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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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… Continue reading Narrative Mostly Freewriting #6: Self Image<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fVx5-5b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minimoog.net\/daphne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}