The Rundown on the Breakdowns.

Today's Triumph: I have reached a certain level of calm and acceptance about the situation that has been causing me the most pain. To that end, and after my therapy session last night, I have decided that I'm ready to write about it. To do that, I must first write about all the things that preceded it.

So here it is. It's time to write about last year. The roots of it lay in four things:

1. Being raised to hate fatness while also being raised to be fat.

2. Being raised conservatively and thus keeping my pansexuality a secret that I divulged to absolutely nobody until I was 35, resulting in only having been in relationships with cisgender men.

3. Falling for a woman hard enough that for the first time I worked up the nerve to do something about it.

4. Devastating loss.

The first two items obviously extend back over my entire life, and are several posts unto themselves. That's way too much to unpack here. For now, suffice it to say that damage was done and I've spent my whole life trying to learn to love myself in spite of being trained to believe that fatness makes one unlovable. Sometimes I felt like I was succeeding, but failure was always lingering at the edges of my any peace I had. It was an ebb and flow thing. I never truly loved my body, but I also didn't despair over it. I was just unhappy with it. Even when I lost 108 pounds and my weight was below 200 for the first time since high school, I still felt enormous and dissatisfied, but I wouldn't say I was depressed. I didn't have a personal relationship with depression until last year.

The third thing on the list came into my life in the fall of 2017. We needed a minimum of four people for an escape room that we had reserved for a friend's birthday, and at the last minute our fourth person flaked. One of my friends called a new coworker to see if she might be interested in filling the spot. She agreed, and met us at the escape room, where the four of us would spend the next hour trying to stop a serial killer (after spending an embarrassingly long time stuck in the first tiny room because we didn't know we could turn the lights on).

For the sake of anonymity, I'll call her Blake. Not sure why, but that's what just popped into my head, so I'm going with it. I liked Blake immediately. She was tall and smart and had an easy smile. She was great with numbers and finding patterns, and we definitely would not have gotten through the escape room without her. We had a great time, solved the case, and escaped with moments to spare. I definitely thought she was cute, but didn't really expect to see her again.

A few months later, we held auditions for a show, and Blake was cast in it. At the same time, I was performing in another show that was about to open. Two weeks before we were to open, our stage manager quit and took her crew with her, and because Blake is one of those people who just knows how to do a lot of things, she agreed to come and take over the tech. For those remaining weeks and throughout the challenging run, Blake was a fun and indispensable part of the company.

At the same time, we were both working on the other show in which she was cast, and I was getting to know her better in both venues. She was a warm, inviting person, and I felt safe with her. One day early in working on the second show, we got on the subject of names, and I mentioned how I was supposed to be named Autumn, and that I had never really identified with Kelly. I told Blake how I had tried a couple of times to go by Kellene, which is my legal name, and said "but I guess the world won't let me change." Blake drew close, leaned over me, and in a low tone she said "Then I'll change the world for you, Autumn."

Yeah, swoon. She always called me Autumn after that. By the time the first show ended, I definitely had a crush.

Then she found out she had gotten a job out of state and would be leaving that summer. This was in March. I was disappointed to hear that, because I felt like I had just made a really amazing friend. I knew I had a crush, but truthfully, I have probably had some measure of a crush on every single one of my friends at some point, because they're all beautiful and amazing people. I honestly didn't think much of it at first, and I certainly didn't indulge it. Maybe that's because I never expect anyone to like me back, but I really did just dismiss my feelings at first. That's the generally safe choice.

But then, driving home from rehearsal one night, Blake's impending move popped into my head and I started to cry. Then I started to sob. I was suddenly grieving for something that hadn't even occurred yet, and I was not really a person who cried much (hard to believe if we've only recently met, but crying at a shift in the breeze did not used to be a thing for me). I sat in the car in my driveway for a long time that night, thinking about my reaction to her move and why I had it. I tried to really analyze my feelings, and came to the conclusion that it may not be just a crush. Then I made a choice I'd never made before. I decided to behave as if I were a person who was allowed to follow up on crushes. I decided to act as if I deserved good things. I decided that Blake was worth removing my carefully constructed armor. I made the choice to admit I had real feelings for a woman.

