I’ve always had a tendency to depression. My Dad is really prone to black periods, and I've always been kind of darkly moody. Whenever I have a bad spell I crawl into bed for weeks at a time and eat, which is not the healthiest thing for a person to do. When I was 14 or so, I blew out my right knee, and I've had some problems with it ever since.
Between recovering from my latest stupid-girl-mope-fest, and not working out much due to my knee, when the Evil Ex and I hooked up, I was rounder than I would have preferred. I still looked pretty good at that point. I went to the gym, I worked out, I got compliments and had guys hit on me. I was strong, I was healthy. While the Evil Ex and I were dating, I got on the Depo Provera shot to prevent me from having a baby. The depo shot is the strongest form of birth control available, and being from a long line of hyper-fertile women who have surprise twins, I wanted the most bullet-proof contraceptive I could get. The depo shot is not reversible, and I gained 60 pounds in the three months after I got the shot, and I could not loose any weight for the life of me for the next two months. Apparently this is a common side effect of Depo Provera, and happens more than anyone wants to admit. It didn’t help that the Evil Ex would pout and throw fits if we didn’t go to Denny’s or some other grease pit on a regular basis, so my formerly healthy diet (not to mention bank account) went to hell.
So I went from being mildly plump to downright pudgy, while still going to the gym twice a week and being moderately active. I felt awful. I felt my skin rip one day, and I got stretch marks where I had never had them before. My moods were blacker, I was having really bad menstrual cramps for the first time since I was thirteen, and my self esteem was shit. None of my clothes fit anymore, and that was fatter than I had ever been. After the depo shot, moderation no longer worked for me. When the Evil Ex went the way of the Dodo bird, I stepped up my physical activity again. I was feeling better, moving more, going to the gym with my friend Avery and I lost thirty pounds in a safe, sane manner. I was halfway back to my starting point, although I was still using food as a way to deal with my emotions. I am still struggling with a very unhealthy attitude towards food. My parents met in Overeaters Anonymous, and my Mom, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother on her side all had eating disorders. When it comes to trying to come up with a healthy attitude towards food, I'm on my own.
My life changed about then, and during a cross-country move I feel down a flight of stairs and landed on the side of my ankle. The trauma center said that I had the biggest, thickest bones they had ever seen on a woman. They took two sets of X-Rays because they could not believe, after looking at the bruising on the outside of the foot, that I had not broken something. I had the worst sprain they had seen in twenty years, and my bones were so big and healthy that none of them broke. I would have been better off if I had broken bones, it would have healed faster. Seven months later it's still tender, and I still have to be delacate with it.
So here I was, in a new state, with no friends, no gym membership, no rock climbing wall, no dance clubs, and a broken foot. I couldn’t have go out and dance, rock climb, go to the gym, or work out even if my foot wasn’t injured. All I did was sit there, pissed off, as the ten of the hard-lost pounds slid back on me. I felt like a large, squishy slug.
Well, now my foot is mostly better, although it’s still a little sore at night, when I’ve walked too far. My weight has held at the insane number it’s at, and for me to be genuinely happy with my weight I only have to loose 40 more depo shot pounds, and then I can loose the moderate squish I had BEFORE that, and I will be a hard body goddess. I’m very fortunate in my genetics, I’m tall (5’11) and I carry the extra fat well, so I don’t look like a beached whale even though that’s what I usually feel like.
It’s a wonderful feeling, getting my body back. I’ve felt like I was suffocating under layers and layers of sensation-deadening, heavy rubber. I’ve felt like my mind and my body were two completely different entities, and I am just now starting to re-connect them so that I’m whole again. In a way it almost feels like I’m being re-born, slowly awakening to all the possibilities that having a physical form will give me. I feel hopeful that maybe, for the first time in my life, I will feel beautiful, and that my physical self will reflect my mental and spiritual self. I started to feel that way when I was climbing regularly back in Colorado, and I had almost forgotten how good it was.
Now I'm working out again. I've started to go to aerobics classes, I'm still lifting weights, and I'm looking to get back into climbing. I want to pick up a martial art and kayaking. I'm more physically active than I have been since I left Colorado, and it's really improving my entire life. I'm starting to make new friends, and I'm much happier than I have been in a long time.
Maybe, at the end of this journey, I’ll finally loose that self-loathing, those unhealthy, destructive thought patterns that have been part of me since I hit puberty, and started caring about how I looked. I can only hope.
