This is new for me.

I don’t have many images to remind me of the past 20 years, either because they were barren of experience, or because the thought of being photographed was obscene.

I pondered over writing this post, but I’m going to get it off my chest….

When the border control looked at my passport photo, he recoiled and did a double take.

I am not great with photographs. It has been two years since I last threw up, but my glands are still slightly swollen. In the real world, they are harder to notice; but in photos, they are the first thing that I see. In my passport photo, they are all that there is to see.

There is nothing I can do to change this.

And so, I have snapped my way around New York because I want to keep the images imprinted in my mind, even if it is still quite hard to look at the photos –

And because the longer I avoid seeing myself, the more I affirm the need for avoidance; and I want to start getting used to accepting me.

I understand those feelings – but life moves on.

Something seems to have changed and I feel like I have been given a second chance.

I also feel like I have been dragged backwards through a cyclone.

I have been on an emotional rollercoaster over the past week. Up one minute, down the next, hungry all the time. Now, it all makes sense; a few days ago, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. The hunger has, inevitably, been the hardest part for me to handle. On Saturday, I thought that I was heading, for the first time in two years, for something resembling a binge.

No.

I think it was just things beginning to wake up again. I am resisting the urge to dig my heels in and fight my body.

And so, I am trying to not be afraid of feeling and not worry about the loss of control. I am taking this whole experience, instead, as the next stage in my recovery, and part of learning about how to feel physically, now that I’ve started to get to grips with the things that are going on in my head. I’m also taking it as a sign that it’s okay that my body is changing and it’s okay for me to move on.

Fingers crossed.

p.s. I um-ed and ah-ed about writing these posts because I wasn’t sure where my (or other people’s, if I’m honest) boundaries were in relation to ‘this kind of thing’. In the end, I decided that this has been a hugely important topic for me, and one that might have resonance for other people in a similar position. I’ve felt horribly alone – both in not having my periods and in them re-starting – and I hope that I haven’t crossed the line, but I wanted to share both the change in perspective and, maybe, some hope.

It is not the size of my leg or the shape of my arm that make the relationship difficult; it’s the emotional response that’s messy. The lack of differentiation between what I feel and what I see.

Instead of being objective and basing my body-perception on facts and realities, I have been building it on far more precarious grounds; and, by reinforcing these through my emotional responses, all sense of perspective has been covered up.

This means that when I am told to look in the mirror and focus on my ‘good points’, I zoom straight past “I have nice eyes” or “I like the colour of my hair” and nose-dive into the feeling instead. It has been interesting to observe what these are:

Hostility

I appear to have a bit of a ‘hard-done-by’ take on my body. I am disappointed by it and feel that it has let me down. This comes out in the criticism and the sharpness that I treat it with: the pinches and smothered anger and unkind names. I am quite shocked by how intolerant and angry I can be.

Distrust

Hostility starts the division: it’s reinforced by distrust. I don’t get my body, nor believe that it can function as it should. I treat it, therefore, with a certain suspicion, as you would a piece of machinery that you don’t quite understand.

Fear

The fear comes with the distrust. It’s linked to expecting something to go wrong and not knowing what – or when – that will be. It goes back, as well, to the realisation that I am not invincible and the fear that accompanied how close I came to the edge. It means that I am super cautious with myself, and I’m still adjusting to taking up any space.

Shame

The shame is prickly like pin points. It is almost too difficult to acknowledge because it is buried so deep. It is a mishmash of fear and hostility and perfectionism and uncertainty, framed by the worry of what other people think. It is, I think, less prominent than it was at the beginning, but some of the previous red-cheeked awkwardness has left a permanent stain.

Disgust

The disgust is where I move towards the more physical and where it starts to blur into identity and size. The repulse caused by one triggers a repulse towards the other and leaves me bouncing backwards and forwards in between.

When my body-image is so charged with negative emotion, it’s not surprising that the reconciliation has been so hard.

But not impossible.