Blake is a very physically affectionate person, which I loved. This is pretty common when all of your friends are actors, but Blake seemed to be especially nourished by sharing the platonic contact of her friends. It may have been wishful thinking, but I perceived that she seemed to be especially physical with me. She was also very flirty, which was a generally present condition with her, but again I felt like more of it was directed at me than other members of the company. Perhaps I thought too much of it, but it emboldened me to feel like my affections might be returned.

For a few weeks I was in a little euphoric bubble, where everything Blake did made me grin like an idiot and I confided in a few trusted friends who seemed to have the same impression that I did, based on their own observations. I started to feel like something might happen with us, and even though I knew she was moving away, I was willing to throw caution to the wind for once.

Then one night at rehearsal, there was an incident that changed everything for me from that moment to this. Our space was an old gymnasium that had been converted to a dance studio, so naturally one wall of this space was lined with mirrors. Up to this point, our work table, where I sat as the stage manager, was in the front of the room near the wall, and out of view of the mirrors when I was seated at it. For whatever reason, that day the choice was made to move the table into the center of the room, closer to where the end of the dance floor would be once the stage and set were finished. This meant we were much closer to the dancers as they rehearsed, all of whom were stunning and slim and moved so beautifully in their revealing clothes. I could see them all up close, but I could also see them all in the mirror, and reflected next to them, I could see me.

I'm not certain exactly which thread it was that snapped in that instant. It's not like I didn't know that the dancers were fit and I was fat. It's not like I hadn't seen photos of myself next to thin people (and tried to pretend I didn't hate myself in every one of them). But there they were, practicing their sexiest Fosse moves while I was seated nearby on a plastic chair, caught in a frame meant for them, but not for me. I saw their graceful limbs and muscle tone juxtaposed with me; my bulk arranged across my lap and spilling over the edges of the chair.

Then I caught a glimpse of Blake in the mirror, and I absolutely shattered. Blake belonged with those fit, beautiful girls. There was no way she could possibly notice me next to them. Nobody could. I wasn't even human in that moment, in my own eyes. I felt like a different species. For the first of many, many times, I started crying in self-loathing. And I couldn't stop. But I also couldn't leave. I put on my sunglasses, claimed to have a light-sensitive headache, and continued working through the rest of rehearsal.

As the stage manager, it's my job to shut down and lock up, so I am always the last one out. I took my time doing this so I could collect myself, as I was supposed to meet a few of the cast members for snacks and a drinks at a place nearby. Ordinarily when we go out, this place is pretty empty, but rehearsal was short that night, so when we got there it was still packed with the late dinner crowd.

I really do have the most amazing friends in the world. They are so considerate of me, and they know that in most places, I can't sit in a booth. Not comfortably, anyway. They thoughtfully request a table for my benefit, even if a booth is offered first. That night, however, there was no empty table except a high-top booth. There were five of us, and the booth would have easily sat six people of average thickness. I, however, am considerably above average. My thoughtful friends, who had arrived before me, came to the rescue and requested a stool for me to be placed at the end of the table.

I arrived at the table before the stool did, and I must have looked stricken, because one of my friends quickly intercepted me and said "we just asked for a stool, it's coming." I had about three seconds' worth of restraint before the tears would return. The stool came, I sat on it, and the dam broke. I started actively crying. The faces of my friends went slack with surprise, then morphed into genuine concern. The one closest to me wrapped her fingers around my right hand.

That, of course, was Blake. I cried harder.

I couldn't explain to them in that moment why I was breaking down. Especially not with Blake right there. I couldn't tell them how much I hated that they knew they needed to ask for a stool, even as I loved them so much for asking for it. I couldn't tell them how I hated myself for needing it. I couldn't tell them how I hated that it was so tall, leaving my thighs just under the table top and the rest of my body full exposed, like I was on a pedestal. I felt extremely conspicuous in a moment at which I wanted nothing more than to hide. I wanted to hide my body, my tears, my emotions, and I wanted to hide them from everyone. Even Blake. Maybe especially Blake. I was really too upset to know.

