My Body Betrays Me

 I was a picky eater as a child. I always took food on my plate and never finished it. It was a HUGE source of annoyance for my parents, who had been raised by my Grandparents & their "depression" era mentality that it was somehow shameful to leave food on a plate when there were children starving in Europe. My mother had been forced to sit at the dinner table until she finished meals, which had very little to do with children starving in Europe & everything to do with the power struggle between her and my grandmother.

But MY parents chose the "shaming" route, which was their lame attempt to "guilt" me about my eating habits & only served to make me more determined to annoy them & ultimately led to me having a eating disorder. Because, after hearing them tell me how wasteful I was with food & how I never finished anything, It just became easier not to eat, which instead of alarming them, made them simply back off and allowed me to be in control... Because ALL eating disorders are about control, not food.

And as a young girl, I was involved in dance & gymnastics, which only further fueled the need to basically look like a little boy... Lithe, petite, no hips, no tits, super flexible & able to defy gravity... I was like that until the puberty fairy hit me with her stick, not at 12 or 13, like most girls my age, but at 15 1/2, because I basically has zero body fat from my lack of nutrition & insane physicality. I remember being at a weekend retreat as a sophomore in high school & feeling a huge pain in my lower left side... Little did I know that it was my ovaries firing up for the first time & a mature egg was ripe & ready to burst from its follicle, to then travel down a fallopian tube & maybe get fertilized... And then, my breasts, which were nothing more than "mosquito bites" began to fill out a bit, while my hips became curvier, along with my upper thighs & ass... I HATED IT!

I had NO idea that my new "womanly" figure was meant to attract the opposite sex... I just wanted by boyish, slim body back... I even missed being teased about being flat-chested & "a carpenter's dream - flat as a board"... I could no longer buy jeans in the boys section of the clothing store, but suddenly wearing more tight fitting tops & skirts in a size 7 (which seemed gigantic to me) was an option & I could shop in the juniors department & The Limited or Express, Casual Corner or Contempo Casuals. I still thought I was "unfuckable" in high school, because I was a 32A & boys thought of me as "cute" not pretty or sexy, but I was actually okay with that, because while I had MANY crushes, I never actually dated anyone seriously... I wasn't ready for that. I was still getting used to my teenage body, which was apparently the envy of 2 close girlfriends... One had always struggled with her weight & the other had developed early & actually had a breast reduction the summer before our junior year of high school... She LOATHED the fact that I could wear skimpy bras, or no bra at all & I ate like a bird... Her jealousy of me, eventually turned her into a "frenemy" & I'm still leery of friendships with women, because of how badly she betrayed me and hurt me. She is now a cautionary tale for my daughter, about choosing your friends very wisely.

I blossomed in college, where boys finally discovered the "exotic", sassy Jewish girl from Chicago... In the middle of Ames, Iowa, I was a rare delicacy. I was an Art major, who was very into music & theater & unlike the Iowa farm girls from small towns, who did nothing but drink until they puked on the weekends & chase dooshy frat boys or any male that would make a suitable husband. My freshman year dorm room was kitty corner to the bathroom on our floor & if my room's windows & the windows to the bathroom were open on a Saturday or Sunday morning, I could hear the chorus of retching from those hungover girls & the bullimics that thought they were being SO clever with their eating disorders... I couldn't wait to switch rooms, which is exactly what I did 2nd semester. I learned to like eating in the cafeteria on the main floor of our dorm... I even got up to 105 lbs, which at the time was "heavy" for me... But I still fit into my size 7 clothes & I walked all over campus, so that kept me in reasonably good shape & not into "the freshman 15" weight gaining territory. I even had a few serious boyfriends, who adored me, so it was a pretty great time in my life.