Compassion

Compassion is a new body-related feeling. I noticed it last week when I was bouncing around in disgust. I suddenly felt terribly sorry for this body that I was berating and, in the moment of sympathy, the negative emotions were instantly shown up.

The compassion allowed me to question whether the criticism was really fair, and whether the hostility might be mis-directed. This feels different – in a good way. It is a new route towards body acceptance, and one which I’m going to explore -

Because I think, if I start at the centre, the effects will radiate out -

Related Posts: Optical Illusions; Hello body, meet Melissa; All Joined Up….and an article from GoodTherapy.Org that seemed to help: The Body as Battleground

If I understand that my perception can get distorted; and I know that it’s all tied into how I feel about myself; and I have a whole bag full of CBT tricks to prove that no, I can’t possibly be fat with my BMI or yes, the reason I feel uncomfortable now is because I was used to being so unnaturally thin…

Well then, it’s all hunky-dory, really, isn’t it, and there’s clearly nothing to dwell on?

Hmmm.

I think I might have slipped into a bit of self denial. Body image? Not a problem – I just don’t even venture into that headspace. Shape? Doesn’t really matter, cos I can still squeeze into most of my clothes.

Today, I noticed that a sweater which I’d bought a few weeks ago was a few sizes bigger than I thought it was. Okay, the style was baggy and I’d noticed that it was particularly loose – but my stomach tripped into somersaults and the internal acrobatics caught me off guard. I thought that I was beyond numbers mattering – but clearly the message is still stuck.

I have not been able to shrug off the experience.

I have pointed out, patiently, that it was meant to be a throw-on. Reminded myself that I have clearly separated out self – from size. Forced myself to consider the other 99.8% of my wardrobe….

It hasn’t helped and I’m now confused.

There has been a division, in my recovery, between my head’s thoughts about my body and those in my gut, and it’s been a bit too difficult to give the issue any real space.

I am not quite sure how to reconcile the distance between what I now understand about my eating disorder – and the fact that my preoccupation with my body still, to some extent, stands. I know that size is an issue for lots of men and women, and that there’s an emphasis, inherent in the culture, which is often difficult to move beyond. I understand that, in the need to recover, I worked really hard to overcome the fear and impermissibility of weight gain, and that the separation helped me to live –

I just can’t work out where I go from here, nor how to get some sort of balance in my head.

So I decided to try something totally off the wall.

Today, I had my first proper massage. I left it too late to cancel and spent the first fifteen minutes feeling self conscious, and stupid, and full of self disgust –

And then, just when I’d determined that once was enough and I wouldn’t be repeating the mistake, the masseur tugged me, just below my left rib, and as I tried, desperately, not to giggle, some of the discomfort and fear was instantly revoked. I had forgotten that I am really ticklish.

Body image is a serious subject – but my approach has been far too solemn.

It got me thinking – when my left foot provoked the same reaction – about the interface between ourselves and the world. How our skin, quite miraculously, responds to the outside environment; and how a simple thing – like a tickle or a soft touch – can shift the emphasis, and make my body slightly easier to be in. It can even, dare I say it, make me laugh –

Which is kind of cool.

So I have decided to keep an eye out for these unique moments and make it my mission to identify times when my body can make me smile (like when my feet go off without me if I’m walking quickly down a hill or that funny Pilates move where you roll, like a kid, on your back).

And, I am going to notice the occasions when the outer can positively change the inner (like the first stroke from the side if I’m swimming underwater or the sensation of cool sheets on hot skin), and my body stops being such a barrier between me and the world.

Because it can, as I have been reminded, in even the most awkward of moments, provoke a range of emotions -

Including laughter, and a smile.

What realisations or experiences have helped you to make friends with your body or view it from a new perspective?

Related stuff…

• Hello Body, Meet Melissa
• A Strange Kind of Silence
• All Joined Up
• Laughter Therapy

One (the eldest) of three.

This blog is not about my siblings (who are, by the way, totally wonderful and I love them to bits); but I think it might be about a younger me’s reaction to them, so I’m going to include this.

