Not so Good Friday around here
Apr 10, 2009 Feminism/Politics
My childcare has food poisoning so first I want to acknowledge that her Friday is even more suckier than mine before I whine that I’m scrambling to reschedule meetings. I’m just grouchy because I am discombobulated. I’ll recover. And Noah is being considerate and making everyone breakfast so I could get to my work inbox and stuff.
(sigh)
I just emailed Becca this (because she’s my editor/writer friend who talks to me about editor/writer stuff when I’m working on essays) but in my essay about calling myself fat it is only about ME. It’s about me not wanting to be called fat and the times I have been called fat and how I feel like I need to get over it for the sake of my daughter who — being female — will eventually be called fat and for my son who — having female friends and perhaps someday partners — will eventually be dealing with women who say, “Do I look fat in this?” So it’s a very small focus, the essay. It’s not about calling other people fat or about the media or manners or fat-phobia in general — it’s about ME and calling myself fat and obviously this is a good thing essay organization-wise since talking about the rest of that just gets off-track.
Becca asked if I felt defensive and I’ll tell you all, YES. ABSOLUTELY. And I suppose I feel defensive about this because it’s not easy at all to talk about, (which goes back to my need to pretend that we don’t all know that I am fat) and so discussion is just harder for me around it. Yet another reason to work on the essay.
Here is one piece I’m putting in the essay though. I was thinking about it while I was working out because I’ve never blogged it since it was and is very painful for me.
So — one of the hard things about my infertility struggles was that I now had proof that my body was a worthless piece of shit. If you read fat-positive stuff, sometimes it will focus on how fat women are so fruitful and lush and womanly and also — the adjectives imply — fertile. You know, they’ll go “womanly hips to cradle a new life” and “lush breasts to nurture another being.” But me — I was just fat and barren. I loathed my fat, barren body. My infertility was unexplained but I had myself convinced it had to do with my weight and I convinced myself of this because all the infertility books say if you are too fat or too skinny you can sometimes f*ck up your fertility. Plus there are always miracle conception stories from women who lose a bunch of weight and — boom! — get pregnant. My RE was neutral on it. Maybe losing weight would help, maybe not but he was pushing for Clomid.
I decided the whole infertility journey had to have some meaning and I decided I would get stronger and healthier and lose some weight and see if it helped me get my cycles in order. But I was really scared about it because I didn’t want to become diet obsessed (I had never dieted before although I have lost weight in the past by exercising more) and I didn’t want to sink deeper into self-loathing, which I knew would be easy to do since inevitably I would eat something “bad” or skip a work-out.
I took it all very slowly and deliberately. I made small, heatlhy changes. I started keeping track — not obsessively — with portion sizes. I asked Brett to quit buying ice cream. I also started running instead of just doing step aerobics. And slowly but surely, I started losing weight. I felt really good about it. I felt confident about my ability to keep the weight off because it was coming off slowly and I felt like I was making changes I’d be able to live with forever. After every run (and it took me a long time to get to where I could run for twenty minutes without stopping to walk) I would stop and breathe and stretch and pray.
I started to feel better and more forgiving about myself. And as it happens? My cycles shortened from 35 days to 29 days, which boded well and sure enough — after losing about 25 pounds — I got pregnant.
And then I miscarried.
I was at my brother-in-law’s wedding when I began to lose that pregnancy so I didn’t get back to the RE until I was well and truly bleeding. I was still holding out impossible hope though because you do that when you’re insane to be pregnant. And this is how my doctor greeted me (this part is in my archives): “Congratulations! You’re pregnant!” and then when I gasped at the miracle he smoothly added, “But it won’t last.”
This is the part that’s harder to write.
I was crying in his office, sobbing so hard I couldn’t see and he started pressuring me to consider the Clomid, which I really did NOT want to do. And I said (through tears), “I’ve been working really hard to lose weight and I’ve lost twenty-five pounds so far and isn’t it possible that if I keep on this course that it’ll help regulate my luteal phase defect?” And he said, “How much do you weigh now?” And I told him (although I don’t feel ready to tell you yet) and he said flipping to a BMI chart, “How tall are you? Well, then that’s obese! You’re obese!”
Then he harangued me about wasting time (I was 31) trying to lose weight when he could get me pregnant RIGHT NOW if I would only follow his directive. And I don’t really remember how I got out of there but all I could hear was “obese” and suddenly it didn’t seem like such an accomplishment that I’d gotten to a size 12 again.
