Was talking to Mary Kay this morning and our topic was fear of being thin. Gui has told me for months I was afraid of being thin, and that always sounded so dumb to me. How can anyone be afraid of something they have dreamed about their whole life? But in the last couple weeks I have come to realize, he's right (yet again). I talked about this a little a few blog posts ago, but since I still seem to be stuck here, I hope you'll humor me for being back on this topic.
There seems to be two sides to this problem for me, the loss of being able to hide behind my weight and the not knowing how to deal with who I am becoming.
I never realized until recently how much of a protection my being obese gave me. It was a super filter for keeping people at a distance and protecting myself from having to let others in. Only those few who could see past my physical appearance even tried to get know me better. It was a perfect way to keep the world away and protect my heart. The fat kept people from getting close enough to see my heart or my emotions in so many cases. I now feel very emotionally naked and unprotected.
It was also a great way to shield myself from hurt and disappointment. I could easily say I didn't have a date on Friday night, or a husband or a family because I was fat and ugly. I didn't have to dive deeper into why I was really alone. And I didnt have to chance reaching out to others and have to face possible rejection, because I knew without a doubt they would never give me a second look anyway.
It also kept me from having to try things that scared me, like my current thoughts on rock wall climbing. I was too fat or my right leg wouldn't do things, so I could easily stay in my comfort zone. No I find those excuses fading away and it frightens me. The same with clothes, there were so few choices I could hide in ugly, frumpy things and not have to try anything new or scary. Now I have no idea what my style is as the options are exploding in front of me.
As MK put it this morning, but now I have to face the reality of "what if after all this is done and over I am still not good enough". As I lose the weight and that protection it is getting harder and harder to hide who I am inside, from the world and also from myself. I am losing my excuse for hiding from the world and more importantly my protection from rejection and it terrifies me.
This all leads to the second part, not knowing how to be this new person. I have spent my entire life fat. I know how to be "Fat Pam". I know what that means, I know the way it works. Being someone other than that is really confusing for me. I struggle every time someone compliments me, I dont know the right thing to say and feel like my answers are so lame. I don't know how to react when someone gives me a second look who would have looked past me before, it is totally foreign to me. I feel embarrassed, like a fraud and often suspiscious.
I have to admit I am very uncomfortable about the notion of ever being thin enough that people notice my body before they do my personality or my brain. As much as I have always looked at (and still do) all the "beautiful people" and wished I looked like them, the closer I get to that reality, the more I am frightened by it. I have spent 40 years in a world where my brain was all I had to offer the world. It was who I was, it was what people wanted from me and it was why people who chose to be in my life were there. I don't know how to be any other way. And as much as I want this weight loss, I have to admit I am not 100% sure I want it any other way than that.
Every time I think about all this, I find myself stuck on trying to understand how good looking people figure out the validity of the people in their lives. How do you know when people are being sincere about wanting you in their life when you don't have the "fat filter" which keeps all the shallow people away?
Even now when someone compliments me on how I look, I have to admit I find myself questioning it. Wondering if they feel they have to say it and then are laughing at me behind my back the minute they walk away. There are times I wonder if I am just a big joke to the world right now because I feel I have accomplished so much in the last 8 months but really haven't. I wonder it with my friends, I even wonder it with my trainer. I have never been so insecure in my life about "what are people saying behind my back" because before I knew how people saw me.....fat, obese, disgusting...whatever words you want to put there for my physical appearance, now I just don't know and that uncertainty is really hard for me.
For as proud as I am of the 93 lbs I have lost, I will admit that there are more and more times lately I consider retreating back to where I was...which I am realizing is part of all the fighting with Gui lately, me trying to find a reason to retreat back there. To where I knew who I was, how to be, what the world expected from me. I have that user manual, I know the rules, I know the game plan. I dont know how to be thin, I dont know how to be fit, I don't know how to live this new life and feel like I got thrown into this foreign land long before I knew the language.
I have been struggling with this myself. I find myself thinking it was easier being fat. I find myself purposely sabotaging my efforts to lose the rest of the weight. I wish I could figure out exactly why am I doing this to myself.
ReplyDeleteComments about the scale: Congratulations on passing the scale by. I know how hard that can be and how strong that tie to the scale is. Early on in my weight loss journey, I found my mood was determined by what I weighted on the scale that morning. This was making my moods very volatile (I was not good for me or my family). I started tracking my weight (via excel) - I made it part of my routine (every Wednesday morning right after I got up). This became the only time I stepped on the scale. It was weird at first, but now (4 years later) it is just a task I do every week. By making it a task, I seem to have broken the unhealthy emotional tie to my scale.