My friends were wonderful and supportive. I ordered some kind of rice bowl or something and mindlessly choked it down. It wasn't until the next morning that the inability to eat would settle in, and keep me in its grip for the next three weeks. When we left that night, two of my friends talked to me after and asked if I was okay. I said no, but that I would be. I thought at the time that was true, because I had never had anything hold on to me like this brokenness has.

I won't recount every single time the tears came for me, because I'd have to write about most of every day for the better part of a year, but there are a few that stand out in a series that I have dubbed "In Which Kelly Breaks Down in Public." That night was the first one.

The second was on tech Sunday, less than a week before the show was to open. I really didn't have a lot to do because the lighting designer was running things, so I had plenty of time to sit at the work table and think too much. I'm really good at that. By this time I hadn't eaten in about a week and a half, and I wasn't sleeping well. It showed. In the darkness during that rehearsal, I gave myself a break from the mask I was trying to keep in place, but I wasn't as indiscernible as I thought I was.

A friend saw my face and asked if I was okay. Without thinking it through (turns out that's hard to do when you're malnourished), I replied that I hadn't eaten anything. She went to the lobby, where there was an eggplant dish that I love as well as some bean salad, and made me a plate. She brought it back, and for half an hour or so I would hold the fork, pick at the food a bit, and set it back down. The same friend noticed I hadn't eaten any of it and came over, saying "honey you have to eat something." By then, the catered lunch that is usually provided for tech Sunday had arrived, and she went to get me a sandwich. She brought it to me and I tried to protest, saying I couldn't eat it, and of course I started crying. Another friend asked if I wanted to take a break, and before I even responded, she announced "Kelly's taking a break."

I got up and bolted to the parking lot, where I collapsed against someone else's car, sobbing and gasping for breath. Two friends followed me out, and then I blurted out everything. They held me as I wept and confessed everything from the mirror to the stool to my feelings for Blake. I'm not sure how long I was out there, but eventually one of my friends was called back in, and the other stayed until I was ready to go back in. It was too long to have run out of tech, I can say that much.

When we finally went back inside, someone walked out of the theater into the lobby, saying "I was just looking for you to give you a hug." Did you guess it was Blake? Of COURSE it was Blake. As she hugged me, I shot a panicked look over her shoulder to my friend, certain that somehow Blake knew everything I had just confessed. She didn't. She was just being a good friend because she's a wonderful person. I made it through the rest of tech, but I still didn't eat, and I continued to quietly leak tears in the dark.

My next public breakdown was opening night. I still hadn't eaten, so now it had been over two weeks. I somehow made it through the show, but I do not recommend calling a full-scale musical with about a million light cues when you haven't eaten. How I made it through without screwing it all up, I'll never know.

Traditionally, the cast go out to eat and drink together after performances, and opening night is a particularly big deal. So as expected, we all went out to a prearranged venue that had a large group of tables awaiting our assembly. I was a late arrival per usual, being the stage manager, but eventually found a spot at the round end of our makeshift banquet table. Blake sat next to me. I was panicked about not ordering anything and having everyone figure out that I wasn't eating, because if they asked why I wasn't eating I would cry, and then I might actually tell them why, which I was not prepared to do. So I ordered the only thing on the menu that I thought I might be able to nibble: zucchini chips.

I picked one up at least a dozen times, brought it toward my mouth, and put it back. I kept repeating this and praying nobody noticed. Then one of the cast members from the other end of the table came to visit our side, saw my zucchini chips, and said "Oh I got those too! Aren't they amazing?" I hesitated for a second and then brightly replied "Yep! So good!" Blake, however, is insanely perceptive, and she had seen the flash of panic that crossed my face before I spoke. She could also plainly see the full dish of zucchini chips that had been sitting in front of me for over thirty minutes. She leaned on her elbow, looked at me and said "How are you doing?"