I never had issues with my weight after college... I worked, I worked out after work, I did pilates & yoga when I could, as a holdover from dance & gymnastics training. I couldn't do either of those anymore, due to a knee injury in high school, but I was still in reasonably good shape. I had a few boyfriends, nothing serious, one turned out to be a real psycho, which was a total mind fuck, but eventually I got married to a Korean American guy, who looked good on paper, but was a terrible match in reality. After being together for 4 years & married for one, I got pregnant & subsequently had a miscarriage... I was devastated, because my best friend at work was also pregnant & we would've had our babies around the same time... But it was not meant to be, I remember the midwife I was working with was so incredibly kind & re-assuring, telling me that it's actually a GOOD thing that our bodies can recognize when there's a problem with a pregnancy & react accordingly & now, at least I knew I was fertile & could get pregnant... I was only 7 weeks along, so it was early & my miscarriage was not that much worse than having a bad period, but I don't think I ever properly grieved that loss or the subsequent breakdown of my "starter" marriage after 2 years... "Shit happens" I told myself & despite feeling like a massive failure, I moved on.

Five years later, I re-married & after two years of that marriage, we discussed the possibility of having a child... I remember telling my husband that it would probably take 6 months to a year of trying, but I got pregnant on the very first try, which surprised and excited me. I remember being 128 lbs when I got pregnant & I was closer to a size 8 or 10 at the time... I only gained 22 lbs with my pregnancy, which was "right in the ballpark" according to my ob / gyn. My belly grew & so did my boobs, which was a total blessing, since I FINALLY had some "real" cleavage! Unfortunately, at the 5 month mark, it was discovered that I had placenta previa, which was a dangerous & uncomfortable condition, so the rest of my pregnancy sucked & my daughter's birth required a scheduled c-section. And while I marveled at my body's ability to conceive & grow another human being, I made sure to do water aerobics & yoga, so that I wouldn't feel like a huge hippo. And I wondered if I would ever be able to get my pre-baby body back.

I never really did, because in my late 30's & 40's, my body decided it wanted to hang onto the "extra" curves & I essentially had gone from a pear shape to an hourglass... It horrified me, because no matter how hard I worked out, my body refused to go back to a size 8 & with a baby, then toddler, I simply didn't have the luxury of being able to work out for hours a day. So, I grudgingly accepted my fate & bought clothes in a bigger size... Instead of celebrating that my body had changed, thanks to my daughter, I secretly hated looking in the mirror & my old eating disorder reared its ugly head again. I foolishly compared myself to the other women in the Mom's group I belonged to, never taking the time to realize that I looked like a "normal" woman with a child. I beat myself up mercilessly for not bouncing back to my old body shape. And nobody ever told me how wrong my thinking was.

And then in my mid-late 40's I hit the perimenopause wall... And suddenly I had to contend with insomnia, hot flashes, mood swings & weight gain... ALL things I had never encountered before & no matter how hard I tried, my body STILL hung onto that extra curvature, even adding some to my hips, belly, ass & thighs, along with my upper arms... I was an am disgusted by it. Once again, instead of embracing the changes, I loathed them & would cry in the dressing room, each time I had to try on a pair of jeans. The only thing I appreciated was the fact that I had become a 38C, a small C, but still a C cup, so even though I kept the lower body curves, I also kept my new, naturally enhanced boobs (and lots of women have to go the surgical route to get them). THAT part didn't seem like a betrayal, but everything else did. Because once again, my hormones, who were just doing their genetic job, had turned me into another being, one who looked a lot like my mother, a person who has struggled with her own body image issues & dealt with it by overeating & then trying every diet known to man, while I was growing up. 

I'm still trying to accept myself at 52... I'm certainly self-aware enough to not ever make a big deal about my teenage daughter's eating habits or her blossoming body, because I KNOW firsthand how damaging that can be to a girl's self-esteem. She looks a lot like I did back then & weight has never been an issue for her, so far. She likes to dress in baggy, androgynous clothes most of the time, but when she doesn't, I make sure to compliment her on her cute figure, which so far, is perfectly in proportion. I don't ever want her to suffer the damage that I suffered & inflicted upon myself, both psychologically & physically, because I thought I had to live up to some highly unrealistic, manufactured & Photoshopped version of what a woman should look like. I'm hoping that her sassy, half-Scottish genes will allow her to not give a shit about what other people think, which so far seems to be pretty effective. I made a promise to myself long ago that I would NEVER do or say anything to make her feel like she was anything less than perfect or beautiful... I just wish I had had someone tell ME those things when I was a girl. It would've made a huge difference, then again, I probably would've turned out a lot different & far less empathetic than I've become as a middle-aged woman.