I made a goal, I reached it, and I was still unhappy. I still felt uncomfortable in my skin and tangled in thoughts of hatred and self-loathing. That was pre-covid.
The beginning of last spring, when we were first given the stay-at-home orders, was pretty great. The pressure to go and do and be all the things was lifted from my shoulders. Justin and I watched a lot of shows and ate a lot of take-out because we were staying home, staying safe, and helping small business, of course. It wasn't until right before summer that the joy of staying home began to change. My mental health, which is a powder-keg on a good day, teetered into a downward spiral the likes of which I've never experienced. And that is saying a lot because shit was intense in my late teens/early twenties.
As my mind started declining, my body mass began increasing. At first, I brushed it off because we were in "the apocalypse" and who has time to care about health when the world is on fire?! I don't even know when I hit the point where I couldn't hide it anymore, but I can tell you that when the realization hit me, in my already precarious state of mind, I gave up. I gave up caring and started getting self-destructive. Binge eating, not getting outside to walk, drinking every day, and not reaching out to anyone.
Here is the absolute truth: I look at myself and I feel like an utter failure. My outward appearance is a physical manifestation of what is happening inside. I really fooled myself into believing I had healed my relationship with who I am as a person and with food. But the reality is that I hadn't. I had just learned to fake it enough to lose some weight, wear a smile and some better clothes, and pretend I was well. I didn't fix the root of the issue so of course it resurfaced with barely any resistance. Healing is a journey, not a destination. There is no magical finish line where everything is effortlessly perfect. Healing is a verb. I thought if I did X, Y, and Z, and hit that ever-elusive "perfect" number on the scale, that would be it. All the past trauma, all the self-esteem issues, all the internal self-abuse would evaporate into the ether.
Spoiler alert: it didn't.
I still don't care about myself and therefore don't take care of myself. Not on the inside or the outside. I just slide down my slippery slope, feeling powerless and numb. Meanwhile, my inner voice is relentless. RELENTLESS. I ping-pong back and forth between "fuck it, who cares" and "you're a weak piece of shit and know you should be doing better". Every meal is a battle. Every. Single. One. When I was "doing good" aka going through the motions, I ignored the fact that what needed my attention wasn't my waistline. It's easy to change your outward appearance compared to what it takes to change your mindset. I'm good at hating myself. It's easy. It's familiar. It's hard to unlearn that. Even though it hurts, it's a hurt that I'm used to feeling.
These things on their own are difficult enough to navigate that I'm not even going to attempt to articulate the added pressure of trying to be well enough to not pass this nonsense on to my children. Motherhood brings with it a responsibility to do better and be better. Not perfect, but better. Better than my own childhood, better than my mental struggles, better than my insecurities and biases. My poor, poor kids. If they had any clue how sorry I am that I'm not the Mom they deserve....
All of that to say this: I suck. I'm lost and struggling. I don't know what "getting better" looks like. I've given up for the moment. Not to the point of hurting myself, but to the point of feeling like I'm just biding my time until the end.
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