There's always something you hang on to after a relationship ends. Baggage is such a nasty word in that context, I think, because the things you hang on to aren't inherently bad.
With Chris, I hung on to a hatred of super cheap party dip, fast food, X-box, and weed, and I think my life is better for it. Also lavender baby oil and fingers in my butthole. And the term A+.
I'm carrying a lot.
With Allen, I made off with a reasonably light load. I came away from that relationship with a hatred of chicken and vegetable lasagna with white sauce, and Stacie Hertel. Poor Stacie ended up being one of those girls I was friendly with at arm's length for a little while, and she was so sweet, and the poor little lamb had no fucking idea I hated her so vehemently. She didn't deserve my ire, she was so fucking nice to me, and I was so dreadfully cold to her. I saw some very flirtatious messages from Allen to her (I only remember a new haircut and something about a bikini), and I misplaced my anger and contempt. We ran into her once at Best Buy, and she greeted Allen with the longest hug, and then she turned her attention to me and said it was so wonderful to finally meet me, and I responded with a very frosty and cunty, "You, too, I guess".
With Dan, I really, really, REALLY lucked out. I don't know if it's luck, or if I've just grown as a person and learned to let things go, especially ridiculous things that have no bearing on my life. I recognize what I COULD have come away from that relationship carrying...fear of abandonment (I have that, anyway. Hooray, BPD!), fear of opening up in a relationship, fear of relationships in general, fear of an imbalance in power dynamics in a relationship (with those power dynamics weighted between money and emotional acuity, never to balance out), and a fear of weak jawlines, but I didn't come away with any of those. You know what I came away from that relationship with?
A hatred of Anne Hathaway.
And I cannot cannot CANNOT stop hating her. It's just a thing. I'll never get over it, and I don't know what that says about me as a person, or if it's meant to imply something about my inability to get over Dan (which I have, but admittedly, it took a VERY long time), but whatever it is, I virulently fucking hate her. I. hate. her.
I was so fucking jazzed about the Ocean's 8 movie until I saw that her bitch ass was in it, and then I was overcome by such a rage that I couldn't function for a solid minute.
Of course, I will still go see Ocean's 8. In the theater, on opening day. Mainly because I love heist movies and grifting, but also because I, for one, am totally here for the femaling of male lead movies. You want to remake Snatch but with all women? You should, Guy Ritchie, because it would be hilariously on the nose in several ways.
I'm already planning on bringing a popsicle stick with a cutout of my face on it to put over Anne Hathaway's dumb face whenever she is on screen, because fuck her, that's why.
I realize that it's 1) childish and B) so disgustingly anti-feminist for me to drag a woman and hate her just for existing and looking the way she does, but that is the thing I fucking carry from my relationship with Dan...a fervent desire for Anne Hathaway to fade off into obscurity yesterday, so I can just forget she exists in the same way that masculinity as it applies to jawlines forgot Dan.
I may also be carrying a latent desire to make fun of Dan publicly because I had to hide it for so long, though Allen and I did tear into Dan a LOT while Dan and I were together. I took part in that with Allen because Dan was crushing my feelings and I was so bent on him loving me back that I stayed because I didn't know what else to fucking do about how I felt (telling him he was a jagweed crossed my mind on the reg, but I never had the balls to do it), and then when I was still getting over Dan, making fun of him was how I hid how much my heart hurt that we weren't together anymore, and I thought if I could verbalize enough bad shit about him, maybe I'd start to believe it. And now I make fun of him because it's funny, and I've fully grasped what a fucking shitwad of a dumpster fire our farce of a relationship was, and how lucky I am that I came through that fire like Daenerys Targaryen, the kind of bitch that doesn't take shit from mother fuckin' ANYBODY, always says what she feels and what she means, and will not fucking tolerate you stomping through my kingdom like you fucking own the place, men.
And fucking HATES Anne Hathaway. Little known GoT factoid, you're welcome.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Thursday, December 14, 2017
The worst Bodhisattva in the eight fold path
I want to reflect a little bit about some body issues, and I'm going to be candid, and that's uncomfortable for a lot of people. It's hard to really relate in any way other than shoving assurance down someone's throat when they say things like, "I hate my body so fucking much", but that's generally what that's met with: a cascade of "don't be insane, you're gorgeous!" and "why do you hate your body?? You aren't fat, this attitude isn't healthy!"
Well.
I hate my body because I hate it.
I took this picture of me today:
To me, this body is huge. I absolutely hate my figure right now, because this is the biggest I've been in my entire life. My car accident really fucked my world up. I ate like I was still running 3-5 miles every day, because my body was still hungry like that for a couple weeks afterward, and then I spiraled down into the habit of letting my now husband, then boyfriend, cook deliciously caloric meals for me. Like curry, and beef with broccoli, and taking me out to eat all the fucking time, and really doting on me. Which my crazy frosty bitchy ass secretly LOVED, because it felt like genuine doting rather than pity or obligation, and the weight gain happened so slowly that I didn't even notice. Until one day, I was taking a selfie to send to Derek and I was like, excuse me there, ma'ams, but have you always been here? I was, of course, talking to my extensive collection of chins. They responded they had not, and I was dumbfounded. I didn't realize how big I had become until I was scrutinizing my self to send a naked picture to Derek. Which, I mean....I didn't end up sending. For obvious reasons. My chins talked me out of it, with my new tummy rolls echoing the sentiment. When we got engaged in 2014, I was around 210 pounds, a number I do not like telling anybody because I am very heavily caught up in what society tells me about weight. I hate our engagement photos with a fucking passion, because I'm massive in them. I was a very fit, very slender little runner when I met Derek, and to see my engagement photos come back with this...just...I don't even know how to describe myself...but the end of the story is that I was distraught over how I looked. I was supposed to be happy and in love in these photos, and my makeup had been fucked up, my hair had been fucked up (I paid a girl to do them and she was not what she promised, skill-wise), and I was FAT.
