Because

Love.
Not for a reason,
or to fulfill
someone else's
deserving.
Love,
because
love
is
what
you
are

.

I Wasn’t Fat; I Just Hated Myself

Because of something I had said the other night, my friend asked if I had ever thought I was fat. I answered, “No,” but then I remembered that I did think I was fat when I was eighteen years old, recently out of high school, with a badly broken heart.

Shortly after graduation, my boyfriend of two years had suddenly left me. I felt like I was standing alone out in a desert, winds of self-hatred, sadness, and failure pelting me till I curled up into a protective ball of numbness.

I weighed myself to see if I still existed, and I noticed the scale read 108 pounds. Always being thin enough that people felt a need to comment, 108 sounded like too much, so I began to live on a small handful of cereal, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, and a few saltines each day. When I saw 103 pounds on the dial of my parents' old scale, I began to feel a little more in control of my life.

What I didn't tell my friend the other night was that after losing those five pounds, things only got worse. Back then, a couple of girlfriends and I met a man while hanging out at Cheesman Park down in Denver. He was inviting people to a meeting where participants talked about God. Having little going on, and being the spiritual seeker I was, I bit the bait and started attending Wednesday night meetings, even driving the hour and a half it took to get there from the town I lived in while going to college.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was finding my way into a cult.

I ended up dropping out of school in order to be with the group full-time, and shortly after that a small number of us were sent to another state. There, I had at least a dozen companions who were doing the same meditations and following the same long list of rules as I was. We were a sick family, stressed by ridiculous exercises to make us more disciplined, while the leader used us to make himself rich.

I started eating too much. The needle jumped to 133.

One day the cult leader ordered several women to lose specific amounts of weight, while letting me know I should just "lose a few pounds." We were living under penalty of being cast out, of having to go back to living with "world people" who would suffer the anguish of the Last Days, and I didn't even know whether the loss of two pounds or ten would save me from all of that! 

I tried an all-protein diet for ten days. I ate too much. I fasted. I ate cartons of ice cream. 108. 130. 110. 125.

I medicated with food, eating a whole box of Triscuits or a package of cookies in one sitting. After throwing away the empty box, I would buy a milkshake and drink it dry. This was my dessert ritual after eating a big dinner.

My pain came from much more than my big, bloated belly, but I only had the means to relieve the physical symptoms. I failed at self-induced throwing up, but I was a master at purging through the over-use of enemas and laxatives. After each cleanse, I would feel a lightness, like I was walking out of a sort of prison and into the huge sky of freedom. I would swear that I never wanted to be a prisoner of my bingeing again, and I would vow to stop over-eating.

The last time must have come two years after joining the cult, right before I popped a couple of bleeding ulcers that put me in the hospital.

In the hospital, I couldn't binge and purge. I couldn't do the required meditations or follow the rules of the cult. That was all fine. More than fine. When I left the hospital, I also left the cult. Two bleeding ulcers and a few hospital stays began the healing I still work with today.

The other night, if I had thought about it a little longer, I would have told my friend that, honestly, I never thought I was fat. But the dark thoughts of self-hatred and some horrendous fear of trying to live in this world used to warp my view of food and life. 

Self-hatred and fear continue to be shadows over my left shoulder, but at the same time, right in front of me, I see the sun rise, I feel air filling my lungs, and I know love is so much bigger and truer than the thoughts that try to undermine the beauty of this world.


Carol Barrow
October, 2018