11 – I Have A Story To Tell Pt. 1

2/21/21

TW: In this post, I discuss body image issues and disordered eating.

The older I get, the more people I meet, the more I believe that most of us have nuanced relationships with our bodies. Right off the bat, I want to say that there are endless shades and layers to conversation around bodies. Some of the messages we engage with are overt while others are obscure, most are gendered, and most are built upon constructs around age, class, and ability. It’s driven by consumerism and perpetuated by each of us in ways that have been built into our brains. I could spend hours talking about the topic because of how strongly it has affected me over the course of my life, but for the sake of this newsletter, I’ll suggest that it boils down to one message: your body isn’t good as it is.

I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl. If I’m going to do something, say something, be something, I’m all in – an aspect of myself that I’ve learned to watch closely after years of disordered eating, which is what I was left with after embracing a comprehensive hatred of my body. I believed the message that my body wasn’t good the way that a child believes in Santa Clause. No holds barred. All in. 

I kept measuring cups in my purse. I ran myself ragged, refused to take a day off, tracked the calories in a raisin. I slept terribly, I bottled up my emotions, I kept everyone at a distance. My weight dropped and dropped. My body began to protest – cystic acne, stress-induced eczema, broken bones, torn muscles, balding scalp. I could go on. In hindsight, it was as if she threw her hands into the air and decided to fight back. A two-sided war in one body. 

There’s always a breaking point, right? Well, I broke the same ankle in the same place two consecutive times just by walking. I spent 11 months in a brace, on a knee scooter, in a walking boot. I had a titanium rod inserted into my bone. I couldn’t run anymore.  I gained all the weight back plus some. I started eating food that made me feel bad, and I wallowed in self-pity. Finally, someone important to me said, “Leah, do you know that losing weight isn’t going to make you love yourself?”

The light bulb moment. To be continued.

Lightly,
Leah