Journal rdewald's Journal: 371 - Back out in the open 10

I've never really left. I've just been hiding. Hiding not from you, but from myself.

When I hit 370 pounds, something happened. At the time, I thought it was just one of those tough periods that I had up until that time survived by white-knuckle persistence. It was more that that. It was time to stop losing weight for while, but I didn't know why.

If you're looking for an elemental pearl of wisdom here, applicable in every situation, here it is: there isn't any. What brought my weight-loss to a grinding halt was a combination of a bunch of little things, none of which would have been powerful enough by themselves to make a difference. Sound familiar? That's because its pretty close to my definition of what causes obesity.

What happened to me is no different really than what happens to everyone who is involved in a process of fundamental personal change--you take two steps forward and one step back. The stories of sudden fundamental change, when everything going forward from some magical event in time becomes different, are just that--stories. It makes a good movie, TV show, magazine article or whatever, but what happens on the ground, where the proverbial rubber hits the proverbial road, is much less dramatic.

But, these real-life stories aren't part of the gladiator games we collectively use to keep sleep-walking through life. Real stories of change sometimes take people to places they emotionally don't want to go. Who wants to know that change is mostly about non-stop drudgery through numerous banal obstacles? Who wants to believe it's not fun, not predictable, and doesn't provide the kind of ongoing reward that one can seem to derive from the repeated and regular gratification of appetites? We much prefer heroic tales of buildings leapt in single bounds. Well, I know I do.

My experience has been that most people want to change something fundamental about the way they live their lives, and most people don't ever do it. Real, fundamental change involves an intimate association with one's own limits and weaknesses. This contact with things with which we're neither proud nor comfortable is often painful. If this steady awareness of our shortcomings is not met with compassion for one's self and the wisdom to recognize the difference between heroic fiction and the real way that real people lead their lives, it can be terribly discouraging, even debilitating.

This is why the classic, self-destructive turn to emotional defenses such as victimhood and/or the arrogant condescension/dismissal of the very human limitations we all share becomes so alluring as to persuade otherwise reasonable people to lie to themselves, even when the lies produce vividly self-destructive consequences. It's easy to suspend our attention to what's really going on around us in favor of an identification that puts us in either a superior or inferior position with respect to "normal" people. These lies we tell ourselves can be amazingly self-destructive. Beyond that, even when one finally gets to telling the truth, it hurts and takes a long time to fix and un-do the damage done.

I've watched more than a few people destroy themselves in my lifetime. Every one of them followed their own version of a peculiar pattern. Every one of them believed one or both of two things: (1) that something happened to them which puts them at a permanent, unrecoverable disadvantage with respect to "normal people," and (2) that the "rules," i.e., the limitations and weaknesses which plague "normal people" don't apply to their lives or their peculiar situation. Recovering alcoholics call this "terminal uniqueness."

I did it myself. I used to believe that there was something wrong with my body that caused it to preferentially store fat and use far, far, fewer calories than "normal people." I believed my family was the worst ever, that there was such a thing as psychosocial damage from which there was no real recovery. Hand in hand with this "one-down" blanket of victimhood I indulged in an arrogant "one up" belief that I was special, better, smarter, more "spiritual," more meritorious and more deserving of success than "normal" people (who almost always worked a lot harder than I did). Something, somewhere, someone was going to recognize me for the special gift that I represent for humanity/business/womanhood and swoop in and save my day. This mystical omniscient savior would be the one person to finally see me for who I really was and enable the kind of life that I *deserved.* I almost had an opportunity to defend these lies to the death, literally and personally.

I'm better now, Mmm-kay? So, what's been going on since Thanksgiving is just regular ole resistance to change. I have not back-slid, I haven't gained any weight since then, which signals that the 60 pounds I took off in 2004 is likely to stay off, along with the 70 pounds I took off in 2003. I recently began to turn my attention back to a sustained period of modification of personal habits, something which is hard and often not very interesting or immediately rewarding.

So, I'm back here, too. I mean I will commence writing once again about my experience with all this. I'm fresh into a new job, I've recently made a new close friend. As I look back on my life I notice that I have had the most success with taking pounds off in the latter half of the year. Winter is really hard. Thanks for your patience, thanks for your faith, and thanks especially to the handful of you that have been asking about my return to these essays. My success is yours, too.