untitled post that's not really about anything

i really do wish that i were better at posting here. i mostly think of posting when i'm sitting at work, avoiding the things i should be doing (which is what i'm doing right now). but then i start to think and my posts become too general, too over-analyzed, so i just don't post anything.

lately, i have been feeling the lack of fat community in my life. well, this has been salient and pretty consuming since july, when i returned from nolose. when i think about that space, that time, those people, i just cry because i don't have it in my regular life and when i re-create that space in my head, my heart aches. it's so damn hard not to have folks in my daily life who GET IT. i have amazing friends and some of them are amazing allies. sometimes my friends say and do things that are so supportive, so encouraging, and i appreciate those instances so, so much. there are other times when things come up and i realize in a flash that no, they just can't get parts of it. and that's okay, we have different experiences, we are different people. it has taken years for me to allow myself to reflect on and understand things about my past, things that i am still trying to understand. not having a space to bring those thoughts and experiences is so hard. it is so isolating. i'm working on reaching out to community, while also fully engaging in my current relationships because when it comes down to it, although relationships are hard and sometimes they don't work out and when they don't work out it is so fucking hard, i am damn lucky. most of the time, on a really bad day, i have someone to turn to. and when i don't, i have books and my bed and a pretty flexible job(s).

i've also been exploring phd opportunities. my path just seems to be leading that way, and i can't ignore that. so many things seem to be coming together and leading me towards pursuing a phd. the path isn't clear - for example, there are no fat studies programs around here. but i am doing everything in my power to make a clearer path, to make space for myself, my ideas, and addressing fat oppression in academia. i have been so fortunate to find a couple of academics willing to work with me, and if things continue to go well, and if i can figure out the money end of things, this might just happen.

in the mean time, i am continuing to work a lot, continuing to have a hard time turning down work opportunities, and trying my best to take care of my body in a way that makes sense and feels good. this is quite a challenge at times. i'm working on it, though. i'm quite certain that no one reads here, so maybe i should start keeping this as a journal to myself. i've considered framing this space as letters to myself, as i've been prone to do in personal journals and writing in the past. maybe i'll start doing that.

dear katie:

just keep trying.

love,

me/you

on dresses and tailoring

a few weeks ago, i finally made my first eshakti order. i was SO happy to go online and order some new dresses from a company that carries my size and doesn't charge me extra for being fat. i got three dresses as part of a sale and used a first-time customer coupon, so all three dresses were around $100 with shipping. on monday evening, i had a knock at my door, and it was a delivery person with my dresses. i was so fucking excited, i signed for them, paid the customs charge, and ripped open the box. i pulled out the first dress and thought "hm, that looks a bit on the small side", then i pulled out the other two dresses and started to cry. there was NO way they were going to fit on my body. 

of course, i should have waited to try them on. i had company coming for dinner any minute, i was in the middle of vacuuming up cat hair, i was sweaty and hot and flustered and hadn't started making dinner. but i couldn't wait. i tried them all on in a hurry, tried to wedge myself into three dresses that were clearly too small. the material was hot and scratchy, my arms were marked with red from trying to shove them in the too-small arm holes, i almost ripped the seam on one of them trying to get it off. it was terrible. i was in tears, sweaty, and upset. 

see, trying on clothes is always a crap shoot. generally, though, i am really good at looking at something on a hanger and knowing if it will go on my body. if not, i don't bother. and even when i do try things on that don't fit, it doesn't matter, i'm just there to try it, if it doesn't fit, i just put it back or grab a bigger size (which normally they don't have - i am about an 18, so i can *sometimes* shop in stores that go up to a size 18, but their largest size is usually too small and there's no going up from there). for some reason, though, having these dresses in my home, trying them on in my room where i get dressed every day - dressed in clothes that i searched out and tried on and know fit on my body - and having them not even almost fit? it fucked me up. i've been thinking about it for days and this is what i've come up with for reasons why:

1) i was just disappointed. i was excited about these new dresses - i NEVER find dresses that fit me in stores - and then they just didn't fit. i was SO looking forward to wearing one to work the next day, after being home from work for days, sick with terrible allergies. i rarely get to explore my femme-y side because dresses never fit me properly and i have little patience for shopping.

