My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

Have you ever been through something so traumatic that when you look back on it from a healthier space you almost can’t believe you survived it?   That’s how I feel when I re-read the blog posts I wrote during the end of my engagement; I can see how fine that last thread I was hanging from was, and how close I came to it snapping every single day.   I can still remember, on a visceral level, just how painful simply existing was, and I’m genuinely shocked I didn’t self-harm or try to end myself. These days, as I creep up on a date which, in a parallel universe, is my eighth anniversary with the best man I’ve ever known, and which is now just another April day on which I don’t even know who I agreed to marry a year ago – these days I’m mostly better.   I’m currently experiencing a pretty tough downswing in mood, brought on by an ill-advised trip to Mexico with one of the more intimately loved-up couples I know, so it’s not all rainbows and moonb...

--> One of the most difficult things about dating in the aftermath of my last relationship is the question of when to oh-so-casually mention THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME and how to paint it in an authentic but not terrifying light.   It’s complicated stuff: bring it up too early on or emphasize the trauma too much and I give the misleading impression that the betrayal still rules my life, but mention it too offhandedly or gloss over the pain I’m still working through and I give the equally inaccurate impression that I’m completely over it – or worse, that I wasn’t completely devastated because I didn’t invest my entire self into the relationship. It also brings up the complex issue of my self-confidence.   Nearly everyone assumes that my self-worth must have been completely shattered by what my ex did to me, but it wasn’t.   Which is kind of odd, given how fragile (at times almost non-existent) it was before.   Yet somehow, although the b...

--> “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...

I was supposed to get married yesterday.   I had the dress, the caterers, the guest list – most importantly I had the man, whom I loved with a certainty I’d long thought impossible. But I didn’t.   Get married, or have the man, as it turned out.   I was cut brutally loose, with little warning, and spent the summer floundering and desperately trying to weave together some semblance of a life for myself from the shreds of who I was before things imploded. The good news: I’m getting there.   I’m in therapy, which is helping me strengthen my emotional core; I’m dating new people, which is a constant reminder that I’m not totally worthless to every male member of the human race; I’m actively looking for a full-time job (and the health insurance that comes along with it); and I’m reconnecting with my amazing, wonderful girlfriends, a gang of whom spent the weekend with me at a vacation cabin in Healdsburg, distracting me from my sorrows w...

--> 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...

It’s been a month.   A whole 31 days since I found out my fiancé had been having an affair and my world fell apart.   I really thought I’d feel better by this point, but I woke up yesterday with the same sharp pain in my chest that I had the night I found out – I spent the morning hours doubled over with the same kind of sobs I cried then, too. In some ways, things are getting easier: I’m no longer in London so I’m somewhat less reminded of our relationship every single second (it doesn’t help that we spent a lot of time in SF, where I’m currently living); I’ve finished all the packing and shipping and logistics of getting out of the flat where we lived together for four of our seven years; I’ve gotten rid of some of the wedding decorations that were haunting my closet.   In other ways, though, the pain is endless: I’ve hurriedly left behind the city and friends who made up the majority of my life for the past five years; my wedding dre...

For seven years, I’ve been in love with the same man.   It started as an insecure, whirlwind infatuation, then grew into serious affection and concern for his future happiness and well-being, and by this time five years ago I had stopped using every bad argument as an excuse to look up flights from London to San Francisco – convinced by his conviction over so many months, I was finally operating under the assumption that we would share our lives, or at least as much of them as we could bear to share before things got too hard.   A couple of years later I dropped the caveat.   I was all in: my future family became our future family, my dream home our dream home, my career plans inextricably linked with his, less flexible career plans. I did the one thing I’d always said I could never see myself doing: I gave myself over completely to another person.   I was proud of how little my pride had come to matter, after years of extending arguments in its favor; I was...