I hired a personal trainer, and busted my fucking ass in the year leading up to my wedding. I had my training twice a week, for an hour and a half each session, and then the other three days a week I hit up the gym on my own, for an hour or two, depending. I got REALLY strict with my diet, I counted calories, I got more sleep, I did everything right. I got down to 192 for my wedding.
That's about where I've been for the last two years, and I am FRUSTRATED. I'm frustrated about several things.
1. I'm frustrated because I do everything right. I'm as close to vegan as I can be without jeopardizing my health (even with multivitamins, I had lines in my nails, fatigue, all around bad health, and after introducing eggs, cheese, and the occasional piece of fish into my diet, my health has improved ENORMOUSLY. But my diet is more vegan than it is pescatarian). I workout every fucking morning, taking a three mile jog with my dog. I come home and do body strengthening workouts for 30 minutes every day. I eat well. No fast food, only the occasional sweet treat. I don't drink soda, I don't drink juice, I have a cup of decaf coffee in the morning with almond milk creamer, no sugar, and then water the rest of the day. I cannot make my body look like anything but those two photos, and I don't fucking know why.
2. For some reason, I am not allowed to hate my body. Nothing makes my husband more upset than me going on a tear about my wide hips and my flat tits and my fat arms and my thick thighs. He gets irate, he yells at me, we get into arguments about this fairly regularly. My friends, too. I know they just want to make me feel better, nut it's maddening when someone tells you to seek therapy as you gripe about your body, like you have a mental illness. I do not have a mental illness, I do not have body dysmorphia. I am a 192-200 pound woman, somewhere around there, that used to be exceptionally fucking fit at 170 and is rightfully upset to find herself in a bigger body than she's used to that is exceptionally slow to change. I hate people saying, "you're a babe!" or "I think you're super sexy" to me like that matters. The fact is, my body feels like a stranger to me, especially now. Because I feel HEALTHY. It's so defeating to see 194 on the scale when I feel like I should have a 180 weight. I feel fantastic. I'm not sluggish, I don't get tired through the day, I'm not winded easily, I feel strong (except for my bad arm) and like my body is at almost optimum performance power. I know I could be a lot stronger, and be doing more, and I already have a plan to do so when I finish my last class of the semester tomorrow, but where I'm at INTERNALLY feels wonderful. And then, when I see how much I weigh, it makes me cry, because it doesn't feel right. My body feels like it's in shape; my body LOOKS like a hot fuckin' mess. And I don't mean hot as in dudes want to cum all over my tits immediately. It sucks to feel like your insides and your outsides are not in harmony. And I am trying to fix it, but if there's progress, it's so slow that I'm more familiar with feeling dejected rather than proud or motivated.
3. My husband has this aggravating habit of following curvy models and curvy model collection pages on instagram. Now, I'm not one to freak out about fantasy when it's not close to being real. Porn doesn't bug me, having massive boners for celebrities, Hollywood, Internet, or otherwise, doesn't bother me. It's all fantasy, it's all healthy, it's totally cool. If it swings into reality, that's when I have a problem, but that's not the issue. My husband likes to show me pictures of these women and talk about how sexy and confident they are, which, you know, good for them! I'm so happy that women are happy and confident.....as a size 8. My husband follows CURVY women, not full figured (or plus sized, which is a fucked up term) women, and the two are not the fucking same. These women are fit, they are toned, they are just a little bit thick in areas like their thighs. They're all young and perky, they're exactly what people say "real" women should look like (I have beef about that bullshit, too, but again, not the point here). And I'm not sure how he thinks comparing me to women who have 24 inch waists with 36 inch hips and 32 inch chests is going to make me feel good about myself, but it doesn't. It makes me feel worse. Which brings me to my next frustration.
4. WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK IS UP WITH THE BODY POSITIVE MOVEMENT??? Look, a few things. The body positive movement SHOULD encompass all bodies. No one body is better than another, and it's important that people understand that society is made up of all flavors, and not wanting one kind of person's body type does not mean that body type is inherently bad. So women can be short and overweight, and it is perfectly ok for them to feel sexy, and for others to think they're sexy, just like a woman can be tall and lean, and she has every right to feel sexy in her skin, too. I understand this in my head, but in real life, I get very, very, VERY angry seeing thin, athletic women plastered all over the bopo instagram hashtag, and the love your body hashtag, and the hashtags that are meant to help women (and men, who do not get equal press in this movement, but definitely should) who are not exactly fitting in society's mold of hot and sexy find a following that helps them love themselves more without seeing their bodies as flawed. On top of THAT, I hate seeing predominantly white women all over these hashtags. White, able bodied women. It needs more diversity, because people in wheelchairs, people with dystrophy, people of color, people missing limbs....they don't get press, and they need and deserve representation. And it needs more diversity in looks, because for the great majority of love these hashtags gets, the women are pretty. They are still very attractive women. Like the women on my husband's curvy model pages. And look, most of us are not that white, not that pretty, not that fit, and not that curvy, and not that able. These movements are becoming exactly what they sought to topple down: impossible archetypes that make normal people feel bad. I am fucking sick of that shit, which leads me into my final complaint.
