The Art of Humiliation

As a preface I'm not "avoiding" my last post, I'm just taking my sweet time getting to a point when I can discuss any/all that was dredged up as a result/precursor to my most recent update. In the meantime, I've got a few thoughts to share.

I've finally begun my "new job" at a home improvement store and because of their dress-code I found myself in need of some new clothing. More to the point, I need new clothes because the only things that fit me are stretchy "athletic-wear" types of clothing, which are strictly prohibited. I can squeeze into a few pairs of pants, but they aren't exactly comfortable and they don't allow for the best movement and I need to be able to move as I'm a cashier. Ordinarily a cashier might be just a "standing" position, but for this job it's definitely not (and I'm glad!) so I need appropriate clothing.

Polo shirts and khakis seemed like the best bet and would suit me for many uses beyond "work clothes" as they are basic enough to be worn in a variety of settings. When I first started my job, my mom and I went to a Meijer (like a smaller-scale Wal-Mart) to pick up some basics that would not break the bank. I had no pretenses, I went to the plus-sized department and got some size 18, size 20, and size 22 pants; I also picked up a few shirts that were XXL, which usually are a bit loose on me or fit "just right," in my opinion.

I walked into the dressing room, feeling rather indifferent, and then I realized I couldn't get ANY of the pants to even begin to go over my lower hips/thighs... when I squeezed into one of the XXL shirts (I'd gotten the same shirt in multiple colors) it literally fit me like a medium and looked horrible. I don't know how I managed to fit into it, though I did have a heck of a time getting out of it. Needless to say, nothing came close to working so I walked out and the girl at the main counter for the dressing rooms said, "I can take anything that you don't want or that doesn't fit" and I handed her EVERYTHING. She looked a bit startled and then said, "Oh, one of those days, huh?" Yeah... Don't get me wrong, even though she didn't strike me as a girl to have to worry about having "those days" very often I knew she didn't mean it in some snotty "Lose the weight, FATTY" way. In any case, it was still incredibly humiliating -- even my mom looked quite a bit crestfallen.

Let's be realistic, though, it's a no-brainer to say I've had plenty of days where I tried on things that didn't quite fit or looked terrible or wouldn't zip/button as they should, but that was one of the WORST experiences I've ever had in a dressing room. Not a single thing came close to fitting and I'd "aimed high" -- I might have expected snugness, but not that. I felt defeated and very, very fat.

The next weekend I spent the last of my money on two items from Target, a denim skirt (that I wear with leggings because I can't wear skirts without my legs rubbing together uncomfortably) and a pair of khaki-colored bottoms that fall somewhere between capris and Bermuda shorts. They fit, but I can't wear the skirt too often as it's a fairly memorable piece of clothing when worn as I have to wear it, and when I'm working 8 days in a row (as I did last week), wearing the same khaki shorts every day is not going to do. They're both size 22 and they go well with my Men's polo shirts that I'd gotten from Meijer (after the humiliating encounter with the Women's department).

I know I'm not the only woman to struggle with these issues and that's why I write this, because I know so many women -- regardless of whether they're an 8 or an 18 -- go into a store never knowing if they're going to leave feeling like a heifer or a hottie. Why do stores, manufacturers, designers, want us all to feel so horrible about ourselves? Why do they want to shame us? It's frustrating enough to actually be overweight and struggle with finding clothes, but it's even more frustrating to know that all these people WANT it to be a struggle, want me to feel shame, want me to dress like a dishrag...

When I was a teenager (probably 14 or 15) I was in a Wal-Mart with my mom, trying on some jeans, and I'd had to upgrade from the Juniors department to the Women's department. I'd tried on a few pairs of pants and one particular pair looked good -- my mom asked me what size they were and I said, completely serious, "18 Wide." She was confused for a second and then started laughing hysterically and I couldn't figure out why. She then explained that "18 W" meant Women's size 18, not 18 in Wide. Oops, classic mistake, but in my defense I figured it was like shoe sizes -- a 10 W is a 10 Wide! Besides, isn't that how the stores want us to feel? We're not women, we're wide.

