My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

“It was weird, though,” I say, turning to look briefly at my boyfriend’s face and check my blind spot before turning off the main road into our little potholed neighborhood. “I’m standing there, surrounded by all these beautiful dresses, and half of me is like ‘ooh, yeah, I am so coming here when we get engaged,’ and super excited about the selection, and the other half…the other half is basically like ‘are you really going to do this again? Are you really going to try on dresses and put down deposits and announce to the world that you're happy and in love – and trust that the world isn't going to laugh in your face and bitch-slap you in return?’” I pause for a breath as I turn onto our block, dodging the ancient, rickety trailer that haunts the curb at the corner. He’s quiet, so I try to smooth over the rough stuff I’ve just let fly: “Don’t worry; I’m working on all this. I’ll figure it out.” I’m not at all sure I’ll figure it out, but I’m desperate ...

“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 minute I clicked ‘Enter’ I knew I’d done something incredibly stupid.   How could I have been taken in by an Instagram ad, for anything , let alone diet pills ?   I felt disgusted with myself, even as the disgust mingled with an unmistakable tinge of excitement and curiosity – surely after more than twenty-five years of experience with diet culture bullshit, and at least a decade of continuous counter-culture reprogramming, I must know better?   But, well...knowing better didn’t stop me.   I figured five bucks was a cheap price for a very unlikely potential payoff. I went to lie down on our hotel bed with my boyfriend, who was zoned out in front of his own phone, half-listening to an episode of The Simpsons and trying to digest all the rich food we’d been eating on our trip to New Orleans.   I didn’t want to admit what I’d done; I knew he would be disappointed in me, and frustrated with my continued negative body image.   We’ve discussed it a hundr...

When I told my brother I was counting calories, a vulnerable admission of defeat, he reacted just as I should have expected: he rolled his eyes, sighed as if he was exhausted by my weight struggles, and told me “don’t be mom!   Just be balanced.”   As if it were that easy.   I made the mistake, at first, of trying to explain that after years of balance and reasonably steady weight, I was no longer stable and I felt the need to do something drastic to try to reign in my body; I gave up pretty quickly, after multiple interruptions and dismissals. It’s not that my brother is insensitive – he’s actually more sensitive than most dudes and most of my family, not that that’s saying much – but he doesn’t have a lot of patience for any kind of struggle to which he doesn’t relate.   Worse are the struggles he thinks he relates to, like weight.   A few years ago he felt he was getting ‘tubby’ and so he cut out junk food and cut back on carbs and started doi...

"Every time I think I'm done crying on airplanes, the world prices me wrong again," I whisper at my boyfriend through hot tears. But really I don't blame the world – I blame myself. I knew the minute I squeezed into the exit-row seat that I'd been mistaken to think I'd be more comfortable there. I'd moved us partly so we would have more space and partly to grant a reprieve to the very tall man folded into the window seat beside us; I had originally hoped the man would move of his own volition, thus improving all our experiences at once, but he had been asleep by the time the seatbelt sign went off and waking him to suggest he move seemed rude. So when I spotted two empty exit-row seats, paired off separately from the rest of the three-person rows, I leapt up to snag them. As my boyfriend settled in beside me, though, thrilled with the legroom, I grew increasingly agitated. The armrest was digging into my fleshy hip in a painful way that was far too reminis...

Between cheap dinners out with the new boo , a very stressful and time-consuming new job (and the thousands of Goldfish consumed weekly to keep me on my feet), and all the yoga-defying illnesses my little petri dishes have passed me on their homework assignments in the past nine months, I’ve noticed that my clothes have been getting tighter.   Like, a lot tighter.   As in, I find myself wincing as I take off particularly unforgiving dresses at the end of the day – dresses which, nine months ago, fit just fine, or were even a bit baggy at the waist.   And now I’m faced with a dilemma I haven’t faced in years: how to lose bulk, if not necessarily weight.   If you’ve been reading this blog (or known me personally) for the few years, you know that I am majorly anti-dieting.   And if you’ve known me for the past decade, you might recall that the last time I succumbed to societal pressure and tried to lose weight, through a strict-but-real...

It’s been over a year since I’ve written here, and a lot has happened.   I’ve moved to Oakland to live alone, spent the past nine months teaching middle school (which, in this internet age, has made me much more squirrelly about my online presence and what I say here), and continued to work on a book that feels ever more like chopped-up pieces of squirming earthworm in my hands – perhaps they can be fitted back together but every time I try to start I just want to throw up.    Perhaps most relevant is this: last time I wrote, I mentioned a new boyfriend.   Well, he’s still around, and not so new anymore.   We celebrated a year this January and we’re planning to move in together at the end of the summer, which is simultaneously surreal and wonderful and terrifying.   The last time I lived with someone I wound up staying with him for seven years, planning the next thirty, getting engaged, and then having my heart rot from the inside out over the cour...