My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

“Tell me what that’s like,” my therapist says when I tell her I’ve been experiencing a lot of body image ‘stuff’ lately. “Well, I’ve just – you know, not only did I not lose the weight I put on while teaching last year, but I seem to have actually gained weight?   Even though I’m not doing anything differently, except actually exercising more – it’s infuriating how little control I have, and I just…” and here tears spring unexpectedly to my eyes.   I swallow them back and continue, “Mostly I can’t believe I’m still susceptible to this shit!” She nods, then asks me again to explain what I mean by ‘this shit.’ “Okay, here’s a great example: I was sitting in your waiting room just now and I started a new book, and the opening scene is this woman in a hospital – she’s got some kind of undiagnosable bacterial infection or something, and she’s been on IV fluids for weeks – she can’t keep anything down.   And I thought, there needs to be a place where you can go a...

--> “The holidays are a difficult time for almost everybody,” my therapist tells me, “let alone someone who’s been through the trauma you’ve experienced.”   I know her job is, in part, to validate my feelings, and she does, but I also seethe at the thought that I’ve become a cliché, moping through the sparkle and cheer of Christmas and New Years, alone and miserable about it. When I was single, in my life before him, I didn’t feel crappy about the holidays.   In fact, I really liked them.   I was still young enough to consider my parents and siblings as my ‘main’ family, and to me Christmas was about spending time with them, getting and giving gifts and eating plenty of deliciously unhealthy food while the colored tree lights bathed the house in a particularly Christmassy glow and Sinatra sang old holiday classics in the background.   Being with or without a boyfriend seemed like a tangential thing: it was a bonus if I had someone to kiss under the mi...

--> Of all the terrible things I saw as possibilities in my future, being cheated on was never one of them. I always figured I wasn't attractive enough to have to worry about cads who couldn't keep it in their pants – anyone who wanted to be with me would, by necessity, be too good a person to cheat.   He would be with me because he truly loved who I was, and he would never want to (or be able to) do anything to hurt me that badly. Obviously, I was wrong.   Either about the caliber of man who would seriously date me or about how people’s intentions control their actions, or both.   Whichever I was so incorrect about, the facts are now clear: I’m not immune.   And it’s partly the shock of learning this that has made it so hard for me to face what’s happened and move on. I have whole weeks (like last week) where I’m mostly okay.   I go on dates, act whole and human, then come home and text with my ex and get sad, but then I go to bed and I’m st...

My best friend is getting married on Sunday, and I've been having serious anxiety about being the fattest person at the wedding.  I guess I've been yammering about how I look a lot, because yesterday I was nattering on about how if my roots are dyed and my brows are waxed then maybe I won't mind being such a tub of lard, and my mom looked over at me with a raised eyebrow and went "Boy, you've still got issues, huh?" Is it rude to shout DUH in the face of one's elders?  Well, I just laughed and said "What was your first clue?"  Then told her I'd be entering therapy as soon as I can afford it (so basically never). Oh well, I guess it's good to know she's finally noticed...

I've been home in San Francisco for exactly 2.5 days.  I've been in Napa with my parents and my sister for less than a full day.  I'm already locking myself in my room and crying. Not because they're torturing me (at least not on purpose), but because being here with my mom and my sister, and sometimes even my dad, is just a constant reminder of how I'm too fat, and too disgusting, and worst of all too complacent. I spend much of my time, when I'm in London with my boyfriend, trying to come to terms with my body at the weight where it levels out.  I try to eat healthily and be active, but not diet or follow an exercise regime, and then accept the weight and size where my body seems comfortable.  It doesn't always work, but it feels like I'm at least trying to break out of my cage of fucked-up body issues. Then I come home.  And I'm surrounded by talk of 'points' and boxes of weight-watchers-approved snacks.  And my mom and sister spend ...

    Yesterday, I wrote a piece for class about my childhood in Manhattan Beach, and more specifically about how my brother and I used to sneak out to the mini mart down the road and buy candy behind my mom’s back.  I tried to make the piece funny, but I think it just turned out uncomfortable, because that’s exactly how I felt writing it, like I was peeling back my skin and showing the world my big gaping flaw: I like sweets.  In fact, as a kid I was mildly obsessed with them, but even now I’m a huge fan (as evidenced by my baking blog ).  And I hate that my sweet tooth makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong, because to me it’s the strongest evidence the prosecution could cite in the case against the fatty– clearly I wasn’t fat because I ate too much asparagus.     And it doesn’t matter that I love asparagus now, or that I’ll often pass up a rich chocolate cake for a plate of grilled zucchini, because the fact remains that I also stil...

To anybody who actually reads this blog (Derek), you have my apologies. I know I haven’t written in forever, because I was waiting to be inspired to humor and wit, but now instead I’ll just be updating the black hole of cyberspace on my life and my angstiness. I left London in mid-August, which sucked because I had to leave my boyfriend behind, but I figured I’d be coming home to a land of a slightly more normal body scale. Women in London seem defined in class by their weight, much like Postal Packages. The thinner you are, the wealthier/better educated/generally classier you are. Or at least that’s how I felt there. The only women above a size 4 (US) were big, apple-shaped messes of fake blonde hair and loud offensive voices. Usually they didn’t live in London. (Of course I’m generalizing. Broadly. But I’m going to continue to do so, hiding behind my secure belief that hardly anyone reads this anyway, and Derek knows I’m not really an asshole!) San Francisco, on the other ha...