I also remember the first time I went into Lane Bryant, it wasn't much after that 16 Wide moment and I remembering thinking it was QUITE a bit more expensive. We went in their because I needed something to wear to my grandpa's funeral and my mom had suggested it because she thought we might have better luck, which we needed as we were running low on time. We went in and the sales people were so nice -- they didn't make me feel inadequate or as though I shouldn't be shopping there -- though they did inform me that I was NOT a size 16 or size 18. At Lane Bryant... I was a size 14!!! Or, as they said, "the smallest size we carry!" It's as if they knew how defeated I felt, how as a teenage girl I struggled with feeling like the fat cow in a sea of lithe cheerleaders, and they did their best to make me feel okay about myself. For the first time in my life I felt the way a girl should feel when she walks into a store: good. beautiful. worthy.

Now, a size "22 Wide" at one store, I haven't felt that way in a long time and I know it's no sales associates fault, it's my own.

- - - - -

 "In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired."

[Author Unknown]

Feeding salt (and ice cream) into the open wounds.

This past week was the epitome of emotional awfulness. I hit rock-bottom, slammed upward from the momentum, only to come crashing back down onto the jagged rocks time and time again.

I had intended to sift through the muckity-muck, to clear out the skeletons in my closet, so that I could better understand the whys and hows of my life as it currently exists. I wanted to dive a bit deeper into issues that were arising as I wrote out my variety of emotions and questions, particularly those expressed here; I thought the experience would be, at most, a cathartic, soulful cleansing of sorts.

Instead of the joyful release that I expected to feel upon unleashing a decades worth of demons, I felt every heartbreak, every gut-stabbing moment of pain, every ounce of regret and guilt. Every moment of wrong was relived as I navigated myself through the maze of all the unhealthy relationships that I have witnessed and all the unhealthy relationships I've been a part of in my life.

One moment I'd be fine, the next I was sitting on the shower floor, water pouring down me, as I was choking out sobs and trying to wrap my mind around something I've been avoiding for so long. I'd be fine again, thinking I'm getting it all under control, then I'm in my car headed back to my apartment and a super-personal song comes on the radio that has me bawling and trying to wipe tears off my face as quickly as possible so I can see the road...

I was absolutely desperate to talk to someone about all the guilt, shame, bitterness, confusion, disgust, and just get RID of all the stuff that was being held like a fist full of bile in the back of my throat. I needed to get it out, to clean out my system, but there was no one. The things I needed to let out were so personal that I'd already reduced my potential "supporters" to people I really felt I could trust with such information. The person I most adamantly wanted to talk with was no where around and I don't have his phone number so I had no way of getting in contact with him... His sister was my next effort and she didn't respond to my text message.

My last potential vein of support was to talk with my best friend who I've not been able to talk with about anything personal in quite sometime because she's been so seemingly uninvolved and uninterested in anything that's not her husband or her child. It seemed kismet when she ended up calling me before I could call her, but then all she could talk about was how Steven Tyler was "such a sell-out" because he made a pop album and how he was her "idol" and now she has "no respect" for him because he's "not a 'rocker'" anymore and that a "part of [her] died" because of his being a sellout. She talked for 20 minutes about how this was such a huge disappointment, such a sad day, blah blah blah. Toward the end she picked up on my total lack of interest in the whole (completely stupid) conversation and mistook it for me being "tired."

Lost and alone, I thought I could get myself out of the demon-plagued mind-trap by writing it out here and, hopefully, get some sort of support that I'd been denied for too long last week. Well, wouldn't you know it, when I got online Blogger was down for maintenance and was in read-only mode or some such thing.

