I’m back. And I’m better.

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Things have gotten better. Sure, they still get rough from time to time, but overall I feel like our marriage is finally settling down.

Several things helped me along the way. The first was becoming Really Busy. I started volunteering at a local shelter one evening after work, not getting home until 9:30 p.m. I joined a local women’s service organization. I began soliciting weeknight dates with my girlfriends – anything to get me out of the house and away from my husband.

It helped. The busier I became, the less I thought about being unhappy. The more time I spent out of the house, the happier I was to see him when I returned home, and the happier he was to see me.

I also began seeing a new therapist, who very bluntly and honestly put some things into perspective for me. I’m not saying I liked what he had to say, but it did make a difference in my life.

He basically had one piece of statement, which is startlingly new-agey and a very difficult concept to wrap one’s mind about. That statement was:

“That which makes you alive is enough.”

Humph. But my husband doesn’t pay ATTENTION to me! He doesn’t call me pretty! He’s boring and just sits around all the time! I’m fat! People judge me!

“That which makes you alive is enough.”

It’s true. I don’t know if it’s true in an earth-shattering, change-my-life-forever way, but it is true. Because regardless of all the horrible shit that has happened in my life (and even he admitted I had way more than my fair share), I have survived. I survived a hellish emotional environment growing up. I survived parents who taught me that as an overweight person I am not ever going to be as good or worthy as a non-overweight person. I survived cancer. I survived the loss of two fathers in one lifetime.

Somehow, despite all the horrible shit, I managed to turn into a Real Person. Nonwithstanding a Real Person with a sizeable number of Big Issues, but I am here. I am a productive member of society. I have an amazing job that I am lucky to have. I have a stable home life and a loving husband and family. I volunteer my time to give back to my community.

My therapist also really worked with me on seeking my validation from within myself. As humans we spend so much time competing with our peers and the other people around us. Every single day we let other people make us feel bad about ourselves just because they are thinner, richer, smarter or more vivacious than us. I spend a great majority of my time suffering – not because other people have been mean to me, but because I am SO mean to myself. I see a pretty, thin person close to my age and bile and self-loathing well up in my throat and tears rush to my eyes because I so desperately want to BE her. And I hate myself and my large size-16 pants with a burning violence that consumes me. Because I am not her, will never be her, and can only think on how unfair it is that so many people are born naturally thin and I have to agonize over every bite I put in my mouth.

Look at all the hate speech I direct towards myself. That beautiful, thin girl probably never even saw me and I made no impact on her life whatsoever.

I will never be truly happy until I stop the vicious cycle of hatred that I direct towards myself. I will never be truly happy until I forgive myself for not being perfect and begin to accept myself as I am.

It’s a daunting task. I have a husband who never compliments or builds me up – he just sits in silence. He hates the fact that I have no self-confidence or love for myself. In fact, recent discussions have led me to the discovery that he is pretty disgusted by my self-loathing. He thinks it’s weak.

When I spoke to my mother about some of the things therapy had opened my eyes to (“I don’t need to lose weight. I am fine just the way I am. I am active and healthy, my cholesterol is normal and I am in good shape. Society tells me I need to lose weight, but I don’t. I have to learn to love myself as I am.”) she just um-hummed in a very vague way and wouldn’t meet my eyes. Sadness and humiliation rose in a great tide over me because I knew that deep down, my mother is ashamed of me because I am fat. SHE doesn’t love me the way I am.

My husband doesn’t love me the way I am either.

So I’m going to have to overcome all of the prejudices against me – my husband’s, my mother’s, society’s and everything else, and teach myself how to love myself.

Wish me luck.

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