It is important to distinguish between your reality and the alternative versions of reality; the stuff that belongs to other people, and that which belongs to you.

This bit is mine.

Earlier today, someone asked me what I liked to eat as a child. Hoping to access my pre-ED tastes, I decided that casting my mind back a little (lot) and exploring the things that I used to look forward to at mealtimes sounded like a good idea.

It was. I just didn’t find what I was expecting.

Hoping to form a little connection to my childhood favourites and re-awaken any tastebuds that I’d snipped at the roots, I was waiting for the images of homemade macaroni cheese (yep, liked that) – or breakfasts at the weekend with my Dad (I know I used to enjoy these) – or crumble and custard on Sundays (a favourite, I think), to arrive. Instead, I got a hideous wave of inferiority and a horrible flashback to how I used to feel –

I was not, as a child, the skinny one.

My brother was a beanpole. My sister, petite and pretty. And me –

Normal. Healthy. Attractive. Big. Ungainly. Fat.

With a good appetite. A dead cert for seconds. Enjoyed her food. Greedy. Uncontrolled. Fat.

These things were not, of course, said; nor, I am certain, even thought. It’s just how I felt. Them – and me. Thin – and fat. Acceptable – and totally not.

I don’t know when I decided that body size cast the deciding vote. This certainly wasn’t a family message; and, it seems, oddly, to dismiss all the things that I clearly excelled at – school, music, reading, the ‘clever one’ – possibly, because even writing these things reminds me that they were irrelevant. Instantly negated. Uncool.

For whatever reason, at some deep and complicated level, worth and self-acceptance got all tangled up with whether I was skinny or not -

And, as a child, I was not the skinny one.

So, when I go back, even after all these years, and after the balance was so dramatically altered, the surge of inferiority is still uncomfortable; and the feeling of weightiness, bowls me over. And, even if I try to move beyond this, and go back – back – further – back to an earlier stage, where it didn’t matter so much or I wasn’t so aware; the memories of food remain hidden, and all I can see is –

One wooden chair leg, and a not skinny knee, poking out from a pair of cotton shorts, with the sun streaming through the window behind. A fork, on a plate, and sitting at the kitchen table wondering why I always wanted more.

Photos that made me feel horrible. Climbing frames that I seemed too big for. Clothes that I had outgrown.

Summer days, and paddling pools, and swimsuits with frilled bottoms, and queuing for barbecues, with an acute awareness of just how much space I seemed to consume.

This might, I think, be where some of it started.

In this small, still throbbing, sense of shame – and self-consciousness – and older sister awkwardness, some of the nerve ends remain red and raw.

I need, I think, when I’m feeling a bit braver, to go back and acknowledge that it hurt (that I felt I was different); and reassure, my younger me, that it was nothing to be ashamed of (this taking up of space). To explain that sometimes feelings, are just feelings (and not the reality); and unstick this person, who is still a little stuck –

Because I’ve probably been carrying this childlike sense of inadequacy around for a very long time -

And, it’s time to move on.

I know that taste is subjective; but there’s no other way to describe it. This dress totally rocks.

It might not be bang on trend as I couldn’t tell you what’s strutting along the catwalk and have never quite got into Vogue; but, it makes me feel a million dollars, and has reminded me of something that gets lost behind the catwalk debate and the size zero phenomenon –

In my recovery, fashion and fabrics were an unexpected friend; even when I wasn’t that comfortable in my own skin.

You could chart my illness in relation to the contents of my wardrobe. In the better spells, it was well looked after and neatly hung; when things were going badly, anything that could be tightly belted and easily washed, went. There is little point in making an effort when everything ends up spattered in sick; and it is impossible to find anything that stays where it’s meant to stay.

Clothes were functional, not fun; and looking good was immaterial, if not impossible. Feeling good? Who cared.

Surprisingly, me.