I had exhausted every possibility and had been left, as usually, entirely empty-handed. That's why I've always chosen food. That's why I "chose" food again. In the 48 hours my mom was back home in NW Ohio, I ate 6 "party pizzas," 5 large cinnamon rolls, two containers of Edy's ice cream (not the "double-churned" supposedly-healthier variety, either), finished off a container of Nutella, and ate a bunch of almonds for good measure.  I drowned myself in food and soda; in both the sweet and sugary and the salty and savory calories. I kept eating because at least when I was eating I could trick myself into thinking about the food and not the loneliness and the emptiness and the shame of it all. I had no one when I needed someone the most, NO ONE, but I had food.

Now, a few days later, the demons are lingering in a big way, the already stretchy-as-stretchy-can-be clothing are getting tighter, and I still haven't been able to talk to anyone so I just... keep eating. It doesn't seem like it should be this hard; I don't WANT it to be like this, but I'm so tired of facing nothing beyond loneliness and emptiness. Where do I turn when the only thing that's ever constant is food? I'm so mind-numbingly scared of what the future holds if this is the "prime of my life" and I'm this miserable and perpetually locked down by food because there's nobody around to throw me a helping hand to help me help myself pull away from it all.

What do I do? WHAT? I need help, I admit it, I'm ready for the next step, but I need help because I don't know what the next step is and I don't know how to face it alone -- I'm not even sure I can. I just need help.

- - - - -

"One of these days I'm going to love me and feel the joy of sweet release; one of these days I'll rise above me and at last I'll find some peace. Then I'm going to smile a little, and maybe even laugh a little, but one of these days I'm going to love me."

[Tim McGraw; "One of These Days"]

I don't want the world to see me, 'cause I don't think that they'd understand.

Often times double-standards are equated with issues between the sexes, but I think an ever-growing double-standard in American society (perhaps elsewhere, though I cannot speak on behalf of "elsewhere") is that being being extremely overweight is much more offensive than being extremely underweight. It's not really limited to the actual weight, though, it's more the disorders that generally lead to such results. 

Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa, for example, are not only much more recognized in our country as significant health problems, but there is a much greater understanding that they can be helped through the combination/integration of therapy, nutrition education, and sometimes even medication. They are not simply physical problems, they are psychological problems as well. Binge-eating disorder, or any of a variety of complications or scenarios that lead to weight gain, are scoffed at by so many people because there seems to be some underlying belief that overweight people have no self-respect, no control, and no real reason for being overweight. Is that to say that underweight people do have self-respect, control, and a real reason to be dangerously skinny? I think not.

In terms of "getting help," most overweight people are simply told to go to the gym and workout, but as I've said in previous posts, that's like looking at a person afflicted with Anorexia Nervosa and suggesting s/he "go eat something." Or, in yet another phrasing, it's akin to putting a Band-Aid over a bullet wound: if only the treatment really were so superficial and simple.

When people are recognized, or perceived as having an eating disorder that has caused them to lose a significant amount of weight, it seems more people are inclined to want to help in a positive, constructive way. When a person with Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa is partaking in destructive behavior (such as purging, refusing to eat, etc.) others jump in to help them, but when an overweight binge-eater is shoving pizzas and ice cream down her throat rude comments are made -- if anything at all. Binge-eating might just seem to be something that overweight people do, but that's not true. Not all overweight people binge-eat.

The fact is that people are overweight for a variety of reasons: lack of exercise, poor diet, health conditions, etc. Or even a combination of several factors, but not necessarily because they binge-eat and/or don't exercise; additionally, plenty of people are still clinically overweight, but they exercise a great deal. I say this to illustrate the diversity within a subculture that is more often than not boiled down to one unflattering stereotype, a stereotype that makes it incredibly challenging for people to seek out help from others or for others to feel comfortable with helping. 

Despite the growing epidemic that is obesity, people do not feel as inclined to help on a personal level. Instead, obesity and binge-eating are treated as physical results attributed to poor diet and laziness with little concern shown for the person beneath the layers of excess weight.

This is one reason I am simultaneously angry and defeated -- I want to be healthy, not necessarily "skinny,"  but how can I get there when instead of being seen as a person struggling on the inside, I'm categorized as a lazy heifer. That's incredibly unfair and hurtful; I wish someone could understand that, for me, I really don't believe the biggest issue is learning to eat healthy or making time to exercise. 

