falling, and getting up

This morning I dug out the scale from underneath a box of winter clothes. I remember putting the box on the scale about a month ago. At that point, I was in my "scale avoidance" period, coming off of an obsessive bout of weighing myself almost daily. For whatever reason, the happy medium of weighing myself weekly was unattainable -- it was either every day, wincing when I saw nothing change or the number go up, or complete denial of any information that disclosed my NUMBER. My NUMBER, it seems, was ruling my life. I did not like that feeling. So I robbed the NUMBER of its power and relegated it to a dark place underneath a pile of shorts and tank tops.

But this morning, I knew it was time to face the NUMBER. So I grabbed the scale, placed it prominently in front of the dryer, and stepped on. The horror. I was not surprised by what the tiny red LED screen was telling me, but I wasn't exactly happy either. In fact, I was crushed. But here's one good thing: I didn't let myself stay crushed. I thought "well, now you know. And here you are right back where you've been how many times? Three? Four? Five? So what's it gonna take?"

I know that first and foremost, it takes belief in oneself. It takes loving oneself enough to want to live a healthy life. If I were a pie chart, and red was the color of my self-love, I'd have a half eaten pie. This is no earth-shattering statement, because I've yet to find a person on this earth with a single-colored, whole pie. Imagine a statement from your fund advisor, and then imagine an overly-diversified portfolio. That's the image I'm holding out to you. See that one, he's got sliver of an orange slice for a hang up about his nose. Next to that, a golden slice for that beer belly he's been sporting since college. There's a huge purple slice for the quiet hatred of his body proper, and the remaining teal, blue, grey, brown, green slices...they're just more snapshots of further body betrayal.

I had this thought after driving home from a birthday party last Friday: My life has to change. It's not that I'm headed down a road to ruin, but I'm not convinced that it would take much for me to detour into that. The truth is, I lost my feeling compass long ago, and though I've managed, at times, to experience great joy and great sorrow in equal measure, the emotions are short-lived. I don't let them loiter for long. Sometimes I chalk this up to my battle with depression and the choice--a brave one, a hard one--to ingest those little half-pills that reuptake my serotonin, and wonder when the day will come when I choose to leave them behind. Sometimes I think that I come from stock that is so adept at not dealing with hard emotions that my default position, the one that comes most naturally, is to shut down completely. I am the sprinkler nozzle at the end of the hose that knows the water is coming but will allow only a trickle. This is necessary for my survival. No amount of therapy has changed it, though I have sat through hour after hour of excruciating disclosures and felt like my heart was going to drop out of my body onto the floor. Yes, I've learned to let go when I'm in a room with a professional that I trust. But it can't last too long. I can't bear it. The dominoes, they fall and fall and fall, and before I know it, I'm nine and sitting on the lap of my male babysitter, and he's kissing me.

See? I start with the scale and end with sexually inappropriate behavior. It's annoying how that happens. Annoying and inevitable. So I have to accept the inevitability and squelch the annoyance. I have to open my eyes wider and see what great gifts are before me, ready for the taking. No one is holding me down, force feeding me that Reeses cup. I've dragged around this body long enough, and I am willing it lighter, stronger, faster. I'm willing it whole.