Faked you out again with the picture, no diet tips in this blog.

Last week was really hard for me. I was kind of a wreck. My stomach and head hurt, I was unreasonably hot or cold, and using the phrase “emotional roller coaster” would be an understatement unless you have a roller coaster that actually leaves earth’s orbit and then plummets into earth’s core in less than 30 seconds.

I yelled at my kids, I was a jerk to my husband, and I was unproductive and lethargic when I was taking breaks from being mean. I recognized my behavior as crazy town, I did. But there was also nothing I could do about it, I just could not figure out why I was feeling this way.

But…here is what else happened to me.

I received several online threats – nasty ones. Ones talking about my kids. Ones saying I look “easy to rape“. Horrific threats. Curl-your-toes atrocious. From strangers.

I also received menacing comments from my husband’s ex sister-in-law. This is not a woman who has ever met me, or even spoken to me, but has still found it in her heart to say terrible things about me to anyone who will listen. This woman actually called my minister to make threatening remarks and defame my character. She is teeming with rage against me. Apparently, she is also an online follower of mine and left a comment on social media that was just odd enough, and threatening enough, to make me wonder about her sanity and her intentions. It scared me.

Then, my neighbor and I had an exchange where he ended up hitting me hard with his shoulder and I hit him back. Inexplicably, only I was arrested and taken away. The police took me in without ever taking a statement from me. I was confused, I was powerless, I was treated like a second class citizen in this situation. The police took action before knowing the whole situation.

I felt unsafe. I felt unjustly persecuted. I felt targeted, and I felt powerless.

I felt a small piece of what it means to live in a world where you are marginalized and vulnerable. I tasted a bit of what it might be like to be a woman in the middle east, or a Mexican in a border state, or a black person in Ferguson, MO.

As a white privileged woman in America, I rarely have the opportunity for this kind of perspective.

It sucks. A lot.

It sucks for me and everyone I came in contact with.

The stress and anxiety also prevented me from eating and I lost 10lbs.

Then the comments started. “You look great! So skinny! What have you been doing?”

?!?!?

Losing my mind. That is what I had been doing. The comment “You look great” shocked me. I am as raw and distressed as I have ever been. Nothing about me felt great, but that apparently does not matter. I was manipulating my body to be small, and whatever price I was paying was irrelevant. Hooray or me!

When things like this happen, it is time to reevaluate. Is losing weight the most praiseworthy thing I can do? When we encounter someone, do we always evaluate their size status? Are we so entrenched in the thin ideal that we notice it above all else?

I had a very special teacher in high school, her name was Dr. Cote. She seemed to know me very well. I don’t know how, but she did. I kept a relationship with her after high school and she always seemed to notice that for me, losing weight usually meant feeling kind of sad. Not always – she looked closely enough to know the difference between me feeling great and fit – and me getting small inexplicably. She noticed and she cared. She stands out in my mind because she is the only one who looked deeper than simply just me losing weight. When everyone else congratulated me, she looked further.  She is no longer living, and a woman like that is a huge loss to the world.

Maybe the ‘end all/be all’ is not about shedding pounds. Maybe rapid weight loss is not the holy grail we think it is; maybe it is sign that something is not going well – in our bodies, in our minds, in our society.

I am making my way back to strength and well-being. I am consciously eating foods that will give my body what it needs. I am getting it together and trying to be healthy, if not thin. When I get there, I will more genuinely appreciate the compliment “You look great”.

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