My biggest issue is how to get past all the voices in my head that tell me I don't deserve to treat my body like a temple, that I will never be beautiful enough regardless of my weight, that I am not worth all that time and effort required to be healthy. For that reason, I've got to get control of my mind before I can get control of my body, but I'm too ashamed to ask for help in that arena because a) fat girl with low self-esteem is so cliché these days and b) who can really understand the whys and hows of needing to work from the inside out? The general theory is that if I look good, I'll feel good, but that sounds more like a direct path to failure for me.

I guess I don't understand how people can look at Girl A and Girl B (pictured below), yet only be willing to take the extra time to talk to Girl A to help her appreciate herself and see how beautiful/worthwhile she is and always will be whereas Girl B just needs to go to the gym and she might be attractive or at least be skinnier. I think it's hard for people to imagine just how much shame both girls would have to overcome before getting on to a truly healthier way of living, but shame is hard to overcome alone. Trust me, I know.

Girl A:

Girl B:

After all this, my biggest question is this: why can't we all give and get a bit more compassion? I believe there are enough helping hands to help us all, it just may require that some people open their minds a bit more -- their hearts, too.

- - - - -

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, 'I'll try again tomorrow.'"
[Mary Anne Radmacher]

When it's time to find something that fits, somedays are better than others.

A few weeks ago I was sitting by myself in the one bedroom apartment I share with my mother and I mentally cataloged all the foodstuffs I had ingested in my time alone. My roommate (re: mother) was in NW Ohio for the better part of the week and it occurred to me that my eating habits had spiral-rocketed out of control.

As I thought back on all that I had eaten, I became more and more upset--not only about what I was eating, but also because I began thinking of the reasons I had eaten in the first place. This is one of my primary problems: I don't just eat when I'm hungry, I eat to fill voids, ease frustrations, and soothe hurts. When I sit down and think about all the food I've stuffed into myself, I can't avoid the reasons I found to do said "stuffing," and of course that leads me down that same path again--only now with the added angst of realizing that I'm shoving calories down my throat faster than a hurricane uproots a palm tree.

The night I hit my breaking point was my last night "alone" for that week. I'd went to the store with ten dollars (ten dollars that I very much did not have to spare) and I bought all the high-calorie goodness I could manage. I left the store with two Totino's Party Pizzas, one (40-count) bag of generic pizza rolls, and a quart of Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream. I'd purchased all these items and returned home by 9:30 P.M. and I ate the two party pizzas and half the ice cream that night, by 2:30 in the morning. The next day I woke up, ate the pizza rolls, and finished off the ice cream. In less than 24 hours I'd eaten that much food and I wasn't so much "ashamed" as I was conscious of the fact that I should have felt ashamed.

Actually, I did feel a bit of shame when I ate the second pizza when I was already full from the first and then went on to eat the half quart of ice cream. What really set me off in the "shame" department is the fact that the pizza rolls were absolutely disgusting; they had a terrible flavor and the texture was mealy, and even though I had told myself at several points that they were the worst things I'd ever put in my mouth, I ate every. single. one.

Though that night was a low point (or a turning point?) it was not an isolated incident by any stretch of the imagination. In the past few months I've had so many moments of inhaling a high volume of food in a short amount of time. The bright side is that the "low point" prompted me to do a little search on disordered eating, and what I found seems to fit. According to the information provided by the Mayo Clinic, I've got a very clear-cut case of a Binge-Eating Disorder. I say "clear-cut" because it all fits. The depression, the anxiety, the eating alone, the secrecy of what/why/how I eat, and all the thoughts and worries I have "post-binge."

I'm here though, to sort through all that because it's not enough just to say "This is my problem." I still need to figure out the whys and hows of it so that I can fix the way I think about food; I want to understand this so that I can, someday in the future, be truly better. I just have to take it one step at a time and I'll get where I'm going, eventually.

- - - - -

[Katy Perry: "Firework"]