I haven’t run since. Because the next time I tried to run I started crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe and I had to stop and I felt like a big, stupid worthless thing trying to stagger around a track. I felt so stupid. I felt so humiliated. I felt like he could see me in all my fat glory on the track and I sure couldn’t run past the playground full of skinny moms with their many children so I went home to hide my shameful self and the next month I started the Clomid.
Contrary to legend — I did not drown my sorrows in cheesecake or curl up with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a chick flick like a Cathy comic strip. I just stopped running and eventually the weight came back on.
(I have tried running since but can’t get past the shin splints.)
So when I allow my children to acknowledge my fatness and when I acknowledge my own fatness, I am doing this in part because I need to teach myself, too, what I want to teach my kids: That I can be fat and accomplishd and lovable and attractive and worthy. I don’t really believe it yet. I mean, I sorta do but in a very compartmentalized way. It is hard to own my good points when I am owning my less socially acceptable points. I can acknowledge that I’ve reached some of my writing goals but very often hot on the heels is, “Yes, but I’m fat.” As if it negates everything — anything – I’ve done.
I feel best about my body when I’ve got an exercise routine but only if I unhook said routine from the idea of weight loss and trust that I will be the weight I should be if I’m eating right and exercising and understanding that I will always be bigger than many people think I ought to be. (And many of these people are wearing white coats, which reminds me that I need to find a new doc now that my insurance has changed, which just makes me want to CRY because it’s hard to find a doctor who will not give me shit about my weight even though my blood pressure is low and my cholesterol is normal and I work out regularly. And I am prone to crying in doctor’s offices because I can bluff my way through my kids calling me squishy but not so much when it’s a person of some authority. I get kinda wimpy then and my high ideals end up puddling away into a stagnant pool of shame.)
I’m working to drown out voices like Grosskinsky’s and I’m working to head off the voices that will, without a doubt, be coming for my daughter.
So you know, when we get into semantics arguments or a totally civilized debate about manners, I am a little bit prone to feeling like people are deliberately not hearing me even though I know — and in every other blog type situation would accept — that it’s got to do with my writing and not with your reading. (In other words, that I’m writing it wrong. I know I’m writing it wrong but I feel more sensitive and defensive than I usually would.)
Anyway. I want to write this essay in part because writing things down helps me get rid of things and if I can write it all out loud then it won’t be so shitty. And at least dealing with the comments here will kind of ready me to deal with any comments I’ll get if it’s published. So I know that’s all good and everything but I’m still slightly miserable about it all. (Because i just wanted to write it and get it out and not have to debate it just yet — still fragile. Which how should you psychically know that? And honestly I’m not blaming any of y’all for saying anything that I got all hepped up about — just explaining my small insanity around this.)
(I’m not rereading this post because I’ll want to delete it so anything that doesn’t make sense will just have to not make sense and bad spelling and poorly placed punctuation will have to hang there, too. Also I am going to ask you to be kind, which is not something I usually ask from my commenters in regards to myself but honestly, this is one of the most difficult posts I’ve ever written and as I’ve said, I am particularly fragile around it. And now I’m not only frustrated with my work day but I am also marginally depressed.)
Tags: Becca, clomid, essay, Infertility, Noah, weight, working out
When envy works & when it doesn’t
Dec 31, 2008 The Story of My Life
I think most writers are envious. Chekov said writers are as envious as pigeons (I know this because I just got done looking up writer quotes about envy). I think envy comes with the territory, at least for any writer who wants to be read. Because to be ambitious is to be hungry and if you’re hungry, you work a little harder to get to where you want to be.
Worrying that there might not be enough at the great big universal buffet for you and every other hungry person is made worse if the only thing you want to eat up there is the fancy-schmancy gourmet seven layer cake that only serves six. Which is why some people will knock you over to get to the front of the line but others will stay steady on course but not insane — after all, there’s always pie.
My take is that if you believe that only the cake is worth eating then you’ll knock people down to get it. I’ve been knocked down before. There ARE people who will steal your words and your ideas or step on your back to step up to an editor or swipe your sources or badmouth your expertise, etc. etc. Yes, there are. And some of them will be successful even though they don’t deserve it. But I do believe that the cake will taste bitter because when someone is that hungry, nothing ever tastes good and nothing is ever enough so I don’t want to be that person even though I like cake.
