I remarked to my favorite Maternal cousin the other day that I was still getting used to being seen as desirable by my Sweeties. Meds have caused some weight gain, and I’ll be on them for a bit longer, it seems. But that doesn’t matter to them. It’s wonderful yet hard to accept.

In my last post I talked about giving the voice that tells you to harm yourself a name and fight it like a bully. That’s a tip I learned at the turn of the century when I frequented the forums of an support group for Eating Disorders. I was 26 and a mere 2 pounds away from mandatory hospitalization when I finally got into therapy. I weighed 103 when I was 14 and that freaked me the fuck out. So I cut out meat to make it easier not to eat. That lasted until college, when I finally had some control over my life.

It took a dozen years to get diagnosed because I wasn’t your stereotypical anorexic obsessed with looks. It was all about control. Growing up, there were only two things I really had control over–the state of my room and what I ate. My room was a mess and I didn’t weigh over 100 pounds until years after I moved out. Oddly enough, the messiness thing lingered even when I was eating like a normal, healthy person. Let’s not digress about that today though.

Until I hit 40, I never really felt like I could be accepted for who I am. Everyone who loved me seemed to not like something about me that they would point out often. It made me feel like people were doing me a favor by loving me, so I should let those people control me. I didn’t kick that bad habit until after Kevin died. I had a clean slate, and there were many things I swore “never again will I tolerate this behavior.”

Now that I’m halfway through them, I’m still working on accepting that I’m loveable for who I am at this moment in time. My Sweeties are unconditionally accepting and supportive of me yet are frank with me when the situation merits it. It’s a great thing we have, and I’m really lucky.

Ah yes, the voice thing. I named my eating disorder Calvin Ferguson, the nemesis of the Ghostwriter Team, which were characters from this show that was on PBS on Sunday nights. I was a couple years older than the normal demographic for the show, but I still enjoyed it. Calvin was the Snidley Whiplash type of villain–it was clear you were never to sympathize with him. I figured that was a fitting name for that voice that told me I’d feel better the longer I went without eating. It really helped with recovery, and I started eating like a normal person. My Calvin popped up after the first couple years of Kevin’s illness. I had to admit that I had that problem again, as that was probably a source of the oodles of the nearly 3 dozen migraines I had that same year. Calvin was admonished as much as possible.

These days, I will enable myself to easily eat when I know I’m prone to start restricting. At the beginning of quarantine, I ate a lot. Then I didn’t eat much until after I went back to the office. I like making my lunch because it’s cheaper than going out to eat all the time. Plus, I don’t blow half my lunch acquiring it.

It’s funny, I still her Calvin sometimes. Only now his voice sounds like Kevin’s. He loved to refer to my shape or my room as “piggy.” I was a reasonable weight for my body type and age. Just some bloating or weight gain from being on meds. “Don’t eat so much at night.” (Heaven forfend I make too much noise in the morning when you’re sleeping in the morning!)

Oh, I could go on, but I’m not going to. I’d rather shift my mind back to the part where my Sweeties find me desirable and loveable just the way I am. We’e got our space and we all can just live honestly for a change. It really has worked wonders for my self image. I know what they say is true, and I’m starting to see what they see when I look in the mirror.