Disconnected

Infertility stole my sense of being a woman and at times my sense of belonging to the human race. All of this happened in a matter of moments and required a huge shift in my sense of self, because at some point my life had to go on and I had to get up out of the floor. One of my greatest lessons was learning that I was so much more than my body, my ability to reproduce did not define me, my body's lack of cooperation was not my fault, and eventually I had made it back to being able to function. There was one problem I ignored my entire body, I forgot that part of taking of me was taking care of the body that I was walking around in.

Weight and body image has been a problem since I hit puberty. Standing next to my mother, at the house of her friend, in the afternoon. Her friend was getting something for them to drink and she looked up. The words that she said to me were not meant to hurt, because she was one of the sweetest women in the world. She said it looked like I had put on some weight. I was 10 at the time and 23 years later, the memory of those words can bring tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. This was in no way the beginning of my poor body image; it is just the first memory I have of someone making a comment about my weight, someone validating what I believed about myself. The fact was that I was going through puberty just a little bit earlier than most of my peers made me feel out of place. Looking back on the photographs I was not even close to being mildly overweight, I was just a girl going through puberty.

Now the body that I have ignored is screaming for me to pay attention. I know that I need to get this under control and I am sick of being the fat chick. There is only one problem is that I find myself caught in this vicious cycle and the mere idea of escaping is completely overwhelming. I hate the way I look, I eat, I am sad, I eat, I am happy, I eat, I feel bad about something, I eat, I am stressed, I eat. I eat because food is constant and comfortable.

Part of my healing the deep wounds of infertility is integrating myself back into myself. No matter how angry I am at this body for failing me, it is my body and I deserve better than what I am giving myself. In no way would I let someone else treat me the way I have treated myself. It all stops, the abuse that I have inflicted on myself stops today. Just as the misery was comfortable in the depression, the fat became my friend it has kept me safe and warm. I do not need this anymore, what I do need is to integrate my body back into my identity and begin to take care of myself again. I have a hard road ahead of me and I know that I will stumble and fall flat on my face at times, but the time has come for me to really respect myself.