Drinking Seagulls – A Blog Series for the New Year
I cannot heal what I’m unwilling to face, to look at with honesty and objectivity.
I have done a lot of work over the years with therapists and coaches to deal with family-of-origin and disordered eating issues. Over the past four years, after decades of failed diets (what other kind of diet is there?), I have worked hard to create a foundation upon which I could lose weight (100#) and maintain the loss. During the past several months, I have worked to openly and objectively examine my past to better understand why I’ve done the things I’ve done and to heal in deeper ways, beyond having a smaller body and more command over what I eat.
To do that, I’ve been writing a lot, reflecting upon key events and habits that have shaped my life.
Today, I begin a series of blog posts to share my story with others, in the hope that anyone who is struggling in their relationships with food and eating, and feel like they’re at war with their own bodies, might see some light and a way forward for themselves.
I want to state at the onset that I don’t blame anyone for things that happened to me when I was a child. I am not using these writings as opportunities to point my finger at others and say, “See, this is why I’m the way I am.”
I am doing this work, in large part, to better understand myself, to accept all facets of my life, and to move forward knowing who I am, where I’ve been, and changes that I have made and will continue to make in my life.
Drinking Seagulls, Part One
A class of kindergarteners gather on the carpet with their teacher near the end of the school year. The teacher asks her students what they will be doing over the summer break.
I vividly remember telling her that I will be drinking seagulls. I cannot remember her response. I imagine she was nonplussed.
What I meant to say, and perhaps she knew, was that I was going to be drinking Sego, a liquid nutritional support supplement. My mother had informed me that I was going on a diet over the summer. I had seen my mother’s stash of vanilla-, strawberry-, and chocolate-flavored shakes in a kitchen cupboard. To me, they were like ice cream, and I was excited at the prospect of drinking them.
Little did my five-year-old self know that I was being set up for a lifelong struggle with food and eating that included body shaming, that I was both too much and not enough, that I was not acceptable as is, that there was something wrong with my body, and more importantly, that there was something wrong with me.
I didn’t know that this was only the beginning, that there would be years and decades of failed diets, losing weight only to regain it and then some, of increasing levels of self-loathing and despair that I would never figure out the solution to the problem of me. Quite literally, I would spend decades struggling with food obsession, compulsive overeating, bingeing, purging, and restricting, all the while wanting nothing more than to lose weight and fit in. Wanting nothing more than to be ok, to be like everyone else, to be wanted, accepted, and safe.
The message was that I could attain those things by controlling myself… how much I ate and the size of my body. Thus, at the age of five, I started a perpetual cycle of weight gain, loss, and regain, frustration, self-loathing, and desperation as one diet after another came and went, while I got bigger and bigger. I didn’t drink seagulls, lose weight, and then carry on with life at an acceptable weight in an acceptable body, free to be whoever I wanted to be.
On the contrary, the diet between kindergarten and first grade was just the teaser of what was to become the primary focus of my life: to lose weight and gain approval, acceptability, love, and worthiness – just like everyone else.
At the age of five, I was not conscious of what was happening and what was to come. How could I? I was five. I just wanted to please my mother. What I knew was that she didn’t approve of my five-year-old body. I was too big, too round, too much. She wanted me to be smaller and thinner. And she was willing to share her stash of Sego to make it so. All I knew was that I was being given some sweet treats on a regular basis, and I liked it.
It’s hard to say if I understood that my mother was telling me that I wasn’t acceptable as is, that I was too much, and that she didn’t approve. I don’t know when I realized that my body was the problem, and that really, I was a problem, and that the solution was out there somewhere, because I couldn’t be trusted to be and solve it on my own. But that is exactly the message I internalized and carried with me:
~I was too much, but not enough.
~I was not acceptable as is.
~I was a problem to be solved.
~I was not worthy of love and approval until something changed.
I knew on some level that such acceptance, approval, and love were conditional. I didn’t meet the conditions. I never would.
I understood that there was something deeply wrong with me. For far too long, I wholeheartedly believed this, and was alternately attempting to remedy it or running and hiding from it… with food obsession and disordered eating.
I never felt safe, as though I was one misstep away from complete ruin.
I created safety and comfort in the only way I knew… by seeking forbidden food and eating as much of it as I could, preferably in secret, before it was gone or taken away. This was, of course, a false sense of safety and comfort. It lasted for a few short minutes at a time. But I was left with deep and increasingly intense frustration at my inability to solve the problem of being me. If only I could just stop eating… If only I could just stick to a plan… If only I could just keep the weight off…
In a world of if… then scenarios, I was on a perpetual hunt for the one that could transform me from who I was and am to a version of myself that, essentially, wasn’t me.
I searched for acceptability, lovability, worthiness, safety and certainty through a diet.
Of course, it’s impossible to find such things through a food plan. It’s ludicrous.
Looking at these words in print, it’s absurd to think that this is what I was doing.
But it was exactly my mission. And not just mine. Countless women have done and continue to do the same.
We have bought into this notion hook, line, and sinker.
If only, if only, if only, when finally, when finally, when finally….
We have gotten this message collectively through cultural indoctrination. For many of us, it is compounded by family of origin/parental messages of, “I’ll love you when…”
If we cannot do this thing… conform to a societal standard of beauty and acceptability by performing the seemingly simple act of not overeating, bingeing, restricting, starving… (fill in the blank), then surely, there is something wrong with us.
Of course, diets don’t work. They cannot possibly succeed in doing what we are really expecting them to do.
But in the end, the truth is simple, if not necessarily easy to believe, especially after years and decades of believing otherwise:
~There’s nothing wrong with any of us.
~We are not broken, defective, or damaged.
~We are lovable, worthy, and acceptable as is. No qualifiers. Period.
My journey over the past several years has been learning this lesson over and over and over again. It’s not a one and done process. If only.
My growth and my strength are rooted in my willingness to return to myself again and again, especially when I revert to old habits and ways of being, and in my willingness to see my history with open, loving, and nonjudgmental eyes and heart. They are found in my ability to hold gentle, loving, infinitely compassionate space for myself, especially when I’m afraid and uncomfortable, to stay present, to not run away in the old, habitual ways. Ultimately, they are found in my willingness to take care of myself in all ways (physical, emotional, spiritual, mental) without judgment, without the “shoulds” and “musts”.
For me, this work has been about finding home, and realizing that I am my home, returning to my body is my homecoming.
This work has saved and changed my life.
~To be continued…
Thank you for reading.
Much appreciation and love,
Jenny