One day, a few years ago, my Mum took me to a new clothes shop in town. After walking around for months in nondescript outfits that were ‘gifts’ or relics from my teenage years, she was adamant that some ‘nice clothes’ would make me feel better, even if they didn’t quite fit. Whilst I remained sceptical and sure that I didn’t deserve them, “no” was not an option; and, with a little (lot of) coercion, I finally gave in.

Whenever I wear the cream cotton shirt dress that we brought that day, which folds softly around my skin and makes me walk with my head a little higher, I understand what she was trying to do -

The inside often informs the outside, but sometimes, it also works the other way round.

So, whilst I remain adamant that a book should never be judged by its cover and appearances are certainly not everything, I also appreciate that dressing down didn’t really help; and, in the past few years, me and my new clothes have taken a few vital steps together -

Like the pretty blue pyjamas that were a present from me – to myself – to help me sleep through the nights when I was determined to stop bingeing.

Or the brown leather jacket that exactly matched the image in my head and gives me a boost when I’m feeling self-conscious or a little insecure.

The shimmery sparkly skirt that I can accept complements on behalf of, even though I’d argue the point if they were made about me.

The pin-striped suit that helps me stand tall when I’m feeling small at work. The delicate heels that make me feel like a woman when my body seems to let me down. The neat handbags that I couldn’t use when I was hauling around bags of food. The floaty silk skirt that I could afford when I stopped spending a fortune on food. The ribbon-tied bridesmaids dress that made me feel like a princess for a day…

I know that sizes are hard; and I’m not great with mirrors.

I get that dressing up can seem pretty pointless; and there’s no point in pretending –

But sometimes, if I concentrate on enjoying what I’m wearing, then it seems easier, somehow, to be kinder to what’s underneath….

Because there’s nothing like a killer dress to make you feel like a million dollars -

And I think it might be possible for fashion to help me – and my body – to gradually become friends.

In all the hype, and indecision, and shall-I-shan’t-I-ing, I have forgotten that everything starts here.

And so, to connect the dots, I want to include this video, even though some readers may have stumbled across it on other mediums. And, because it’s part of the story, whether I am proud, or embarrassed, or just a little red-faced about my nervous twitching around, I feel that, albeit belatedly, it belongs here.

The whole size zero issue wasn’t something I anticipated exploring and only tinged my eating disorder experience; however, you can’t change the debate if you’re not part of the discussion; and, whilst I certainly never saw myself doing this kind of thing 6 months ago, I wouldn’t have realised how rewarding it would be if I hadn’t given it a go.

This is only part of a wider talk, including some really important information from Professor Janet Treasure, that can be accessed at Gresham College’s site. I have also spoken on ‘Moving Maintaining Factors’, although it wasn’t (to the best of my knowledge!) filmed; and hope to do many many more.

The questions and discussion time has been the most rewarding aspect and, unfortunately, these aren’t captured here; but they did inspire this post on the ‘How do I Help? Question’ and informed some of the issues I have blogged about. Most importantly for me, they have helped to salvage some value or meaning from my experiences, and made me feel that I might be able to start using the past more positively.

To help me along this bumpy journey, I started to try and understand myself and my relationship to the world; to gain some insight into what had happened and why it had happened. The pen was my probe and my head, the subject. Or so I thought. Somewhere along the way, my psychological exercise stumbled into a sociological debate and took on a life of its own – particularly in relation to being a woman.

Whether career woman, ladette or a Bridget Jones-esque twenty-something, girl power, in its many guises, experienced a notable – and much noted upon – surge at the end of the last century. It confirmed and consolidated the dramatic transition that women, as a sex, were undergoing; provided a new way of being for the younger generation – and raised a whole host of questions for those of us who fell on the tipping point.

It is impossible for one person to understand or resolve the complexities of what went – and is going – on for women today; to explore the impact of the past century’s lightening speed race along the social evolutionary scale. One article cannot communicate or clarify what it feels like to be a woman within this wider historical context – but it might shed a little light on the relationship between what’s going on out there and what’s going on for me and, possibly, many other women in the UK.