2) it reminded me of all those years i spent forcing myself into clothes that just didn't fit. particularly my high school uniforms, which i had no control over (my parents bought them and they were expensive, so i couldn't get new things as my body changed. i was also too afraid to communicate or even find out my actual size, so nothing ever fit). every day i had to wear either pants or a kilt that were so tight they ripped into my waist and left hot, red marks that are now scars. it's been many years since then, many years of becoming okay with my size and not denying when my body changes or when i need a bigger size. for so many years i had no idea what size i was and NOTHING fit - the uniform i wore all day was always too small and the clothes i wore in my off time were way too big.

3) i was just hot and rushed and anxious about having people over. even though they were close friends, having people in my home just ignites social anxiety and i can't always control it.

so then i turned to solving this problem. sending the dresses back isn't really an option. as a canadian customer, it's just too expensive. i contacted a local tailor. she is a fat woman herself who works out of her home and lives close by. she seems really nice and was recommended to me by another fat queer activist in the community. setting up an appointment with her, though, triggered the same fuckedupedness as before. i realized yesterday that i have been weighed and measured too fucking often in my life, usually against my will. paying someone to measure me feels wrong. i KNOW rationally that she is a safe person, she is there to find a way to make these clothes feel good on my body. she is an ally. she is friendly. but something about setting up an appointment to be measured is fucking with my head. i've never worked with a seamstress/tailor/dressmaker before. it should be an exciting experience, but i am absolutely dreading it. 

my appointment is friday morning. here's hoping i can force myself to actually go to the appointment. i really want these dresses fixed so i can wear them, and i SHOULD be looking forward to meeting with someone who has the skills to make that happen. now i just need to get over my own shit and make it a positive experience. 

when conversations turn fatphobic

last night i met up for dinner with some old-ish friends who i went to grad school with. it's really nice to stay in touch with these women. we have a lot of great conversation filled with humour and critical thought. at the same time, though, it becomes very difficult to stay engaged when our differences in experience and viewpoint are remarkably loud and glaringly bright. i can handle a good difference of opinion - it's what keeps things interesting and makes for interesting conversations. what i can't handle is when that difference has real implications for my perceived worth and therefore, my well-being.

last night, two of us arrived at the same time, and as we were settling into our table, a third member of our group came to join us. as she approached, the person who arrived with me said "hey! you look so skinny! wow!" i actually didn't know how to respond. i mean, it's not MY body she was commenting on, it really didn't involve me at all. but i can't help but wonder. would she ever say "hey katie! you look so fat! wow!" in a similar, positive way? if my body changed (which it frequently does) and i became smaller, would she comment on it in a positive way? if i got fatter again, would she comment in a negative way? likely not. this body commentary tends to happen one way - when someone is perceived as skinnier/smaller than before.

and for the person who "looked so skinny" - what implications might this have had for her? maybe she's been ill. maybe she's felt pressure to be smaller for her upcoming wedding. maybe she is suffering from stress-induced weight loss. maybe she didn't even notice and couldn't care less. the point is that we don't know. i can't fathom commenting on the size of another person's body, and i particularly can't fathom making a non-neutral statement about another person's body size. in a situation like this, i tend not to respond. it's not my body that was commented on, i wasn't asked my opinion, i don't know how that felt for the person at whom the body commentary was directed. so i kept my mouth shut and swallowed my discomfort.

later in the conversation, i was talking a bit about my experiences at NOLOSE and my time in Portland.  we got on the topic of bodies and fatness. i use the word fat to talk about fat bodies, which i know isn't a comfortable term for everyone (the other three women with me are not fat). throughout this conversation, though, the only word they used was "obese". from what i gathered, they were using "obese" to mean superfat most of the time (and therefore not including me in this category). i've been told i'm not fat before (by non-fat folks trying to make me feel better about myself or some shit), but this seems to have been a way for them to exclude me from their negative (healthist) comments while still allowing me to call myself fat. the level of fuckedupedness here is alarming. i made it clear that this word is so fucking medicalized and according to the BMI, i am "morbidly obese", so let's maybe re-think this word, but that didn't seem to make a difference.

