One Of The Many Things I'm Afraid Of...

With reference to my previous blog, one of the most important things in my life this year has got to be finding out how and why I put on weight, and what has made me afraid to stay thin and healthy during those rare times when I've been successful at weight loss. Warning: this could be lengthy, feel free to check out and rejoin me later when the self-discovery/rambling is over lol.

One of the worst times in my adult life, which led to a period when I gained 40kg over 12 months, was in 1997. Of course it was about a failed love affair...isn't it always ha ha. I was crazy in love, as well as just plain old crazy (pre-Zoloft days!!), and was devastated when I found out the man I had come halfway round the world for was actually attached to someone else. Of course he had neglected to tell me that BEFORE I got on the plan. Anyway. I was in a strange country, alone, and couldn't get a ticket on to London (and family) for a few weeks, and so travelled blindly (literally, sometimes, due to the incessant crying) on Amtrak around the place and ended up in Baltimore. I LOVE Baltimore. As a digression, one of the first things I saw in Baltimore was a sign that read "Whosoever I shall leave or love, whomsoever shall love or leave me, this silent grey city holds me and I am soothed". Magic.

So, I arrived in the US in July 97 around 95kg (200 pounds) and by the time I left London to return to Australia in September I had gained 25kg (55 pounds). Most of the weeks I was in the UK I laid in bed at my parents' house eating, listening to melancholy music and wondering what the F**K had happened to my life. It was such a dark time I hardly ever think about it, or talk about it, and have certainly never decided to tell the whole world about it lol.

Lately I've been realising that one of the reasons I became extremely fat (as opposed to the generally overweight person I've always been) was to protect that person who arrived in the US with everything ahead of her and returned home two months later with nothing to show for 5 years worth of dreams. I sometimes feel like that person is stuck inside me, too afraid to show her face, and I have been shoving crap into my mouth in order to forget about her, and to block out how much it killed her/me to feel that sad. Since then, I have lived a life of safety and compromise, which is much more realistic, I know. I could never have continued being such a dreamer. I was 27, it was about time I grew up I suppose... But jeez it was hard.

I worry that moving towards that 97kg mark frightens me because of the remembered pain...

I worry that if I become that person again, this life I have now won't be enough to sustain me...

I don't know how all this will end up, that's the scariest part I guess.

One of my favourite songs from 1992 (the year I met The American) is a song I still play all the time. I heard the lyrics the other day and I connected even more than usual with part of it. It's Tori Amos "Silent All These Years" and the bit I love is this:

Cause what if I'm a mermaid In these jeans of his With her name still on it
Hey but I don't care Cause sometimes I said sometimes
I hear my voice And it's been here
Silent All These Years


I'm definitely starting to hear my voice again, and use it, and listen to it. If I can learn how to not be afraid I know I will conquer this weight problem once and for all. Wow, even the idea of it is overwhelming.