Just so you know, if you ask a person who is hanging by a thread how they're doing, you better be prepared for that thread to snap. Thankfully Blake was. My eyes dropped to the table as they filled with tears yet again, and I whispered "I haven't been able to eat lately." Blake just nodded and said "let's take a walk." She stood and I followed her outside, where the choking sobs that had become my norm immediately returned from their brief hiatus.

Blake put an arm around me and guided me to a semi-private spot near the wall of the restaurant, where she held me while I wordlessly cried for a while. Blake is incredibly patient and would win gold hands-down if there were Olympic medals for amazing hugs, so she just waited until I got my breath back, and then asked if I wanted to talk.

Then I told her everything. It all came spilling out, along with all the pain. I told Blake everything about that day with the dancers in the mirror. I explained why I had cried as she held my hand at the restaurant that first night. I explained what happened on tech Sunday. I even told her I had romantic feelings. I just didn't tell her they were for her.

Nearly a month after this, I would find out that she figured out that she was the one I liked mere moments after my confession, when one of my best friends walked past us quickly. Blake thought it was odd that she wouldn't stop to see if I was okay, and then she realized that we looked pretty intimate just then, up against the wall, and that my friend probably knew who I liked. She surmised then that I was talking about her. See? Very perceptive.

We stayed outside for quite a while, and when I was ready to go back in, Blake sat down next to me and quietly ate all of my zucchini chips. Suffice it to say that my crush had not abated.

A week or so later, after another performance, I had another meltdown at yet another restaurant. By then I had started eating a bit, but very minimally. Pretty much once a day if that, and usually just a protein shake. I couldn't stand the thought of actually putting food in my mouth. This time I was even later than usual getting to the restaurant, which was very small. It was so crowded that I couldn't even get in the door of the dining room. A smaller person could, but I couldn't. Once again, my massiveness set me apart from everyone, and I felt the tears coming. Eventually people made way for me to get through and offered me a seat, but I wasn't there long before yet again a friend compelled me to go outside and talk. Blake wasn't there that night, for which I was grateful, because while this wasn't my biggest meltdown, it was my messiest. I never managed to turn the tears off.

When the show closed, we had the customary cast party, which is always a raucous and boozy affair, but this one was especially so. There were also a lot of emotions because two of our cast members were moving out of state, and nobody wanted either of them to go. There were tears from a lot of people while we presented gifts at the beginning of the party. By this time I had started eating food again in small amounts, of which there was plenty at this party, but there were also plenty of drinks, and I did a lot more drinking than eating. And then there was the hot tub. Near the end of the party, it was full of tipsy and topless women, and I don't know what planet I was on, but somehow I was drunk enough to let myself disrobe and join in on the partial nudity. In a weird way I'm proud of that. It was way out of my comfort zone, but I did it and nothing bad happened. It was actually empowering.

I had been thinking about making a "cast party confession" to Blake about my feelings, but she was pretty emotional about having to move away, so I didn't think it was fair to do that to her in that setting. I was also petrified, so that made it easy to scrap the plan. The party came to a close, Blake went home, and I decided to stay for a few hours to sober up, as a couple of other guests were spending the night. I never slept, but kept an eye on one friend who got very sick while another friend and I stayed up talking and singing 90s pop songs. Shout out to my Stormy! It was a great way to end the night. But before that trip down memory lane, I got a text from Blake at around 4 in the morning, asking me to bring her gift from the producer to set strike. She had left it at the party. It was a notebook.

I took it home with me, and the next day it struck me that I had Blake's notebook. Blank pages waiting to be filled. I had things I'd wanted to say, and now I had a vehicle in which to say them. I wrote a letter, taking up a few pages, and when we were finished with strike the following night, she came to my car to get the notebook. I gave it to her and said "I hope you don't mind that I used it." She made a puzzled expression, so I said "I wrote you a letter. Don't read it now! 'Bye!" Then I hopped in my car and left.

I didn't know what I expected. I was afraid to expect anything, really. In fact, I told Blake in the letter that I had no expectations. That wasn't entirely true, however. I did expect her to reply that night, but no answer came. Not the next day either. Nor the next. I of course deeply regretted having said anything, certain that I had now lost her friendship.