i KNOW that this stuff is new and maybe uncomfortable for some folks. i KNOW that they probably mean well. i KNOW that they don't get to have these conversation often, so they don't "practice" this dialogue. but i just can't fucking handle it. i can't be the person to educate them. i can't (always) confront these things in a way that is articulate and also sensitive. i don't know if it's even worth my time to try because at the end of these conversations, i just feel like shit and nothing has changed. and maybe nothing needs to change. maybe i just need to choose my conversations, choose my battles. i have a hard time thinking about walking away from relationships that are unhealthy for me in a fatphobic way. being fat is just one part of who i am, and there are many other ways in which i connect with people. but i do have a fatphobia bullshit threshold that i am constantly trying to navigate in a way that is caring, but also meets my needs.

nolose 2013: messy reflections and re-entry

after tossing it around in my mind and going back and forth on it for months, i decided to go to NOLOSE again this year. i was really leaning towards not going, but decided to give it one more chance. last year, although powerful and enlightening and impactful, was also disappointing. socially speaking, i didn't feel connected with the community last year. i think there are many, many reasons for this - some of them in my control, some of them not - but suffice it to say i was left feeling disconnected and isolated from a community that i thought of as "my people" in many ways. and i left thinking: if i can't even connect with "my people" then who the fuck can i connect with?

long story short, i'm really glad i gave it another chance. socially speaking, this conference was miles better for me. i felt connected to individuals, i felt connected to the community, i had some amazing one-on-one and group conversations outside of the sessions (which didn't really happen at all for me last year), i made what i hope will be lasting connections, and i came home feeling like i had folks who Understood and who i could/can contact if i need support. this was really amazing and also really difficult, which i will explain further.

the positive:
feeling like part of something, feeling connected, feeling held and witnessed in a way that i have never felt and didn't even know was possible. i met lovely people, we connected socially, outside of the more formal conversation that happens inside sessions (which is a format that's much easier for me to engage with. the unstructured social time usually finds me slipping back to my room and not emerging until the next session). i also feel like i came home with a fat army of people who i could contact if i'm having a hard time and who would offer support and understanding in a way that folks in my real life just can't. and in large part, this has been the case - in the couple of weeks after the conference, i have been in contact with a few folks, mostly around the issue of re-entry and the fucked up shit that comes along with it. i can sort of already feel that connection slipping, which is scary, but i know that i also need to put in my end of the relationship in order to keep those conversations happening throughout the year. because, truly, i don't think i can survive and i certainly can't thrive without them.

which brings me to my next point, the negative:
feeling so connected to the community this year allowed me to let a part of my guard down. while i was at the conference, a part of my well-built and comfortable guard began to soften and release and that felt really good but also really scary. it became most scary when the conference came to a close. i actually wasn't even aware of this guard-softening until the day after the conference ended, when i went to leave the hotel for the first time since arriving. i felt so unsafe and unprotected. i wasn't expecting it and it was so intense i didn't know how to navigate it. because i was leaving the hotel to explore Portland with a fellow (awesome) noloser who i'd met that weekend, i was able to put that terrified feeling aside, protect myself, engage further with the nolose community, and have an amazing day. it seemed as though everywhere we went, we ran into folks from nolose and the conversations we'd started continued, new conversations emerged, hugs were given, lunch was consumed, everyone was happy, i felt good. then it ended. then i had to go back to the hotel, grab my stuff, and go to the airport. and i had a proper meltdown.

