When you start a journey through your messed up psyche, you have to be prepared to stumble on some ugly truths about yourself. Or maybe not so much stumble upon as be smacked in the face by a baseball bat of truth. Gobsmacked, perhaps. Though that makes it seem more comical and less brutally painful. Fun to say, however.
The point. So I have been able to get back on track with my mission to get healthier. I have reached a point in my weight that I haven’t been at since literal childhood, and I am at the threshold of two major milestones: Another 1.6 pounds and I’ve lost 90 pounds so far. 2.6 pounds, and according to the BMI (which I hate/resent/despise/etc.), I will no longer be considered overweight. I didn’t consciously set out with that as my goal, because I think the Body Mass Index is severely flawed, but the closer I’ve gotten, the more it’s been on my mind.
Yesterday, I started planning an Instagram post for when I reach the BMI milestone, something like “According to the BMI, I am no longer overweight, even though I deeply resent that I care about what the BMI says. It’s a bit like still wanting my father’s approval; I deeply resent that too.” And this morning it occurred to me: it’s the same thing. My father is a retired physician; measures like the BMI have always been a part of my life. In wanting to reach the BMI milestone, I am still wanting my father’s approval. And I hate that with pretty much every fibre of my being.
My father has always had a problem with my weight, since I first started gaining around age ten. Before, he used to take me around and proudly introduce me as his daughter; after I got fat, he started leaving me at home, telling me and my mother that he was too busy or it wasn’t a good time. If I was with him, he stopped introducing me and simply ignored me when we ran into people he knew. Little comments, significant looks when I took a second helping of anything at dinner, big comments, suggestions to get out and exercise, bringing up obese patients at the dinner table, making rude comments about overweight people in public, and, finally, having a loud conversation with my mother about how no man was ever going to want me with hips like that. “Marilyn Monroe isn’t considered beautiful anymore. She was just fat.”
And it didn’t stop when I grew up. In some ways, it intensified, because he had to fit it all into short visits a few times a year. Loud comments about other diners in restaurants (that I know the beautiful souls HAD to have heard), questions about my own habits, comments about (and directly to) other family members about their weight, stories about the miraculous weight loss of his patients thanks to his motivation, bragging about his own fitness and diet routine, comments about my lack of love life and musing out loud about why that might be. It never ended.
I understand that this was his way of trying to motivate me, but it had the opposite effect. I felt worthless, unlovable, unwanted, a waste of life. According to him, my value came from my ability to attract a mate, which meant I had no value, because I had no mate. No one was ever going to want me, so why bother? And I ate those feelings. And I hid. For decades. Even after meeting my husband, after getting married, after marvelling at how he could possibly love me anyway and thinking “Man, I have to work hard to keep him wanting me around,” I still ate my feelings. I still hid.
Then I made all these changes, and I’ve worked so hard for almost a year and a half, believing I was motivated by my daughter, by wanting her to have a different life than mine, a chance at never developing weight issues, at never feeling worthless and disgusting and unlovable. All that work, and as I near the end of this part of the journey, I realize I’m still just desperate for my father’s approval. I want to meet the stupid, arbitrary measure of the BMI because that’s what he’s always wanted for me. And that makes me so angry and so bitter and so resentful. And not just at him, at myself too. I don’t want to want it! But it is such a deep need in me, and I hate it so much.
It crushes me that I have worked so hard and come so far, only to realize his bullshit worked. It just took thirty years, but it worked. It isn’t my voice in my head, harshly motivating me through tough workouts; it’s his. It hasn’t been my eyes criticizing my progress in the mirror; it’s been his. And it’s not my satisfaction at reaching the BMI milestone; it’s his.
I feel sick. And angry. And hurt.
I just want to scream at him, primal angry wordless screams full of the pain he has inflicted on me throughout my life. Scream at him that I was worthy of love and acceptance every moment of my life. Scream in ragged rage that I deserved to have a stable, loving father no matter what I looked like. And how much he has hurt me, again and again and again and again. How he has thoroughly fucked up pretty much every aspect of my life, every relationship, nearly every bit of how I see myself and how I treat myself. I am so angry.
And I’m angry at myself. For caring. This desire is a gangrenous limb that I am desperate to cut off before it continues to spread, before it infects anything more, before it destroys everything I’m working toward. But I can’t. It is a part of me.
So I am angry. And deeply disappointed in myself.
Stupid BMI.
And stupid me. Because in spite of everything, I still love my father.
It would be so much easier if I could just hate him completely, write him off, and move on with my life, not caring. But I do care. At the end of the day, he is still my father. There are still many things that he provided for me, good things that he taught me. But there’s so much toxic bullshit, too.
It’s confusing and exhausting to simultaneously love and hate someone.