It turned out that she did write me back that night. She read the letter when she got home and immediately wrote me back, but I did not foresee that because I had given her a hand-written letter on paper, she would reply in kind and send it in the care of the United States Postal Service. Lest you have any doubt, Blake is a class act, people.

I gave her my letter on a Monday. I received her reply on that Thursday, and could not have known that it would be the far lesser of the heartbreaks coming my way that week. Alas, it was indeed a heartbreak. She was gracious and loving, as I knew she would be. The response to my letter was both better than I feared and worse than I hoped, but I had never really expected her to return my affections. Even so, having it confirmed was painful. I must reiterate, she could not have written a better letter. Blake was and will probably always be the best human being I've ever met. Anyone who knows her likely says the same. She's a rare gift of a person, and we remain friends.

I wrote her another letter and sent it through the mail as she had done, and sent her a text letting her know that her message had been received and I'd mailed a reply. I said I would love to talk, but that I thought it was best was waited until she read my new letter.

Had unrequited affection been the only thing I dealt with last year, I could have absorbed and redirected it in time without much fuss. I've certainly done that before. But first, it was compounded by the devastating blow to my body image and self-worth. And then I was blindsided by a completely unrelated trauma.

The day after I received Blake's letter, my sister let me know that my dad, back where I grew up in Minnesota, was taken by ambulance to the hospital for what he assumed was the particularly difficult passage of a kidney stone. He had been through that before, and didn't even bother going to the doctor anymore because they would just tell him to pass it at home. This one, however, did not seem to be passing, and the pain progressed to a point that he agreed to go to the hospital. Still, he thought so little of it that he told my sister not to disrupt her plans, not to worry about him, he would be home soon. He wasn't.

By the end of the day, my dad was undergoing a second surgery in an effort to contain the internal bleeding that the first surgery had failed to stop. He'd had an abdominal aortic aneurysm. In the best of circumstances, with very early intervention, this has a 15% survival rate. My dad waited in pain for days, and there was nothing to be done. The second surgery failed. My sister called moments into the next morning, saying he had only minutes left. An instant later, she called again, and he was gone. I never got to say goodbye.

That was May 19th of last year. I went back to Minnesota for the funeral and to spend time with my family. I was no longer having trouble eating. Being around my family meant falling back in to our number one coping mechanism: food. The hand-to-mouth solace was real and continuous. I didn't always even taste what I was eating, but it was something to do. Something else to focus on. Within a few weeks, I regained nearly all the weight I had lost while I wasn't eating.

Not long after that, the last of my family's four Shelties died. Too many things happened in too short a time for me to begin to process and recover from any of it. The rest of the year was a jumble of heartaches, and I developed anxiety and depression. I couldn't stand being in my body. I couldn't stand being alone. I couldn't stand being around other people. Especially happy couples. I don't begrudge anybody any happiness, and I'm truly overjoyed for my friends who are in loving relationships, but most of the time I am the only single woman in the group, and it makes me feel very lonely.

But on top of the self-loathing is the unrelenting grief. First for the loss of my dad, which was sudden and traumatic, but losing him refreshed the pain of losing my mom ten years ago. I don't know how to be this person, and I've lost hold of who this person is. I was really just getting to know her before all of this happened. She was just starting to surface.

After that, I mostly felt like I was drowning all the time. If my thoughts wandered too far in any direction, the tears started leaking and my throat constricted. I spent every drive to and from work sobbing. Most of the time it wasn't over anything specific, it was just what happened whenever I was alone. Everything was overwhelming, everything was painful, and I couldn't unravel any of it. I had more meltdowns in restaurants and bars. My friends continued to be supportive and understanding, but I felt more and more like a burden.

Shortly after the new year I found a way to release a lot of this pain, and was able to start moving forward in my life again. It almost worked too, and then the bottom fell out again. But that is the story of different year, and a post for a different day.

#mentalhealth #bodyimage #pansexual #breakdown #depression #anxiety #grief