leaving that hotel for good, going to the airport, and facing the reality of leaving the bubble that i hadn't even realized i was in was and is so fucking hard. i've been home for 2 weeks and i still am struggling. i am having a hell of a time with re-entry, and though i've mostly got to the point where i can function - go to work, do my laundry, take care of myself, meet most deadlines - the off time is still so messy. i've been cocooning since a few days after i got home. i felt like i got hurt, jostled, badly wounded, in those first few days home and reacted by withdrawing, self-protecting, disappearing. i'm not sure how to come back or if i really want to, to be honest. i'm still in the middle of that and i'm not sure where the end of it is or what it might look like. i just have no idea.

in trying to process this for myself, i've put words to what happened sort of like this: i spend most of my time in my head. i think, i over-analyze, i monitor myself and my world, i am hyper-aware and hyper-process-oriented. i spend almost no time outside of that - let's call it my safety zone. at nolose, without realizing it, i started to move from my head to my heart. in those few days, i let myself leave my head and step tentatively into my heart and my gut. i experienced what that feels like and i may have even begun to put both feet inside my heart, rather than just a tentative toe. and then i left the bubble and without realizing it, i was in my heart and everything was raw and painful and confusing and i couldn't manage and needed to get back in my head. while this is happening, i'm recognizing that it isn't "healthy" to be in my head all the time, but it's a place that is usually pretty safe for me. so now i'm standing here, naked, raw, and lost, with one foot in my heart, one foot in my head, off balance and about to fall over and once i fall, i'm not sure that i'll ever stop falling and if i do stop, i'm not sure where i'll land. and what if i land in my heart? and what if i land in my head and can't ever get out again? and what if there's a third option and i land there and everything's not okay? and what if there is no fall? what if i'm just stuck here like this forever? what if i can't handle that? and, and, and?

so, fuck. there's some words.

day 4

day four with no refined sugar is a tough one. last time i did this no sugar thing (just last week), i made it to day 4 and then i had a bunch of sugar. this time, however, i feel better. only marginally so, but still, better is better. at the very least, my face is clearing up and i am sleeping amazingly well, so i can't argue with that. those are my main goals: get rid of acne, and sleep. so far so good.

the sugar i've consumed has been organic cane juice (in some cookies), and a bit of honey (in rice pudding i made). i'm not so concerned with these unrefined sugars, and maybe eventually i will see benefit in removing them from my routine as well. but for now at least, it's the nasty, addictive stuff that i'm concerned about. the stuff that causes me to climb the walls with cravings (though, less so now than a week ago), the stuff that impacts my ability to turn my brain off, lie still, and go to sleep. that's the stuff i need out of my life.

the best part is that this hasn't triggered any nasty body/food/dieting stuff in me (yet?). for that, i am happy. surprised, but happy.

maybe i'm over the worst-of-it jitters and cravings? i can only hope (but won't get those hopes up to high because it could still get worse).

my mantra with myself right now is simply: gentle & patient, gentle & patient, gentle & patient.  

Oh, sugar

I call myself an intuitive eater (funny story: my counsellor recently asked me if that was a religious practice. uh...no, it's not). I didn't invent this term, it doesn't belong to me, it's just something I do. I eat what I feel like, I eat what my body tells me it wants, and I eat what my brain and heart tell me they want (i.e. sometimes I want ice cream for dinner and that's cool). People say to me all the time "oh, I could never do that! I'd eat cookies all day and I'd gain 100 pounds!". No you wouldn't. At first, you may eat a lot of cookies, and that's okay. But eventually, you learn to listen to your body and you realize how foods make you feel (eating only cookies will not make you feel good long term, I promise). Eating a bunch of raw spinach with some toasted sunflower seeds makes my body feel really happy. Eating a turkey sandwich makes my body feel happy. Eating ice cream sometimes makes my body feel happy. For years, this has worked for me and has felt really awesome.

