The Elephant in My Room

If it’s okay for an elephant to be big, why isn’t it okay for me to be big?

Someone might think I like pink…

I realized the other day that there’s an elephant in my room. Yeah, you know. The thing I don’t want to look at or admit to at all. And this elephant? Hot pink. Can’t miss it.

Although it’s been lurking around the corners of my life, it reared up, lifted its trunk into the air and trumpeted out my anxiety, loud and clear. The anxiety came right to the surface for me when my dear, dear Substack pal, Eileen Dougharty, asked me what my plans were for the coming week. I told her I wasn’t any busier than any other week and asked why she wanted to know. Her question came right on the tail of a fun Zoom we’d just had, when I said to her “I wish I could give you a giant in-person Nan hug right now.”

She heard my wish and thought it might be possible to grant it, so she reached out to me to see if we could make it happen. She proposed spending a couple of days with me at my house. We’ve never met in person. It’s pretty easy for Eileen to hop on an airplane to anywhere. She makes her living as a flight attendant, so the sky’s the limit. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

Eileen lives in Chicago, and I live in upstate New York. She’s had some free time the past month or so. She’s preparing to have a major medical procedure on the first Monday in June. That’s next week. It’ll put her out of commission for things like whimsical last-minute jaunts halfway across the country, until she recuperates.

My first response to her idea for a visit was, “Are you serious? I’d llooovve that!”

The next words that popped from my mouth, burst out and were impossible to take back. This was what I said,

“I need to tell you, I’m really fat.” My lightly buried shame came racing to the surface. Why am I saying this? In that moment, I felt like shrinking––in more ways than one. I was warning her away, offering her an escape hatch. Letting her know how very insecure I can be. Showing her how little I value myself at times. Ouch.

The shame I felt burned hot. Eileen’s response?

She nodded, looking at me on our Zoom screen and replied, “Well, I have Parkinson’s.”

At first, I thought she meant, “boo-hoo, crybaby, I have a debilitating neurological disease. You just eat too much.” Eileen Dougharty would NEVER say something like that, to me or anyone else. What she meant was, everyone’s got something. The more sane me knows my weight has nothing to do with how much she loves me. And her Parkinson’s? Same, same. Of course, I love her. Who wouldn’t?

I know all that in my head, but my heart is way behind a good deal of the time. Sometimes, I feel like I have to apologize for taking up space. And I hate it when that comes up. And I hate it even more when I say it out loud.

It’s very easy for me to sequester myself. Home (which is also where I work) is my happy, happy, happy place. But lately, I’ve noticed that I’m getting out into the world almost as much as I did during the pandemic lockdown, or to be more succinct, I’ve been getting out not at all. Unless you count my weekly visit to my therapist. That’s when I talk about my tendency to hide. But does that even count?

The shame I feel IN ADVANCE of social interactions is powerful. Powerful enough for me to opt out of things I know I would enjoy, just to avoid the hell I’ll put myself through in anticipation of the event. I have unkind conversations with my inner critic, running through a list of potential difficulties that I might encounter should I venture out into the world.

The list includes things as mundane as making a clothing choice, a decision that a lot of people probably don’t think twice about, or at least, not as much as I do. What can I wear that’s flattering? And if not exactly flattering, at least, it has to be clothing that won’t call too much attention to what I perceive as my flaws. And by flaws, I specifically mean my larger-than-I’d-like-it-to-be body. Wondering, as I try things on, why, all of a sudden, the shirt I wore a year ago is no longer comfy and roomy. I have no recollection of the collar pulling at my neck or the shirt feeling tight through the sleeves.

Wow, hmmm. Did it shrink in the wash? Ha. I’m kidding myself. I don’t want to admit it’s highly likely that I’ve grown larger in the interim. Of course, I did.

I ruminate before I go to a restaurant I’ve never been to. Will I be able to sit comfortably with my dining companion? Will the chairs be wide enough to accommodate my curvy hips so that I can enjoy myself without having to balance on the very edge of the seat for the entire meal, always aware of how miserable I am, my ire up because it doesn’t seem to occur to people in smaller bodies that there are other people who don’t conform to an “acceptable” body shape and size that fits into the chairs chosen more for their visual appeal than for offering comfort to all of their guests.

The seating in movie theaters? Unless I spring for the premium seats, the regular seats are tight for me as well. So, I spring for the more expensive seats to avoid the upset of finding there is yet another place where I don’t fit (in).

Don’t get me started on the challenges of airplane travel and seatbelts. Asking for seatbelt extenders or discovering that an armrest is broken so I can’t lift it to widen my space, add up to a perfect storm for destroying what little measure of wanderlust I might possess. You really could fit my wanderlust into a thimble.

My response to Eileen gave me a chance to tune in to what I need to get curious about. Of what I still need to heal. I need to be reminded of how troubled I am about the shape of my body, and how I still equate my worth with how I appear. I need to be reminded so that I can deal with the feelings, the self-loathing. That’s more important than dealing with the fat. I need to acknowledge that I’ve been hiding. Hiding in my house, while participating in the world I’ve built for myself with the help of Zoom and Facetime. No face-to-face IRL meetings necessary. A perfect solution. Except when it comes to getting and giving hugs. Hugs are very important. Hugs are necessary.

I’m calling it “hiding while fat.” For the most part, I live my life from the neck up. That’s been my reality for a very long time. I seem to have convinced myself that being social on camera (as long as people can’t see all of me) is enough. I convince myself that it equates to being with friends and clients in real life. Except for those damn hugs.

My 12 Step meeting is on Zoom, every day. I’ve been going for almost two years. This is a meeting filled with women who have eating disorders and none of us know what the others truly look like. Many of us are living life from the neck up. Many of us have body dysmorphia. With body dysmorphia we tend not to have a realistic sense of what we actually look like. This applies to overweight people and people with anorexia. If you ask me what my image of my body is, I’ll tell you that in my mind, I live in a fit, athletic body. When I look in a full-length mirror––which doesn’t happen often––I’m shocked at how I appear. I’m big now; when I was in my 20s and wrestling with anorexia, I had no idea how emaciated I was until decades later when I looked at photos of myself from that time. It too, was shocking. I was skeletal. Back then, I couldn’t see how bad it was.

I need these wake-up calls from time to time. I need to hear myself blurt out statements like the one I made to Eileen because they’re reality checks. I need those moments to help me assess my progress in recovery.

They’re messengers that let me know how far I’ve come and how far I need to go.

Yes, I’d like to weigh less. I’m working on it. I’m losing weight, slowly. I’m not overeating and I’m exercising, a little. Losing weight would be good for me on many levels, my health, my emotional well-being. I know I may never be a thin woman again. The more crucial thing is loving myself for who I am, and not what I look like. To see clearly that my size is not a reflection in any way of my value as a human being.

My wish for myself is that I learn to strut the stuff I have, no matter what that stuff might weigh.

My visit with Eileen, you ask? It was everything I hoped it would be.

And boy, can she hug!

L to R: Eileen Dougharty, Hugo, the dastardly photo bomber, and Nan Tepper

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