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I should be happy...


Things have been crazy lately.  I’ve finished my MA, started looking for a full-time job, and gotten an agent and a book deal, all in quick succession.  It’s all happening really fast, and it’s almost all good news; as my friend pointed out on Facebook when I announced that I had a publisher, I’m finally profiting from my all-consuming neuroses.  They’ve always been the source of my self-deprecating humor, these nerves of mine, but they were never much good for anything else until now.  Suddenly, I have an audience for my particular brand of crazy, and everyone around me seems to be thrilled on my behalf.  I should be thrilled too, and I am, I keep insisting… well, my logical brain is thrilled.

The thing is, in my heart I’m terrified.  Publishing a book about my body anxiety publicizes it, and while I’ve always been one for publicizing my issues on a conversational level, I’ve never really had to deal with a large audience before.  Even this blog only has a few cherished followers and a smattering of googlers.  So I’m anxious about what happens next, and especially about the pressures associated with my particular choice of topic: will people expect me to be constantly dieting and working out, and if I’m not (which is most of the time), will I get hate mail from people who think I’m a lazy slob who complains about her body without trying hard enough to change it?  Will I get reviews saying I’m charmingly neurotic, a new sort of everywoman, or will they label me a whiner who’s trying to profit from having been fat and taking the easy way out?

And it’s not just about what other people think – I’m judging myself much more harshly in the light of future publication.  I’m worried I don’t work out enough (though I’ve become more disciplined lately), concerned about every sugary bite that goes into my mouth.  I’m also up nights fretting over what should be in the book and isn’t because it didn’t flow correctly, worrying that I haven’t given my readers enough information.  And perhaps worst of all, I still feel shitty about my body, and now I’m beating myself up over than even harder than usual.

Lately I’ve been feeling like the fattest girl in every room.  I’ve always had slim friends – kind of extraordinarily slim, too, often smaller than a size 10 – but for some reason it seems like the more friends I make, the smaller the average size gets.  Maybe it’s a sort of aspirational technique – my parents always used to say that one reason I did better in school than my brother, despite our equal IQs, was that I surrounded myself with the best and brightest and aimed for the top, while he surrounded himself with the mediocre and aimed for the middle.  And maybe it’s that way with my body, maybe I gather the slim gals around me in the same way that dieters tape photos of models to their refrigerators, as inspiration.  But if so, it doesn’t seem to be working.  All it does is make me feel like the elephant in the room.

And then I beat myself up for feeling that way.  The point of my book was to work through my issues, and also to show them to the world and myself as issues that most women deal with, no matter their size/diet/surgical history.  And the aim I had for myself, which is also laid out in the last chapter of the book, was to stop focusing so much on my body and try to work on my mindset – if my boyfriend loves my body, and I know it’s healthy, and most of the world doesn’t think it’s revolting, then why do I have to hate it so much?

But I’m failing at that aim these days.  I don’t know if it’s the book deal or just the beginning of winter doldrums, but lately all I see when I look down at my body is rolls, flab, and excess skin.  I work out and I’m feeling great and kicking my own ass and then, mid-plank, I look down at my legs and see the skin hanging off the thighs like an upside-down mountain range and I drop down onto my mat and feel like crying.  Of course I make myself get back up and keep going, but it’s gotten bad enough that I’m thinking about surgery again.  And that was so not the point of trying to change my mindset.

I don’t know… hopefully I’m just in a bit of a depression and I’ll come out of it soon.  And as for the book, I’m just crossing my fingers that the excited part of me will take over some time soon, and the terrified part can go sit in the corner until it’s all over.

For now, all I can do is keep at it: working out, editing the book, and pretending everything’s fine in my heart.  Because one day it will be fine again, and until then there’s no point upsetting the people around me.  Especially my editor.
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