As I step onto my bathroom scale, exhale and tense up for, I dunno, the 1000th time, it hits me. I’m obsessed with my weight; yeah it’s a no brainer, more so for the acknowledgment of it than the actual fact.
You see, I am this aged wild child who believes in the individual, an ardent admirer of the human spirit and this obsession is a crack in the wall. As a connoisseur of life and all things idiosyncratic, it’s my fall from grace.
Idiosyncratic, I find it such ain harsh sounding word but I couldn’t think of another that conveyed what I wanted, peculiar to an individual; no, quirk and peculiar is what I would use to describe Frankenstein not something to revel about, coming back to topic.
So why am I, a person who so passionately defends the right to be different, falling into a classic society mind trap? So I sat down for my morning cuppa (that’s a term for coffee down under) and I pondered. I wrote down two lists one for all the reasons why I wanted to loose weight and one for all the feelings I associated with being over weight.
Background story, I am a mother of three and my youngest is 15 months old and I am exactly 10 kilos above my ideal weight. My husband hates skinny women and loves me the way I am. My family is known to be “healthy with big bones” so no pressure from them to loose weight.
I have always been athletic, used to do yoga, and walk for hours. I was never really skinny except when I first started flying (I used to fly with Emirates) and then slowly bounced back to my normal weight. I did have a slight weight issue when I finished college and took up a sedentary job that bound me to my desk for 10 hours with an endless supply of junk food. However, my weight has remained fairly constant after I quit.
Now for my lists, the one where I jotted down why I wanted to loose weight was ‘classically vain’ but it was the list where I wrote down how I felt being over weight that shocked me.
- I feel like I have lost all control or say over my life, like I’m a football being kicked around by life and situations.
- I am my body and I have no control over it.
- I feel like a spectator not a doer.
- I look into the mirror and I can’t recognise the person looking back. Where am I?
- Earlier I had a sense of style, a personality, now it’s Mrs Frumpy mother of three.
There were a couple more but these are worth talking about. It made me realise my inner struggles and who I was as a person. Obviously the ‘mum’ thing has got me all rattled up, personally responsible for 3 innocent lives, no wonder I wanted my old life back. As a conscientious person I am obviously quite blown over by the responsibility.
That is a topic for another day; today it’s about how I relate my body shape and size with control over life. I am quite insane to think that anyone can claim to have control over life; it is the one thing that mystifies even the wisest.
The thought, a drowning man clutches to a straw comes to mind. A sheer act of desperation, it’s my mind’s way of relating and making sense of my life. Loosing weight given that I work from home and have 3 kids all under 5 to take care of and have to schedule time to even shower is impossible in the time frame I want.
I know I will get there, eventually, but by fretting over it today, I am distracting myself from a more pertinent issue, my identity crisis.
I know myself, even if I were my ideal weight today, I’d find something to vex over tomorrow. Where does this need to ‘control’ come from? I mentioned it twice, as a celebrator of life, when did I develop the need to control it? What happened to live life and let God show you his great plan?
Am I a hypocrite? Do I publicly support all that is different in others but demand a very stereotyped image from myself? Looking back, yes I did hang out with the wild ones but I never did the things they did, I never smoked (cigarettes or pot), never drank (not even beer) and no, I never took risks. Every ‘impulse’ was carefully planed out and all the worst scenarios had fallbacks.
I don’t know what is worse being a control freak masquerading as a free spirit or craving to be that person? Becoming a mother has forced me to shed a lot of the facades that I had accumulated and it has unnerved me. I had been looking at life through a guarded window and now without my masks I feel vulnerable.
Naked, since I have been stripped of all the layers of lies and deception, I am now forced to live the life I have always professed to living. How ironic is that? Here I thought I had life all figured but turns out life had me figured from day one.
I salute you God, you are wiser, kinder, stronger and most importantly patient. What can I say? You got me, but do me a favour and don’t ever let go!
Musings of Antonia Rapheal 