over treacherous terrain to reach 2000 ft waterfalls dropping into deserted lagoons.  I will revel in being able to swim half a mile into the open ocean to play, deliriously happy, with a pod of wild dolphins.  I will find bliss in my body.