On the other hand, if you’re so afraid of causing offense or so afraid you’re not deserving and always hang back from the buffet or if you’re so tensely afraid of getting knocked over that you refuse to move up at all, then you’ll always end up eating stale cookies and I don’t want to be that person either. Especially not the one who shrugs affectedly and says, “I could have the cake if I wanted but I am choosing these stale cookie crumbs as a sign of my superiority over the buffet line” all to try to cover up their fear that they can’t compete with the rest of the line. (Because I have been that person — spent most of my teen years being that person — and not only does it do NOTHING to assuage one’s hunger but everyone sees through the pose anyway.)
All of this is why I think a little envy is a good thing. A little envy keeps you just uncomfortable enough to keep trying. A little edge to your hunger means you won’t tolerate it when someone steps on your foot to push to the front of the line. It’ll make you say, “Hey, no ditching! [We called cutting in line ditching, I don't know what y'all called it.]” And as long as envy isn’t your total driving force, you can be happy when you get pie and really, really appreciate it when you do get that fancy-schmancy gourmet seven layer cake.
Where I don’t want to be envious is in my personal life because that doesn’t help me at all unless I understand that jealousy is always about me and never about the person I’m jealous of and then learn something from it, which I am so sick of doing. I am so sick of learning from all my mistakes and weaknesses. (sigh) But I’ve never bought that ignorance was bliss so I’m stuck with always taking my life’s little after-school lessons to heart.
I remember lamenting the case of the person on whom the sun always shines at my therapist’s office way back when. This person has had not just a good life but a great life. This person is attractive, cheerful, smart, funny and has scads of friends. S/he has never had any real challenges despite going on many adventures and trying many new things. S/he has had it easy in love and easy in marriage and easy in the getting of children who have turned out to be great sleepers, extremely obedient and adorable. S/he has a nice house, a great job, a decent income and lives in a great town with lots of opportunity for travel. This — to my unhappy mind — didn’t seem fair. After all, I work hard. I am a nice person and yet! And yet back then infertility was casting a pall over it all. It made my small house smaller, my (at the time) good job less terrific and my darling son was not enough. It wasn’t fair! IT WASN’T FAIR! I was bitter. And so I railed against this lucky person. I railed against his/her good fortune like it was stealing from mine.
“But it’ll even out, right?” I begged my therapist to tell me. “I’ll have my good times and they’ll have their bad times, right? Right?”
“Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe s/he will always be better off than you in lots of ways. Maybe his/her life will always be easy.”
I couldn’t believe it.
“But s/he isn’t really happy, right? Because to have real, true, deep happiness means you have to suffer some, right? I mean, I’m getting wisdom and character-building opportunities and will be a better person and the WINNER eventually somehow, right?”
And my therapist shook her head and gave me the sad, sympathetic look she could give that always made me cry and said, gently, “Dawn, life is not fair and some people just have it better than other people.”
This was not good news to my broken little barren heart desperate for some soothing schadenfreude. I didn’t want to hear that some people would get unending joy and privilege while most of us would have a more equal measure of happiness and hardships.
(Because hearing how much better I had it than other people didn’t make me feel any more grateful — it just made me feel worse for being not only unhappy and envious but also greedy, which does not inspire good behavior in myself. It is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy where I admonish myself, “Gosh, Dawn, aren’t you glad you’re at least not homeless, you selfish little pig?” And I answer right back to myself, “Well, as long as you’re calling me a selfish little pig I may as well act like one and seethe uselessly about all the things I want and don’t have!” And back in the day it meant that I would will all those pregnant people to have babies with colic, which is ironic seeing as how when I did eventually get a baby I got one with colic, which proves one of three things: that The Secret works and I was in vibrational harmony with colic or that God has a sense of humor or that life randomly happens in funny and ironic ways.)
Somehow hearing unequivocally and baldly that “life is not fair” in the desperate context of trying to overcome my infertility gave me the stark kick in the pants I needed. I could either stay unhappy with all I didn’t have or learn to be happy with my fairly nice lot in life and learn to manage my envy for good instead of evil.