5. Seeing someone who is 200 pounds does not mean that person is unhealthy. I am pretty sure I'm healthier than the bulk of my skinny friends, though if you judged us by our bodies, the assumption is that they're skinnier, which means they're healthier. Nevermind that they eat like assholes and don't workout, and I eat well and exercise at least five times a week. We tend to place a lot of weight, pardon the pun, on how people look. Which is 100% ok, because, barring a lack of vision, we are visual creatures. Our first impressions are visual. And that's part of why I get so fucking hammed up about how I look, because I do not like it. And if I don't like it, that. fucking. MATTERS. But it doesn't mean that I hate myself. that's the important distinction, and I guess it's my primary point here.
I do not hate myself. not in the least. As a general term, I don't hate my body, either. My body is strong as fuck, it's able, I can do so much with it, it takes care of me, and I am grateful for what my body can do, and has done. I've given birth to two children, I've won races, I've built a home, I've volunteered in hurricane clean up efforts, I've done things in my communities. I don't have the balls to hate my body, because I know other people don't have the benefit of using theirs to the full capacity that I do. My body is, as a body, INCREDIBLE. Why is it so fucking difficult to reconcile the idea that I can hate my weight, hate my hips, hate my tits, hate my arms, hate my thighs, BUT be working on changing them in the same space that I'm grateful for them in?
It seems very difficult for people to understand, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because our instinct is to assure people of how little those things stack up against, say, your intelligence, or your wit, or your capacity to care for others. Or that those things we see as flaws are gorgeous and wonderful to other people, and shouldn't that count?
The short answer is? No.
No, how you feel about my hips doesn't count against how I feel. And you loving my body doesn't matter when I hate how it looks.
If you are complaining to someone about your body, and they respond with you're gorgeous, why can't you see it, they see it, maybe you should see a therapist if you can't understand your own beauty, you tell them to go fuck themselves and to stop gaslighting you, because that's what that is. Someone trying to convince you that your feelings are invalid and crazy instead of being there for you if you need time to vent.
Now, to be sure, there are people who genuinely DO have body dysmorphia. Who have eating disorders, or disordered eating. Who do not take care of themselves and enact self harm because of the way they view their body. And if you are concerned that a loved one is heading down that path, I'd suggest viewing this checklist against what you're noticing, and having a frank discussion about your concerns FIRST. If they laugh it off, and say it's just something they're going through that you should just listen to them about, trust them. It's 100% OK to keep a watchful eye on your friends afterwards, though, and even to be concerned that they're about to head down a dark, unhealthy road. But I can tell you there is a difference between a frank and open conversation about the possibility of maybe having an eating disorder and wanting to check in, and saying, "why don't you go see a therapist, you're unhealthy."
It is unrealistic to think that we are going to love ourselves after we've gained a lot of weight, or even if we've always been a heavier weight, because the shit society drums into our heads is dangerously effective. I feel inadequate as a woman for not looking like a fucking stellar model in lingerie. Cute, trendy clothes look like shit on me because I have a short torso and a high waist, and broad shoulders. Designers do not cater to women built like me, and I get this, and I am frustrated by it, and at the same time, it hurts to know that I am not as "real" to clothing designers as my thin, or even non-thin with reasonable proportions counterparts. I need a size XL for my chest, an M for my waist, an XXL for my hips, an L to an XL for my thighs, and an L for my calves. AND on top of that, I wear a size 11 shoe. I have a strange body, and admitting that marketing gets to me and I feel like an ugly, Quasimodo-esque failure when I see what I "should" be wearing sucks, but it's also accurate. My husband likes to say I'm crazy. My friends like to ask me if I've considered therapy. My mom tells me to get everything tailor-made because she thinks I have her kind of money?
My conflicts with my body are rational and valid. I've spent my life as a fit, muscular woman, and adjusting to a heavy body that is stubborn about losing weight, and isn't as youthful, full, and perky as it used to be, is really fucking hard. Really. Fucking. Hard. I have times where I don't want to have sex because I understand how my stomach looks, and the women my husband ogles do not look a thing like me, and do not have my body proportions, or my extra skin around my stomach. The women my husband ogles are either curvy and perfect, or thin and perfect. Always young, always pretty, never anything like me. And while yeah, fantasy is not something I am going to cause an argument over, it's ok for me to admit that seeing what his go to preference is when I'm not around really does make it feel an awful lot like he's settled when I am.