“Well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” my mother says when I tell her I can’t eat and I’m losing weight as a result of my most recent heartbreak, “maybe when all this is over you’ll look in the mirror and –” I have just enough strength left in me to stop her before she completely echoes the voice in the back of my head, the one that’s been telling me that not eating for days, while it might fuck up my metabolism in the long run, might also make me more attractive to potential new men in the short term. But I don’t want to be attractive to new men – never mind the nagging fear that it's impossible.   I just want my man to come back and erase everything he’s done to me in the past nine months.   I want to wake up tomorrow and have this all be a bad dream – the cheating, the lies, the images in my mind of him holding that conniving, revolting, vile girl in our bed, the searing pain in my heart that keeps me awake nights – and I want to roll over and ...

--> Life has been full of lows lately – tears in public, anxiety about moving abroad, work dissatisfaction – but the worst of them have been in my relationship.   I was finally getting used to using the word ‘fiancé’, to talking about wedding plans and thinking about vows, when cracks began to appear.  Big, jagged, terrifying cracks like the ones that earthquakes make in asphalt.   The kinds of cracks that seem bottomless, that you hope won’t stretch or widen, that you hope you won’t fall into – but then you do. The cracks started in April, with a trip home to visit parents whose unbelievably hideous behavior sent the first obvious tremors through our relationship’s crust, but the fissures had been there in the core for months.   Something had been happening to him, and those fractures in his mind spread fast and deep into the bond between us.   April and May were rife with cruelty and tears and torturous indecision, until I felt split apart...

I'm wearing jeans today, for the first time since... I can't even remember. Spring, maybe? You guys know how big of a deal this is for me. I didn't want to do it, but it's 28 degrees in London right now and I can't even begin to describe how sick I am of tights and leggings. So I bit the bullet. The last time I tried on my jeans, I could barely button the 'normal' pair. The fat jeans I bought a little over a year ago, though, felt great. Only one problem: they're way too long! Which I don't remember being a problem when I first bought them... But it must have been, unless I've got the horrible shrinks. Anyway, that day I gave up and went for the leggings/dress combo again. But today, after I got my shit together and got the flat ready for our housekeeper, I only had 10 minutes to throw something on. So I held my breath, closed my eyes, and pulled on the 'normals'. And, amazingly, they fit! Ok, so they're ...

Oh my god I am SO pathetic. I think I might be in worse shape than I was when I was heavy. Four minutes into my first attempt at what is admittedly a tough workout video (but not this tough) my arms felt like they were going to fall off. Another ten minutes and we were into squats. Well, they were. I was “marching it out” because my thighs were having seizures as a result of the few squats I managed. Luckily they recovered for plie time, but still! I have no idea how this happened. Probably the car my parents gave me for my 22nd bday, mixed with moving to the flat land of London. Yeah, I’m thinking that’s the combo. When I’m here I walk all the time, but it’s flat. When I’m home in SF it’s hilly and I try to walk a good bit but it’s nothing compared to when I used to have to take the bus/ walk everywhere. Gah! Anyway, day one is over, and although I dread the pain of tomorrow I’m also looking forward to feeling buff again. Stupid maintenance-requiring muscles. In case I ...

Today I start my 6-month intensive workout regimen. It's called Slim in Six, and it worked for me a few summers ago, in that I lost like 10 pounds and 13% of my body fat. Although, I was still the same pants/dress size I am today, and have been since about a year after the GB, cosmetic procedures notwithstanding. Anyway I'll be working out every day except Sundays (or, in this case, Tuesdays, because I'm supposed to start on a Monday but I figured procrastination=bad), without fail. Seriously. I'll be enlisting my boyfriend to put himself in the direct line of fire by reminding me every day, and kicking me in the butt if necessary. It will be necessary. So next time I write I should at least be smug, if not slender. I've decided that smugness and general strength (and flexibility; since I stopped working out I can't even reach my ankles!!!) will just have to suffice for the time being. If nothing else, working out regularly has always made me feel better ...