At War with Myself
I remember the first time I thought about cutting off parts of my body.
I know, morbid opening, but stay with me.
It wasn’t really that I wanted to amputate parts of myself. Instead, I wanted to be loved, a desire I believed more likely to be met if I could just gather up all the extra flesh on my stomach and… well… slice it off. I was 13 years old.
13. Years. Old. God, that pisses me off today.
I never actually had the guts to take scissors to my skin, but I did go to great lengths to get rid of that belly. And almost as soon as that extra flesh disappeared, the attention and acceptance I’d craved appeared in its place. Boys and best friends and everyone in between took notice of my new, smaller body, and reinforced the idea that the world was better when there was less of me in it… setting the stage for a lifelong strategy I used to deal with the parts of me I found undesirable.
If I didn’t like it, I learned to just cut it off. Or make it disappear. Or stuff it in a mental box. Or “compartmentalize it,” as the professionals say.
You see, I didn’t need scissors to become an expert in carving myself into bits. I had diets and my long list of achievements and the reliable oblivion at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey as my weapons-of-choice in the war between who I was and who I wanted to be.
And as I sit here, writing to you, I wish I could tell you that the war is over, but it isn’t.
I’m still fighting battles no one ever really sees.
Sure, I don’t diet, but WW ads constantly claw at me, trying to find a way to get me to believe I might fix my body if I try just one more time. Yes, I left the accomplished career that promised an enviable resume and hefty bank balance, but most days are filled with fear that I’ve made an enormous mistake. It’s true, I haven’t had a drink in over a year, but vividly remember - with just a little bit of longing - exactly what it felt like to be the life of the party.
You see, battles on every front. A war I’m still waging on myself.
And when I am confronted with this part of me, I am often reminded of a story I want to share with you:
I once worked with a woman who - while chugging down her third of five 96 oz. daily jugs of water- told me there was a fat girl inside of her who might escape if she didn’t find a way to drown her. Yes, I said drown her. Which both breaks my heart and pisses me off, all in the exact same second.
Talk about waging a war… she didn’t even try to pretend that the end game was anything other than total annihilation of the person she believed herself to be.
Sometimes I think of this woman and wonder… does she know how well a fat woman can float?
Yes, I’m sort of trying to be funny, but more importantly, I’m trying to shed a little light on the truth about the persistence of the human spirit.
Because while I don’t know many things for sure, I do know this:
We cannot run from who we are forever.
Either we tire and surrender.
Or we die trying.
As for me, I’m ready to surrender… and I suspect you might be, too.
Because you’re still here, still reading, still considering what it might take to lay down your weapons right along with me.
So, stay. I think I’ve got an idea about the perfect place to start.
Last week, I learned something over on the old ‘gram (Instagram for the over-50 crowd - don’t worry - I had to google it, too)
On the Project’s account, I launched a little storytelling campaign I titled “#noneedforanewyou” aimed at inviting women to talk about the two things they were committed to keeping about themselves in 2020. You know, a whole counter-effort at undoing this “New Year, New You” bullshit. After only a few days, I was holding onto a handful of brilliant video submissions, chock full of courageous women holding onto themselves in the new year.
But there was one video in particular that stood out to me.
This video was longer, a submission from a business owner in the beauty industry. She opened the video by sharing that she had absolutely ascribed to the “New Year, New You” mentality in years past and was sincerely making space to consider another way of thinking about the decade ahead. All good stuff… but then she said something that flipped the whole lens of the campaign for me.
She said:
“So, I’m choosing to embrace every bit of me. As a new mama, I’ve had some battles with the mirror…. My arms, my belly, my breasts, and even the scars I was left with after a C-section. And if I am going to be an example to my daughter, I need to bring every bit of me with me in 2020.” - Nicole
You guys… she basically said, “Screw this ‘2 things’ approach. I’m taking the whole damn thing with me into this New Year.”
And that is the kind of wisdom I crave. The kind that turns the lens a few degrees in one direction and uncovers something entirely new there.
You see, she saw something I missed. I wanted to nudge women in the direction of a personal peace treaty by encouraging them to accept the parts they already found acceptable. There is little peace there. Only a tacit agreement to avoid attacking the good stuff.
But this woman… she doubled-down, showing me that we can’t end the war while we’re still lopping off the parts of ourselves and our stories we find undesirable. She brought me back to center by telling me the truth:
there is no peace without the whole person.
Yes, even the parts we hate. Especially those parts.
And so that’s where we start. With all of who we are. With big bellies and unsightly scars and as many chins as one face can handle. With messy stories and crippling failures and fear about how the whole thing turns out.
I can’t guarantee it will be easy. I’m almost certain it won’t be simple. But I do know anything is possible with you by my side.
So, let’s lay down our weapons together and see what waits for us on the other side of the war.