Fear and Loathing in the Mirror

Today's Triumph: When I got home after taking the kids to camp, I fought the temptation to go back to bed and instead cleaned my kitchen and bathroom. Then I gave myself half an hour to lay down, feeling like I had earned it.

I don't really have a direction for this post, so let's just see where it goes. I just feel the need to write one. I have a lot of feelings all the time, about everything. I have a bucket of tears balanced on a wire, and the slightest vibration spills the bucket. Yesterday was mostly good. We had tech for Much Ado About Nothing from 10 - 6, and I only cried once. It really had nothing to do with the thing that triggered it. I play a man in Paris during WW2, and therefore I wear a button-up shirt tucked into trousers. It's a combination of clothing that I'm not comfortable in and it stresses me out.

I didn't cry when I got dressed yesterday, but I was close. I managed to hold it together though, until the costumer brought me the tiny stole she had ordered for my costume. I play the friar, so I am to wear a stole with crosses draped around my neck. This stole was small by any standards, but of course since I feel so enormous in general, and in that outfit in particular, when I put it on and it barely extended past my chest I wanted to crawl in a hole. Tears sprang up. I hated myself for crying and having so little capacity to absorb and distribute even the smallest impacts lately. The situation was quickly addressed and the stole is to be lengthened. Maybe nobody else even thought my body was part of the problem, but to me, my body is the entire problem, all the time.

The night before, I realized rather late that I didn't have a white undershirt, which I needed because the shirt I had ordered was very light and my undergarments would have shown through. I went to Target in hopes of finding some undershirts that would work. You may have felt pathetic before, but have you ever felt "crying in the men's underwear section at Target at 11 at night because you can't find one damn undershirt to fit you" pathetic? I ended up paying too much for a white tank top in the maternity section. I had to stretch it out.

Weight loss success stories abound. I used to be one. I want to be one again. I take steps and then I lose them. It's so hard to explain to people who have never had to carry this burden how hard it is to reverse once you get here, and what it does to your mind. The level of failure I feel is crippling. I failed to keep the weight off after losing 108 pounds years ago. I failed to not surpass my previous weight when I gained it all back. I not only surpassed it, I fucking doubled it. I fail to not feel like everyone is judging me every time I eat something. I make myself do it anyway. Sometimes I eat too much to prove a point. Sometimes I eat too much because I can't stop. Sometimes I eat too much when I'm with people because I know I won't eat by myself. I fail to maintain healthy habits. I fail to love myself.

I don't know how to love myself in this body that nobody else loves. I don't know how to believe that anyone else can love it. I never have. I've tried to convince myself that I love my body and I'm happy with myself, but that has really never been true. Now I am more aware of it than I have ever been. I'll write a different post on why that is.

There have been people who loved my body and I let them. In some cases I even professed and believed at the time that I loved them too. I didn't. Of all the men I've dated and been with, I have only loved one, and the really fucked up part is that he was the only one who I was sure did not love my body. He would constantly bring up his ex and how he could wrap his hands around her waist, or how they had once measured and found that his thigh and her waist had the same circumference. We were together for thirteen months and had sex seven times. On all the nights that we didn't have sex, I thought about his ex and her tiny waist.

Every other man that I allowed into my life was there because he seemed to love my body when I couldn't. I was seeking affirmation, and I know that. I was terrible to them, and I know that too. Some of them had genuine feelings. I dumped every one of them. I think on some level I believed that there was something wrong with them for being attracted to me. As for women and non-binary people, I never even had the nerve. I didn't know how to approach any of them, whose bodies I envied. Even large women who didn't seem to loath themselves like I did. I was paralyzed.

I'll write another time about when I got the nerve to approach a woman for the first time. That's a doozy.

I feel like a failure in general, but I can point to two things that were both represented yesterday in a positive light. As much as I hate myself and my body, there are loves that outweigh both my body and my hatred of it. My love of theater overcomes my terror of being costumed and dressing like a man with my shirt tucked in. I'll continue confronting that fear as long as someone is still willing to let me be on a stage. Second, we had a pool party after tech yesterday, and there is no level of self-loathing that can keep me out of the water.

I know I can allow things I love to win over things I hate, even when the thing I hate is myself. I am trying to make myself a thing I love.