A lot of variables go in to having things about your body that you hate, and while I think the body positivity movement is a great idea (in theory), it also enforces this idea that you have to love yourself, and that's just unrealistic. You don't fucking have to love yourself. I don't HAVE to love my wide hips, I don't HAVE to think it's great that my stomach birthed two babies, a 7 pound baby girl, and a ten pound baby boy, and that the skin of my stomach never bounced back after the birth of my son, and it looks like a wet pile of raincoats when left to its own devices. I can recognize that my body is fucking AWESOME, but I don't like it's packaging, and that doesn't mean I need to see a doctor.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, body negativity isn't as bad as it's cracked up to be, and maybe, just MAYBE, what women like me, and men who think like I do, need is for other people to be a bit more present and a lot less talky when we air our grievances.
Well.
I hate my body because I hate it.
I took this picture of me today:
To me, this body is huge. I absolutely hate my figure right now, because this is the biggest I've been in my entire life. My car accident really fucked my world up. I ate like I was still running 3-5 miles every day, because my body was still hungry like that for a couple weeks afterward, and then I spiraled down into the habit of letting my now husband, then boyfriend, cook deliciously caloric meals for me. Like curry, and beef with broccoli, and taking me out to eat all the fucking time, and really doting on me. Which my crazy frosty bitchy ass secretly LOVED, because it felt like genuine doting rather than pity or obligation, and the weight gain happened so slowly that I didn't even notice. Until one day, I was taking a selfie to send to Derek and I was like, excuse me there, ma'ams, but have you always been here? I was, of course, talking to my extensive collection of chins. They responded they had not, and I was dumbfounded. I didn't realize how big I had become until I was scrutinizing my self to send a naked picture to Derek. Which, I mean....I didn't end up sending. For obvious reasons. My chins talked me out of it, with my new tummy rolls echoing the sentiment. When we got engaged in 2014, I was around 210 pounds, a number I do not like telling anybody because I am very heavily caught up in what society tells me about weight. I hate our engagement photos with a fucking passion, because I'm massive in them. I was a very fit, very slender little runner when I met Derek, and to see my engagement photos come back with this...just...I don't even know how to describe myself...but the end of the story is that I was distraught over how I looked. I was supposed to be happy and in love in these photos, and my makeup had been fucked up, my hair had been fucked up (I paid a girl to do them and she was not what she promised, skill-wise), and I was FAT.
I hired a personal trainer, and busted my fucking ass in the year leading up to my wedding. I had my training twice a week, for an hour and a half each session, and then the other three days a week I hit up the gym on my own, for an hour or two, depending. I got REALLY strict with my diet, I counted calories, I got more sleep, I did everything right. I got down to 192 for my wedding.
That's about where I've been for the last two years, and I am FRUSTRATED. I'm frustrated about several things.
1. I'm frustrated because I do everything right. I'm as close to vegan as I can be without jeopardizing my health (even with multivitamins, I had lines in my nails, fatigue, all around bad health, and after introducing eggs, cheese, and the occasional piece of fish into my diet, my health has improved ENORMOUSLY. But my diet is more vegan than it is pescatarian). I workout every fucking morning, taking a three mile jog with my dog. I come home and do body strengthening workouts for 30 minutes every day. I eat well. No fast food, only the occasional sweet treat. I don't drink soda, I don't drink juice, I have a cup of decaf coffee in the morning with almond milk creamer, no sugar, and then water the rest of the day. I cannot make my body look like anything but those two photos, and I don't fucking know why.
2. For some reason, I am not allowed to hate my body. Nothing makes my husband more upset than me going on a tear about my wide hips and my flat tits and my fat arms and my thick thighs. He gets irate, he yells at me, we get into arguments about this fairly regularly. My friends, too. I know they just want to make me feel better, nut it's maddening when someone tells you to seek therapy as you gripe about your body, like you have a mental illness. I do not have a mental illness, I do not have body dysmorphia. I am a 192-200 pound woman, somewhere around there, that used to be exceptionally fucking fit at 170 and is rightfully upset to find herself in a bigger body than she's used to that is exceptionally slow to change. I hate people saying, "you're a babe!" or "I think you're super sexy" to me like that matters. The fact is, my body feels like a stranger to me, especially now. Because I feel HEALTHY. It's so defeating to see 194 on the scale when I feel like I should have a 180 weight. I feel fantastic. I'm not sluggish, I don't get tired through the day, I'm not winded easily, I feel strong (except for my bad arm) and like my body is at almost optimum performance power. I know I could be a lot stronger, and be doing more, and I already have a plan to do so when I finish my last class of the semester tomorrow, but where I'm at INTERNALLY feels wonderful. And then, when I see how much I weigh, it makes me cry, because it doesn't feel right. My body feels like it's in shape; my body LOOKS like a hot fuckin' mess. And I don't mean hot as in dudes want to cum all over my tits immediately. It sucks to feel like your insides and your outsides are not in harmony. And I am trying to fix it, but if there's progress, it's so slow that I'm more familiar with feeling dejected rather than proud or motivated.
3. My husband has this aggravating habit of following curvy models and curvy model collection pages on instagram. Now, I'm not one to freak out about fantasy when it's not close to being real. Porn doesn't bug me, having massive boners for celebrities, Hollywood, Internet, or otherwise, doesn't bother me. It's all fantasy, it's all healthy, it's totally cool. If it swings into reality, that's when I have a problem, but that's not the issue. My husband likes to show me pictures of these women and talk about how sexy and confident they are, which, you know, good for them! I'm so happy that women are happy and confident.....as a size 8. My husband follows CURVY women, not full figured (or plus sized, which is a fucked up term) women, and the two are not the fucking same. These women are fit, they are toned, they are just a little bit thick in areas like their thighs. They're all young and perky, they're exactly what people say "real" women should look like (I have beef about that bullshit, too, but again, not the point here). And I'm not sure how he thinks comparing me to women who have 24 inch waists with 36 inch hips and 32 inch chests is going to make me feel good about myself, but it doesn't. It makes me feel worse. Which brings me to my next frustration.
4. WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK IS UP WITH THE BODY POSITIVE MOVEMENT??? Look, a few things. The body positive movement SHOULD encompass all bodies. No one body is better than another, and it's important that people understand that society is made up of all flavors, and not wanting one kind of person's body type does not mean that body type is inherently bad. So women can be short and overweight, and it is perfectly ok for them to feel sexy, and for others to think they're sexy, just like a woman can be tall and lean, and she has every right to feel sexy in her skin, too. I understand this in my head, but in real life, I get very, very, VERY angry seeing thin, athletic women plastered all over the bopo instagram hashtag, and the love your body hashtag, and the hashtags that are meant to help women (and men, who do not get equal press in this movement, but definitely should) who are not exactly fitting in society's mold of hot and sexy find a following that helps them love themselves more without seeing their bodies as flawed. On top of THAT, I hate seeing predominantly white women all over these hashtags. White, able bodied women. It needs more diversity, because people in wheelchairs, people with dystrophy, people of color, people missing limbs....they don't get press, and they need and deserve representation. And it needs more diversity in looks, because for the great majority of love these hashtags gets, the women are pretty. They are still very attractive women. Like the women on my husband's curvy model pages. And look, most of us are not that white, not that pretty, not that fit, and not that curvy, and not that able. These movements are becoming exactly what they sought to topple down: impossible archetypes that make normal people feel bad. I am fucking sick of that shit, which leads me into my final complaint.
5. Seeing someone who is 200 pounds does not mean that person is unhealthy. I am pretty sure I'm healthier than the bulk of my skinny friends, though if you judged us by our bodies, the assumption is that they're skinnier, which means they're healthier. Nevermind that they eat like assholes and don't workout, and I eat well and exercise at least five times a week. We tend to place a lot of weight, pardon the pun, on how people look. Which is 100% ok, because, barring a lack of vision, we are visual creatures. Our first impressions are visual. And that's part of why I get so fucking hammed up about how I look, because I do not like it. And if I don't like it, that. fucking. MATTERS. But it doesn't mean that I hate myself. that's the important distinction, and I guess it's my primary point here.
I do not hate myself. not in the least. As a general term, I don't hate my body, either. My body is strong as fuck, it's able, I can do so much with it, it takes care of me, and I am grateful for what my body can do, and has done. I've given birth to two children, I've won races, I've built a home, I've volunteered in hurricane clean up efforts, I've done things in my communities. I don't have the balls to hate my body, because I know other people don't have the benefit of using theirs to the full capacity that I do. My body is, as a body, INCREDIBLE. Why is it so fucking difficult to reconcile the idea that I can hate my weight, hate my hips, hate my tits, hate my arms, hate my thighs, BUT be working on changing them in the same space that I'm grateful for them in?
It seems very difficult for people to understand, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because our instinct is to assure people of how little those things stack up against, say, your intelligence, or your wit, or your capacity to care for others. Or that those things we see as flaws are gorgeous and wonderful to other people, and shouldn't that count?
The short answer is? No.
No, how you feel about my hips doesn't count against how I feel. And you loving my body doesn't matter when I hate how it looks.
If you are complaining to someone about your body, and they respond with you're gorgeous, why can't you see it, they see it, maybe you should see a therapist if you can't understand your own beauty, you tell them to go fuck themselves and to stop gaslighting you, because that's what that is. Someone trying to convince you that your feelings are invalid and crazy instead of being there for you if you need time to vent.
Now, to be sure, there are people who genuinely DO have body dysmorphia. Who have eating disorders, or disordered eating. Who do not take care of themselves and enact self harm because of the way they view their body. And if you are concerned that a loved one is heading down that path, I'd suggest viewing this checklist against what you're noticing, and having a frank discussion about your concerns FIRST. If they laugh it off, and say it's just something they're going through that you should just listen to them about, trust them. It's 100% OK to keep a watchful eye on your friends afterwards, though, and even to be concerned that they're about to head down a dark, unhealthy road. But I can tell you there is a difference between a frank and open conversation about the possibility of maybe having an eating disorder and wanting to check in, and saying, "why don't you go see a therapist, you're unhealthy."
It is unrealistic to think that we are going to love ourselves after we've gained a lot of weight, or even if we've always been a heavier weight, because the shit society drums into our heads is dangerously effective. I feel inadequate as a woman for not looking like a fucking stellar model in lingerie. Cute, trendy clothes look like shit on me because I have a short torso and a high waist, and broad shoulders. Designers do not cater to women built like me, and I get this, and I am frustrated by it, and at the same time, it hurts to know that I am not as "real" to clothing designers as my thin, or even non-thin with reasonable proportions counterparts. I need a size XL for my chest, an M for my waist, an XXL for my hips, an L to an XL for my thighs, and an L for my calves. AND on top of that, I wear a size 11 shoe. I have a strange body, and admitting that marketing gets to me and I feel like an ugly, Quasimodo-esque failure when I see what I "should" be wearing sucks, but it's also accurate. My husband likes to say I'm crazy. My friends like to ask me if I've considered therapy. My mom tells me to get everything tailor-made because she thinks I have her kind of money?
