Exposing my Deepest Truth

Heads up, this post discusses eating disorders which I know can be triggering to some. Also, there’s a few curse words because this is how I typically speak :)

This morning, I was out for a run and listening to Glennon Doyle’s Untamed on Audible. A lot of what she writes makes sense to me, even if it’s not specifically applicable to my life. How many of us choose to live a life that we believe others expect of us and not the life that we actually want to live? How many of us hide our truest self, our most personal experiences, for fear of being judged by others? What’s the story that you would share if challenged to open up about the part of yourself that you want to hide the most? The truth that is so deep down in your soul that it defines who you are, yet you’re not willing to own up to the impact it’s had on you and your entire life.

Here’s mine:

How my body looks now, at its heaviest weight

For a long, long time, I have feared that I am unlovable. Not that people can’t love me, but that I will never experience the deep love that’s shared between spouses, lifelong partners, soul mates. When I was in school and other girls had boyfriends and experienced first kisses, I was faced with rejection and always believed deep down that it was because my body was different, because it was larger than the other girls’. This is because of what society has conditioned us to believe; that if we aren’t thin, we aren’t good enough. We aren’t enough. Forget that I’m smart and funny and creative and have a big heart. No man in his right mind would choose to love me over someone who’s more physically attractive, in a thin body, right? I know it’s messed up but I have genuinely believed this for close to three decades and am still challenging myself to overcome it. I also know that I’m not alone in thinking this way.

Eating Keto and running a Marathon but still felt unworthy

The belief of feeling unworthy has messed me up for an even longer time than the fear of being unlovable. I’ve felt that I am not only unworthy of love but that I have to apologize for who I am and for the body that I live in. To everyone. It has led me to disordered eating and eating disorders, to excessive exercise and to counting calories, points, macros, and carbs. I’ve also restricted myself to consuming only animal products (à la the carnivore diet) and kept this up even though my bowel movements proved my body was not favouring it. I have had countless binge eating sessions to make up for the resulting emptiness of these diets, not only in my stomach but in my mind, my soul and my life.

I also fear that I will never become a mother to my own children because of the time it’s taking me to learn how to love myself and accept that a man will love me regardless of how my body looks. I’ve put off dating after many failed attempts in order to prevent heartache; but also because I was sure if I could just get “the perfect body”, I would attract that man I’m meant to marry. I still don’t know what the perfect body looks or feels like. For the past two years I have used the excuse of not wanting to get attached to someone who will get in the way of my plans to move to Australia. Though this is partly true, it’s also an excuse for not having to work on myself, knowing it’s more of my inside that needs work than my outside. It’s scary AF to work through our shit.

I realize that a key ingredient to getting through this is learning to recognize my true worth and ultimately learning to love myself unconditionally. I’m working on this every single day. I know I’m fucking awesome but I also know that I will likely always have a body that’s not deemed attractive by the majority. For nearly my entire life I, like all of us, have been told that a fat person is unlovable and in order to be loved by a good man, I must shrink my body. This is at the root of my lifelong disordered relationship with food and eating. I’ve recently started to uncover these thoughts in my mind and I’m committed to getting through what I expect to be a long process of healing. I have used food to make my body smaller in order to be lovable but when that doesn’t happen, I use it to provide comfort in my loneliness. I use my resulting weight gain as an excuse for being single. It’s a bitch of a cycle but I’m learning to break it in a way that will serve me for the rest of my life.

This post has many interrelated thoughts woven throughout it, all of which will be unraveled as I continue to work on myself. I’m sharing and working on me, even though both of these things scare the shit out of me. I know that exposing these hidden feelings for the first time takes courage and makes me stronger. I’ve been inspired by people who have chosen to share their deeply personal stories with me, and to them I am grateful. As always, my motivation for baring the rawness of my soul is to provide others with connection. There’s a special sense of community that’s formed when we hear or read a story and think “wow, I’m not alone in feeling this way, I’m not wrong, I’m not crazy.” My work is for you.