Joining the Dots

What it meant to be a woman in the UK in the twentieth century has been a persistent interruption to my soul searching. It cropped up when I was considering identity; made another appearance when I got to body image; bounced into my biological or emotional debate: basically, it seemed to take a lot of space for something that I had considered to be, in the context of things, of little relevance. With my curiousity piqued and my frustration heightened, I decided that a little attention was evidently required – and opened a minefield.

My eating disorder seemed to be intricately and complexly connected to my gender; it had resonances with women today, yesterday and years ago; appeared to be informed by traditions and ingrained patterns that I had never consciously recognised; and, strangely, made a lot more sense from this perspective, as I will explain.

As you move out of the grey cloud of an eating disorder and, probably, many other mental health illnesses or addictions, one of the biggest challenges in the recovery process is working out who you are, re-discovering and re-claiming your identity. My exploration of the interplay between being a woman and eating disorders did not begin at the obvious point, i.e. the much discussed female form and the equally well discussed preoccupation with the female form; it started, instead, with identity, my contemplation of how we work out who we are and how we define ourselves to others – and introductory speech seemed the logical place to begin.

The female identity

Today, we are defined as much by what we do as who we are – “I’m so and so and I am a ….”. Our career is synonymous with our identity and, whether our career is reflective of our character or not, it is an easy and concrete starting point. Men are probably used to this; but, for the female species whose historical identifiers were mother, daughter or wife, this question has acquired a new significance. Now I’m all for equality and empowerment in the workplace; but I also wonder whether they have forced the question of how women define themselves to the forefront. If they have introduced another dimension into the female identity which has confused and complicated how, and where, women locate themselves.

So, where does this confusion rise from? Why should it be harder for women to identify themselves in this way than it is for men? And don’t the fathers and husbands and sons out there experience the same conflict in how they define themselves? No, I don’t think so. Men, as a species, are used to this way of things; women, on the other hand, are coming from a totally different state of consciousness. The conflict is heightened because our roots lie in an ‘other’ state which, while absent from our individual memories, seems somehow ingrained in our collective history.

If this argument feels too airy fairy for you, let me add some biological and sociological padding. Now I’m no historian (or doctor, for that matter) but it doesn’t take a scholar to map out the role of women through the centuries.

The Role of Women

Women have typically occupied a few select key positions: mother, home-maker and nurturer. Why? Because biology dictated this role for them in the evolutionary process: the smaller female physique is not as suited to the hardcore hunting/fighting/building initially needed for survival; women’s bodies and psyche are designed for motherhood and nurturing the young – and pregnancies are not conducive to a stable income.

Whilst times, circumstances and behaviours may have changed, if we consider the idea that our fundamental nature shaped a very different role for us to the one that we are trying to fill today, we’re getting closer to understanding the conflict around self-identification.

If we take this line of thought one step further and combine the biological make-up with the career identifier bit, we can also see that it is only the fortunate few whose careers bear any meaningful relationship to who they are. Pregnancies, maternity leave and the school runs aside, it can be difficult for women to really connect to a career or a vocation in the same way as men can.

Thus, defining ourselves in terms of what we are do, as society so often dictates, jars with our sense of self; yet we are negated totally if we return to our original identifiers.

So that sorted that out a bit – if I put myself and my confusion in a bigger context, the difficulties I was experiencing in working out who I was, whilst unresolved, started to make a bit more sense. And so did the issue of women and food or, more precisely, the powerful relationship between women and food. I have often wondered why food was my weapon of choice: what was it about food that was so difficult? Why did it seem so much harder for me and my female counterparts, to manage than for men? Back-tracking through the female experience again shed some light on the question.

Women and Food

It is difficult to imagine today’s constant debate over diet and body image having much place in early societies: if you’re just looking to survive or keep your family fed or meet society’s idea of femininity, I suspect that counting calories or exchanging waist measurements is not on your radar. Food, however, probably was: women and food seem to be intricately and intimately linked from the beginning.

