Rock Bottom

I guess it looks kind of different for everyone.

I met a woman a few weeks ago who was asked to step off of an amusement park ride because she was preventing the shoulder harnesses from lowering properly for the rest of the riders.  Not a gigantic woman, just an ordinarily obese one.  In fact, she was about the same size as me.  Her children crying and berating her for being the “fat” mom who ruined the ride for them was her rock bottom moment.

My horror over the way she was treated by her own children aside, this was what rock bottom looked like for her.  I had a similar experience where I was crushed and bruised by the lap bar of an amusement park ride a couple of years back, but for whatever reason that wasn’t rock bottom for me.

Mine involved Ted.

After ten years of telling me every single day that I am the most beautiful and sexy woman on the entire planet, he finally realized that I am never going to believe him.  I am never going to believe him because he spends every night with me building me up, and then every single day I step outside our front door (or just turn on the TV or browse the internet) and the entire rest of the world attacks and breaks me back down.  The pain in his eyes when he realized this was too much for me to bear any longer.

I wish I had the strength to tell the world to sod off, and that I’m beautiful the way I am and that’s all there is to it.  For a couple of years now I’ve been trying to focus on eating healthfully, exercising regularly, and loving my body the way it seems meant to be – but it has become abundantly obvious that I am not strong enough to maintain a healthy self-esteem in a world that resents my very existence.

I want cute clothes.  I want to be a nerd who engages in Cosplay.  I want to see myself in the mirror and pictures and like what I see.

Beyond that, I have a family history of arthritis and joint problems.  My right ankle is already so damaged by repeated ankle sprains that it is never the same size as my left ankle.  I cannot wear shoes with a heel because of this damage and weakness.  I want to wear cute shoes.

All of these are enough of a reason, so I’m waving the white flag and I’m taking a pretty drastic step.

I am not having surgery, but I am seeking the assistance of a Doctor and following a course of action that involves both drastic calorie reduction for my body and treatment of food addiction for my mind.  I am going to be off of solid food for the foreseeable future beginning on Thursday the 29^th, and I will be monitored to make sure I’m not developing malnutrition or other complications.

In my head, I’m thinking of this as detox.  It’s the only way I could find for a food addict to go cold turkey off of their drug of choice.  Eventually, I will re-learn how to eat, hopefully with a healthier and more stable relationship with food and a viewpoint of it as fuel, not as pleasure or a substitution for other needs.

It has now been almost four years since I started this blog with the intention of using it to help myself lose weight, and I am fast approaching what will be (once again) day one.