My conflicts with my body are rational and valid. I've spent my life as a fit, muscular woman, and adjusting to a heavy body that is stubborn about losing weight, and isn't as youthful, full, and perky as it used to be, is really fucking hard. Really. Fucking. Hard. I have times where I don't want to have sex because I understand how my stomach looks, and the women my husband ogles do not look a thing like me, and do not have my body proportions, or my extra skin around my stomach. The women my husband ogles are either curvy and perfect, or thin and perfect. Always young, always pretty, never anything like me. And while yeah, fantasy is not something I am going to cause an argument over, it's ok for me to admit that seeing what his go to preference is when I'm not around really does make it feel an awful lot like he's settled when I am.
A lot of variables go in to having things about your body that you hate, and while I think the body positivity movement is a great idea (in theory), it also enforces this idea that you have to love yourself, and that's just unrealistic. You don't fucking have to love yourself. I don't HAVE to love my wide hips, I don't HAVE to think it's great that my stomach birthed two babies, a 7 pound baby girl, and a ten pound baby boy, and that the skin of my stomach never bounced back after the birth of my son, and it looks like a wet pile of raincoats when left to its own devices. I can recognize that my body is fucking AWESOME, but I don't like it's packaging, and that doesn't mean I need to see a doctor.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, body negativity isn't as bad as it's cracked up to be, and maybe, just MAYBE, what women like me, and men who think like I do, need is for other people to be a bit more present and a lot less talky when we air our grievances.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
The problem is, there's a German Shepard in your toilet.
If you're in the business of learning really disgusting things about another person's bowels today, have I ever got a story for you.
I'm a bit weird about poop. I don't play in it or anything like that, but I've always been deeply ashamed of the fact that I do it. Or fart. Generally, anything that comes out of my asshole is enough to send me into a shame spiral that is hard to get out of. For instance, I have never farted on purpose in front of anybody but my sister, and even then, it was just because she lived in the same room as me and I was not going to spend all fucking day holding in my farts. That's just unhealthy and uncomfortable, so I pushed that behavior off for a few years. Amber and I have been best friends for almost twenty years (twenty next year!), and I have never farted in front of her, or pooped around her. It took me fifteen years to be able to tell her I was pooping and texting her at the same time. I can do that now and it's not a big deal, but it took a LONG time.
I never mentioned pooping to Chris, and we lived together. He farted and shit with the bathroom door open, there was no privacy boundary there for him. Allen was the same, though I eventually got to the point where I could tell him I had to poop, and he needed to vacate the area because I didn't want him to hear it or smell it or give any other clues to the fact that my anus served the same purpose as everyone else's. I didn't fart on purpose around him, but it did happen on accident in my sleep. Because of COURSE it did, I was a human woman holding in farts. Same with Dan, though with Dan, it was reciprocal. Neither of us talked about farts or poops, or bodily functions at all. And I will say, in the...I'm muddy about how long we were actually together...Anyway, body habits were not a thing we discussed when we were together. Dan never farted in front of me (he did on accident once, but as a person with good upbringing, I pretended I didn't notice by saying, "for what?" when he excused himself. I am perpetuating the problem of dwindling bodily intimacy), though because we "lived" at his place, he of course pooped, and his walls were so thin that I could hear EVERYTHING and I would sit in the living room with my ears burning out of embarrassment thinking to myself, "no fucking WAY will I be pooping at this abode's commode". And I never did. There was one time, my friend Anali was trying to get a dating feel for Dan's friend David, so we were over at Dan's watching movies and eating pizza, and I was struck by some kind of shit emergency, and I made an excuse about my period coming, and then ran to walmart and shit for a decade in their public restroom, sweating and packing myself full of self-loathing. And then REALLY going full gusto by buying a pack of tampons and shoving some in my purse.
Of course, I live with my husband now, the romance is gone, I know he shits, he knows I shit, and while I still do not fart in front of him, it's something that's no secret. We're human people that are married and live together.
I'm still weird about poop, though, and today, when Amber needed a little bit of a pick me up, I decided to tell her about my most embarrassing poop story, of which I have a few, but this one takes the shitty, shitty cake.
I was plagued by nervous guts as a kid. As an adult, this is less of a problem, but every once and a rare while, when I'm REALLY nervous, my tummy will seize up, and my asshole will demand that I find a hole to squat over, because I'm going to shit, whether I want to or not. As a middle schooler, I could usually hold in my first day of school nerves until the end of the day, when I was home and on my own turf, and could shit without shame. But the first day of ninth grade was different, for some reason, and this is the first in several truly embarrassing stories where my body was a vile betrayer in such a public forum; where the slightest sprinkling of bad verbal press could make or break your happiness for the next four years, my body decided it didn't give a fuck about my popularity. And let's be honest, my popularity was a lost fucking cause. I was fluffy headed, I wore glasses, I was tall and oddly built, and as we previously learned, my mom dressed me in the most painfully odious clothes. Also, she didn't let me shave past my knees, and as I'm Italian and Armenian (I recently learned that, and I think it's so cool), I am as hairless as a gorilla, so I was walking around with an afro, bad clothes, Sally Jesse Raphael glasses, Garfield shorts, and legs that were half smooth, half Robin Williams. Now that I've repainted that amazing picture of me as a 9th grader, it'll make the rest of this story even worse.