I’m still jealous of that person who’s life looks so sunny (and it hasn’t gotten any darker in the seven years since I was seeing my therapist either). Especially now that s/he moved to an even more architecturally interesting house in the retro-modern style I so adore. (So unfair! I would love that house!) But that goes with the territory that is me. I no longer take it as a personal affront that his/her house has a nicer entryway than mine. I mean, I still want the entryway but am able to see that having a nicer entryway doesn’t mean that God loves him/her more than me. And it no longer keeps me up nights the way it used to when I was so unhappy. Because that’s key — when I am eaten up by jealousy it’s because there is something else in my life that’s demanding my attention. Either I need to do soemthing major like resolve that life crisis (i.e., infertility) or I need to do something minor like clean my crowded entryway and put a basket out for everyone’s shoes. Or (in the case of professional jealousy) I need to ease up on the whining and get busy on my goals. Because no one is going to get that cake for me. That, my friends, is all up to me.
Tags: envy, goals, Infertility, inspiration, jealousy, professional, success, therapy, vent, work, writers
More on happiness in spite of it all
Dec 30, 2008 work work work
Jackie and I apparently inhabit the same brain. She wrote, “When I look at my own life, I am truly and authentically happy– but then I start comparing what I have/do to what other people have/do, and let that get me all twisted up. Or I worry about what could possibly go wrong and *that* gets me all twisted up. So I need to figure out a way to not let my own stuff distract me from realizing that I am happy, in my own life.”
To which I say, “Word.”
I was raised in the not-so-fine art of comparison. As in, “Sure, she has a Baby Alive but YOU have a Ginny Sweet Shoppe!” And, “Sure she’s drop-dead gorgeous but YOU are smart!” Which never made me feel good about my Ginny Sweet Shoppe or my test scores but did make me jealously guard the things I had and also fear happiness, because if it all evens out than any added joy will also take something from me.
I have gotten better at keeping my eyes on my own plate in the past few years mostly out of necessity. Because there are always people who are smarter, more accomplished and have BOTH a Baby Alive AND a Ginny Sweet Shoppe and while I haven’t been able to totally rid myself of envy, I have gotten better at understanding that 1) there is room for us all to find our own measure of success; and 2) it really is the journey not the destination.
I tell you, as someone who has struggled mightily with jealousy her whole life, going through infertility was a good thing for me. There is nothing to hone a person’s skills in humility more than smiling stiffly through scads of pregnancy announcements and baby showers for a few years while desperately wanting another baby to arrive. I could have gotten permanently bitter and mean and seen my own life as not enough for me (it happens and I could point to blogs to prove it but have no interest in doing THAT). But it was a deliberate choice not to get that way despite the temptation. I’m not getting all saintly about this, about seeing my blessings instead of wallowing in misery (for the record, I tried on both and bounced back and forth between them). I’m saying that it was a deliberate choice to say, if this is how my life will be, I will take meaning from it. I will let it improve me instead of make me miserable. Because, dammit, I like my life and I won’t let circumstances ruin it for me.
See, that’s intrinsic happiness at work. (I don’t think it’s always a choice. I have come to believe — despite hearing all my growing up that I was a pessimist — that I am a staunch if cautious optimist. It’s just that I’m also kinda whiny.)
Likewise, like Jackie I can get undone worrying and do almost every night when insomnia kicks in and my defenses are down. Feeling happy is scary. It seems smarter to be worried or fearful or angry or even sad because it seems like when life is not so hot and I’m happy anyway that I’m giving in and settling for the not so hot parts. So here I am worried about my freelancing career and I think, “But if I’m happy instead of tormented, who will do the work of worrying?” As if the worrying does more than steal my sleep. As if the worrying actually somehow effects positive change.
I think, “If I take my eye off the prize — off of the Baby Alive or the book deal, then it’s like I’m saying no to them. It’s like I’ll lose the hunger to claw my way to them.” This is when I have to stop and do the one day at a time thing. It’s when I have to stop and look down at my feet and see where I’m standing, take notice of my surroundings and what I’m learning on the way.
I am thinking about the new year. I am thinking about this my last year as a thirty-something and thinking about how I want to enjoy my life as I live it and how I want to wring all I can out of my experiences. (Because I am greedy after all.) I want to have enough faith in the hard work that I do that I don’t feel like I have to second-guess myself late at night when everyone else is asleep and I get to worrying. I want to be kinder, less apprehensive, more interested in what’s happening now.
Those are some of my resolutions. This my first year to make some after at least two decades of not caring much for resolutions. It’s because I’m getting older, I’m sure. (And more near-sighted. Sheesh.)
Tags: Infertility, wordpress