Biological make-up, ie. breast feeding, is the most obvious illustration of this connectedness; but then there’s also the nurturing role, the cook function, the home keeper and, later, the supper on the table for the hard-working husband. Food has always been a central part of the female role and, consequently, the female identity. Could this, too, explain why I, as a woman, seemed to put more emphasis on food and find it more emotive than my male counterparts?

Let’s follow this argument a little further because it also seems to encompass the other side of the coin: eating. Back to caveman and the home keeping woman: if males had been out fighting or hunting or cavorting around the countryside, then they physically required more sustenance than their female counterpart and, thus, the differentiation between what women and men eat (in terms of how it looks, and not simply physiological need), is established. Speeding along again to Scarlett O’Hara squeezing into her corset; or the working class women donating their meat to the men; or the notion of dainty female behaviour: it’s not difficult to dismiss an evolutionary trend emerging around women and the act of eating.

The female form

So, finally, we move smoothly on from eating to the female form and, taking a walk through any art gallery demonstrates the long-standing obsession with women’s bodies. Whether the fashion has leant towards thin or fat figures, the female form, historically, seems to have attracted fascination and scrutiny – and we’re back to identity again. Whilst the position of men was informed by money and occupation, these avenues were limited to women: looks operated then, as they possibly still do now, as an asset or selling point.

My lightening bulb moment happened at this point: traditionally, women were defined by food in terms of both their value and their function. No wonder it caused so many problems.

It’s all interesting food for thought, to excuse the pun; but things have changed and, you may well be asking, what’s the relevance now? Possibly nothing more than a few minutes of contemplation or a little introspection before you rush back to the office or feed your own brood their overdue tea or head off for a night on the town with the girls; but, for me, the relevance comes from learning about myself through going back to my predecessors. It comes from gaining a little of that often lacking empathy with and connectedness to the female race. And it helps my journey.

Through putting my personal battles in a wider context and adding a little rationality to an irrational experience, I am moving away from the isolation and confusion that governed my illness, and gaining a little of that empathy and compassion which has also helped to define our gender.

I’ve just had one of those moments.

Post pilates leg stretches, and I was so surprised by the leg that I was stretching that I ended up twisting it back to front and forgetting to follow the crucial

“breathe”….

My legs do not look like my legs anymore, and I couldn’t guarantee that this body belongs to me.

This is, I suppose, what happens when you hit a normal weight after having a good two stone of ‘growing room’ for so long. It takes a little readjusting to get used to the fact that things look a bit different and nothing feel quite the same –

So, there’s a strange emptiness, at the moment, because I’m not sure what I think of this new body; and, there’s a slightly surreal disconnection, because the me that I had become accustomed to no longer exists; and, it’s unnervingly quiet, up there, as my head’s not sure which line to take –

It would like, I think, to shame me in to action; but, after nearly two decades, I am somewhat unmoved by the taunts, and the name calling, and the “come on, fatty, you’re late for work.”

And the softly softly approach seems equally pointless; because, the promise that losing weight will “make it all better, love” and miraculously transform my world, has been proved a lie by all the things that it has made worse –

It is used to me cowering under the charge that I have “let it all go” – and the subsequent sleepless nights, and desperate actions, and the panic that won’t stop until the dial goes back into reverse. Had expected that the fear of “getting fat” and losing control and becoming “normal” or “nothing” would scare me into submission; or, that the repulsion which is, I’m afraid, still instinctive, would overpower any rational arguments –

But it also realises that things are a little different now –

Because, this leg, which feels a little bulkier than the previous version, and makes me look twice when it’s being stretched, can also do a lot more than the old one.

And this body, that has strange curves and takes up a little more space, has opened doors that my previous self would not have imagined.

This stomach, that is present, rather than shockingly concave, doesn’t seem to consume my thoughts and feelings so hungrily; and, the outside, which had been the priority for so long, is contending for attention now that there are a few other things going on inside -

And the hushed silence is a strange sign of progress because my head is no longer sure how to respond.