I couldn't hold my tummy nerves. My body made it clear that I was going to shit, the only thing that would change in that scenario was where I did it. I could either keep trying to hold it and shit my pants, or I could find a bathroom, get over myself, and shit where I was supposed to. so I rushed to a bathroom, and it should be noted that our high school was too full, so we were in a valley of portables off site. Our restroom was a portable, too. Without a door. So it was three stalls, completely "open" to the outside. But I was lucky, nobody was outside, nobody was in the restroom, I was totally free to shit as noisily and stinkily as I could. And I REALLY fucking needed to, so I did.
For what felt like the next twenty years of my life.
It sounded like what I imagine the gates of hell sound like, and smelled worse. It was an all around unpleasant time, but it was desperately needed. After however many eons of raucous shitting I did was over, I felt AMAZING. Like a brand new person. I had stopped sweating, my body wasn't shivering and cold anymore, and most importantly, I had managed to not have anybody come in and disrupt my exploding asshole moment that so desperately needed to happen.
I was washing my hands, feeling so much better about my life, and my bowels, and the school year in general, when I looked outside the open door to the bathroom portable.
There stood two of the most popular girls in school. Like statues. Statues that had obviously been standing there, silently biding their time to see who those horrible ass noises and smells and plops belonged to, and oh god oh god oh god, it was me. The noises belonged to me. I couldn't pretend someone else was in there, or that I had happened upon the noises, too, and yeah, popular girls, what kinda monster has a stomach that makes sounds like that, ammiright??? There would be none of that. It was plain to these two beacons of popularity and social grace that I was the culprit. I was caught brown handed, a pooper among the elite. The three of us stood in our spots for a frozen second, me panicking, them taking it all in, and then the laughter started. They were laughing at me. Incredulously, earnestly, judgmentally. They were laughing at me, and I stood there and took it, because what was I going to do, defend myself? Scream at them, "Hey, you fucking perverts, who the fuck sits outside a bathroom and listens to someone feverishly squirt out their emotions AND their horrible breakfast? Gross, you guys are gross, and you have the gall to laugh at me, you sick, sick, sick, sick fucks!" Well...yeah. Yeah, I should have done that. Because it's true, it takes a really weird person to want to sit and listen to someone shitting. While we all laugh at poop and farts, this was going above and beyond. It's a level of curiosity that I do not understand, as an adult, but I was utterly ashamed by as a child.
Was the entire school going to find out? I was so fucking nervous. I hung back in the stall and sweat for an entirely different reason now, and the girls never came in. They just walked off, laughing at me, talking about me pooping like normal mean girls talked about my hair and my Garfield shorts. They never said a word to anybody outside of themselves, thankfully, though for the rest of the week, they would giggle and whisper to each other and look right at me when I crossed their paths. They probably talked more about my shit that week than any of my doctors have in my whole life, and I literally shit in a doctors hands a decade ago.
I have never moved on from that embarrassing moment. When we go out and I have to poop, I make my husband take me home, and he gets frustrated and asks me, "Can't you just fucking go in the restroom? NOBODY CARES!" Sure, nobody cares, but the ghosts of the popular girls will always always always be waiting for me outside of that bathroom, judging me and laughing at me. i'll stick to the bathroom at home, thanks.
I'm a bit weird about poop. I don't play in it or anything like that, but I've always been deeply ashamed of the fact that I do it. Or fart. Generally, anything that comes out of my asshole is enough to send me into a shame spiral that is hard to get out of. For instance, I have never farted on purpose in front of anybody but my sister, and even then, it was just because she lived in the same room as me and I was not going to spend all fucking day holding in my farts. That's just unhealthy and uncomfortable, so I pushed that behavior off for a few years. Amber and I have been best friends for almost twenty years (twenty next year!), and I have never farted in front of her, or pooped around her. It took me fifteen years to be able to tell her I was pooping and texting her at the same time. I can do that now and it's not a big deal, but it took a LONG time.
I never mentioned pooping to Chris, and we lived together. He farted and shit with the bathroom door open, there was no privacy boundary there for him. Allen was the same, though I eventually got to the point where I could tell him I had to poop, and he needed to vacate the area because I didn't want him to hear it or smell it or give any other clues to the fact that my anus served the same purpose as everyone else's. I didn't fart on purpose around him, but it did happen on accident in my sleep. Because of COURSE it did, I was a human woman holding in farts. Same with Dan, though with Dan, it was reciprocal. Neither of us talked about farts or poops, or bodily functions at all. And I will say, in the...I'm muddy about how long we were actually together...Anyway, body habits were not a thing we discussed when we were together. Dan never farted in front of me (he did on accident once, but as a person with good upbringing, I pretended I didn't notice by saying, "for what?" when he excused himself. I am perpetuating the problem of dwindling bodily intimacy), though because we "lived" at his place, he of course pooped, and his walls were so thin that I could hear EVERYTHING and I would sit in the living room with my ears burning out of embarrassment thinking to myself, "no fucking WAY will I be pooping at this abode's commode". And I never did. There was one time, my friend Anali was trying to get a dating feel for Dan's friend David, so we were over at Dan's watching movies and eating pizza, and I was struck by some kind of shit emergency, and I made an excuse about my period coming, and then ran to walmart and shit for a decade in their public restroom, sweating and packing myself full of self-loathing. And then REALLY going full gusto by buying a pack of tampons and shoving some in my purse.