Lately, though, I've come to realize that there are certain things that do not react well with my body. A big one for me is sugar. I have acne as an almost-30-year-old. I didn't have acne all through adolescence, but in my mid-twenties, little by little, I developed an "Acne Problem". There are other things that indicate to me my body's intolerance of things, sugar in particular, but right now acne is the most salient thing. Now, I love me some sugar. Telling myself that I CAN'T eat something, particularly something I like, feels...not good. Not good at all. As someone who was a chronic dieter for years and years, food restrictions trigger all of the negative body shit that came along with my life in the dieting world. Immediately, my brain goes into that space and that makes me want ALL OF THE SUGAR RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I SAID SO.

Now, if I profess to eat intuitively, and something makes my body feel not good (and also makes my face extremely uncomfortable), why would I continue to eat it? It takes so.much.work. to remind myself that this has nothing to do with the size or shape of my body, it has to do with how I feel. It has to do with respecting my body and myself enough to feel good. Just as wearing a bathing suit in public and feeling great about myself for doing it feels like a way to show respect to my body, avoiding foods that make me feel like shit should also be a sign of respect for my body. I need to remember that.

The other fucked up part of this is that sugar is SO addictive. I am 100% addicted to sugar. I experience intense physical withdrawal when I stop eating sugar, and combined with the psychological shit that goes with food restriction, I'm a bit of a hot mess when I try to go off of sugar. By the second day I find myself screaming (inside my head, mostly) HOW IS THIS EVEN WORTH IT GIVE ME SUGAR OH MY GOD WHY WOULD I DEPRIVE MYSELF LIKE THIS WHYYYY?!? It's ugly.

So I'm going to write about it. I'm going to do my best because I deserve that, my body deserves that. I am probably going to misstep, give in to intense cravings, and eat sugar (I've been at this for over a week now and am back to "Day 1 With No Sugar" as of this morning), and that's okay. I will be gentle and patient with myself because that's all I can do. I will not freak out when I have an acne outbreak after not eating sugar, because my body will need time to detox and catch up, and that's okay.

Patience. I need a lot of it.

I am going to try to journal a bit of this process here (reserving the..er...uglier stuff for my own personal journal, you're welcome). Tracking all of this is difficult, but it's important to know what things in my life impact my ability to take care of this shit. If I know the things that make this more difficult for me, I can avoid those things if possible, or manage them more effectively. So, here it goes. Again.

ok, so valentine's day.

until this year, valentine's day has always just passed as another day. nothing notable, nothing special, no mention of any fabricated bullshit holiday. this year, for some reason, it felt like EVERYONE WAS TALKING ABOUT FUCKING VALENTINE'S DAY. and it's no because more of my friends are partnered this year. facebook was filled with mentions of self-love, owning one's singlehood, reminders that we are all special and need to love ourselves today because OMG IT'S LOVE DAY, GUYS.

so here's the thing: it's still bullshit.

i work very hard at self-love. i put a lot of energy into self-love every single goddamn day. someone demanding that i love myself on a day that is made for couples to buy each other shit, go out to eat, and buy each other shitty chocolate has nothing to do with my self-love process. i don't need a reminder that it's okay to be single and that i need to love and take care of myself, as if without this validation i may not realize that my relationship status need not have an impact on my worth or happiness.

i know that this is all well-intentioned, and i know that these public professions of self and friend love have more to do with folks reminding themselves of this as part of their own process. my issue is that this over-the-top lovedayfest (spoiler: calling it 'love day' or 'heart day' doesn't make it less of a fabricated holiday designed to make us want to spend money) belittles this struggle. you know what would be nice? a reminder to take care of myself and love myself on a random day when no one is celebrating anything. it's important to check in with ourselves and our friends/partners about these things all the time. framing this as a demand (a la "LOVE YOURSELF!!!!") doesn't make me more likely to love myself. it frames it as a choice, not a struggle. it frames it as an issue of importance as prescribed by the date on the calendar, not an ongoing process that deserves space and importance throughout the year.

am i bitter about being single on valentine's day? no, not really. but i don't need the calendar to determine when self-love is important. i don't need profound facebook statuses to help me realize that i'm important. i work fucking hard at these things all the time and i don't need a goddamn pat on the back because it's february 14th.