Of course, I live with my husband now, the romance is gone, I know he shits, he knows I shit, and while I still do not fart in front of him, it's something that's no secret. We're human people that are married and live together.
I'm still weird about poop, though, and today, when Amber needed a little bit of a pick me up, I decided to tell her about my most embarrassing poop story, of which I have a few, but this one takes the shitty, shitty cake.
I was plagued by nervous guts as a kid. As an adult, this is less of a problem, but every once and a rare while, when I'm REALLY nervous, my tummy will seize up, and my asshole will demand that I find a hole to squat over, because I'm going to shit, whether I want to or not. As a middle schooler, I could usually hold in my first day of school nerves until the end of the day, when I was home and on my own turf, and could shit without shame. But the first day of ninth grade was different, for some reason, and this is the first in several truly embarrassing stories where my body was a vile betrayer in such a public forum; where the slightest sprinkling of bad verbal press could make or break your happiness for the next four years, my body decided it didn't give a fuck about my popularity. And let's be honest, my popularity was a lost fucking cause. I was fluffy headed, I wore glasses, I was tall and oddly built, and as we previously learned, my mom dressed me in the most painfully odious clothes. Also, she didn't let me shave past my knees, and as I'm Italian and Armenian (I recently learned that, and I think it's so cool), I am as hairless as a gorilla, so I was walking around with an afro, bad clothes, Sally Jesse Raphael glasses, Garfield shorts, and legs that were half smooth, half Robin Williams. Now that I've repainted that amazing picture of me as a 9th grader, it'll make the rest of this story even worse.
I couldn't hold my tummy nerves. My body made it clear that I was going to shit, the only thing that would change in that scenario was where I did it. I could either keep trying to hold it and shit my pants, or I could find a bathroom, get over myself, and shit where I was supposed to. so I rushed to a bathroom, and it should be noted that our high school was too full, so we were in a valley of portables off site. Our restroom was a portable, too. Without a door. So it was three stalls, completely "open" to the outside. But I was lucky, nobody was outside, nobody was in the restroom, I was totally free to shit as noisily and stinkily as I could. And I REALLY fucking needed to, so I did.
For what felt like the next twenty years of my life.
It sounded like what I imagine the gates of hell sound like, and smelled worse. It was an all around unpleasant time, but it was desperately needed. After however many eons of raucous shitting I did was over, I felt AMAZING. Like a brand new person. I had stopped sweating, my body wasn't shivering and cold anymore, and most importantly, I had managed to not have anybody come in and disrupt my exploding asshole moment that so desperately needed to happen.
I was washing my hands, feeling so much better about my life, and my bowels, and the school year in general, when I looked outside the open door to the bathroom portable.
There stood two of the most popular girls in school. Like statues. Statues that had obviously been standing there, silently biding their time to see who those horrible ass noises and smells and plops belonged to, and oh god oh god oh god, it was me. The noises belonged to me. I couldn't pretend someone else was in there, or that I had happened upon the noises, too, and yeah, popular girls, what kinda monster has a stomach that makes sounds like that, ammiright??? There would be none of that. It was plain to these two beacons of popularity and social grace that I was the culprit. I was caught brown handed, a pooper among the elite. The three of us stood in our spots for a frozen second, me panicking, them taking it all in, and then the laughter started. They were laughing at me. Incredulously, earnestly, judgmentally. They were laughing at me, and I stood there and took it, because what was I going to do, defend myself? Scream at them, "Hey, you fucking perverts, who the fuck sits outside a bathroom and listens to someone feverishly squirt out their emotions AND their horrible breakfast? Gross, you guys are gross, and you have the gall to laugh at me, you sick, sick, sick, sick fucks!" Well...yeah. Yeah, I should have done that. Because it's true, it takes a really weird person to want to sit and listen to someone shitting. While we all laugh at poop and farts, this was going above and beyond. It's a level of curiosity that I do not understand, as an adult, but I was utterly ashamed by as a child.
Was the entire school going to find out? I was so fucking nervous. I hung back in the stall and sweat for an entirely different reason now, and the girls never came in. They just walked off, laughing at me, talking about me pooping like normal mean girls talked about my hair and my Garfield shorts. They never said a word to anybody outside of themselves, thankfully, though for the rest of the week, they would giggle and whisper to each other and look right at me when I crossed their paths. They probably talked more about my shit that week than any of my doctors have in my whole life, and I literally shit in a doctors hands a decade ago.
I have never moved on from that embarrassing moment. When we go out and I have to poop, I make my husband take me home, and he gets frustrated and asks me, "Can't you just fucking go in the restroom? NOBODY CARES!" Sure, nobody cares, but the ghosts of the popular girls will always always always be waiting for me outside of that bathroom, judging me and laughing at me. i'll stick to the bathroom at home, thanks.
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