From One Year to the Next (January 2019)

I’m finally done with my first art project of the new year. I like it, though I’m never fully satisfied with my work.

It was a good way to start the year, working hard on a project I wanted to be proud of while reflecting on 2018, and thinking about what I wanted 2019 to look like.

As I shaded her rolls, I thought about how I’d started 2018. I remembered a few of my New Year’s resolutions:

–Lose 50lb.

–Take at least one class that would get me closer to finishing my Psychology degree.

–Spend less time on social media.

I didn’t accomplish any of them.

Yet, I feel my year was far more productive than it would have been had I maintained a laser focus and done so.

Also, my goals for 2019 look pretty different:

–Eat a more balanced, nutrient-rich diet.

–Get back into a consistent exercise routine.

–Take another drawing class.

–Finish the website for my art commissions and prints.

I think the differences here are a testament for how much growth I experienced during 2018.

Not because I think my 2018 goals were inherently bad. Of course not. With no further context, those could be perfectly fine goals for someone.

But I have context. I remember what my mindset was behind each of them.

I wanted to lose weight because I hated how my body looked. I had no weight-related health problems; my size wasn’t keeping me from doing anything I wanted to do. I was just still buying into the societal narrative that “fat” is inherently negative.

I wanted to finish my degree because I thought the piece of paper would make me a more valuable, credible, worthwhile person. I already knew that any career-type advancements I wanted to pursue would be in the field of custom visual art, not psychology (the degree I’ve nearly completed), but I was buying into another false narrative: that I didn’t deserve to be taken seriously unless I had a college degree of some kind.

I wanted to spend less time on social media because…that’s what good adults do, right? That’s what people with Real Lives do, isn’t that what they say? That social media is all curated lies anyway so you should go live your Real Life and not be addicted to the dopamine rush that is “likes” and “follows” and no one ever changed their mind because of Facebook and blah blah blah. Without admitting this to myself at the time…I wanted to spend less time on social media so that people wouldn’t think I was the kind of person who had “no life”, or that I was desperate for validation, or a “keyboard warrior”.

So, how did I get from my 2018 goals—or, the mindsets behind them—to my 2019 ones?

I’m so glad you asked!

I did actually lose some weight in the first part of the year. And as the number on the scale dropped, I saw myself falling into old patterns from my eating disorder days: obsessive calorie counting, daily weighing and measuring, over-exercising, using multiple apps and websites to track my food intake and calorie burning, frequent food guilt and anxiety. In discussing this with my therapist, who counseled me through anorexia in my teens, I realized something: since I was sixteen years old, there had never been a time in my life where I was not trying to lose weight. Whether I was ninety pounds or two-hundred or anywhere in between, and whether or not I was succeeding, I was always trying to lose weight. For 12 years. Always either dieting, or planning to start a diet the next Monday, or the first of the month. No matter what my weight was, I was never really happy with my body.

So, my therapist proposed an experiment: for once, stop trying. Stop dieting, stop making plans to diet. Stop thinking of my current body as just a “temporary” one that I have to endure on the way to a “better” one. I was surprised by how much that idea scared me. You mean decide to keep this fat on purpose? You mean give up?? I felt fear, I felt anger, I felt sad, and I felt…relief? She told me to think about it. That it didn’t have to be a permanent decision; that I could just try it for a little while. Right around this time, I also found out that one of the medications I had been on in the past that contributed to my weight gain to begin with commonly has the side effect of permanently changing a body’s “set point”. In other words, it’s likely that my metabolism has been permanently changed so that no matter how hard I try—short of starving myself—I may never be able to look the way I used to, or reach my “goal weight”.

That discovery, as anyone else who has suffered with intense body image issues might imagine, also brought about lots of depression and anxiety. So, for my sanity’s sake, I delved more deeply than ever into the body positivity movement. There, thanks to some wonderful blogs, Facebook groups, and Instagram accounts, not only was I able to make huge strides of progress in the work of internalizing a more diverse definition of beauty, but I also found credible information on the truth about health, being fat, and diets.

My body image issues are by no means gone. I still live in America, after all—surrounded almost constantly by messages saying “thinner is better”. A lifetime of being socialized to idealize a certain body type isn’t corrected easily. But I’ve stopped dieting, and I am more consistently experiencing peace around the issues of food and body image than I have in years. I’d like to keep that rolling. So now my food and exercise goals are going to be focused on properly fueling and strengthening my body (with patience and compassion for its limitations due to chronic illness), rather than changing its size.

I never got around to enrolling in any college classes in 2018. But that’s because I started doing a lot more art. I was doing more of my own projects, as well as getting more commission requests. I started to take more creative risks, and found that if I kept pushing through rough patches, I could usually figure out something passable. As my confidence grew, so did the joy and sense of purpose I found in creating. I was continually more and more sure that these skill sets were what I wanted to invest my limited resources in.

I’m not devaluing education at all; I have loved most of the college classes I’ve taken. And I definitely want to take more of the type that are of use and interest to me. And if one, two, or five degrees are what someone wants personally and professionally, and they have the resources to obtain them, that’s wonderful.

But, barring miraculous circumstances, I will likely never be healthy enough to pursue traditional employment of the kind where a Psychology degree might come in handy. So instead of spending my limited time, money, and energy completing a degree I will never use, I am finally at peace with the idea of using those resources instead to invest in things like: art classes to improve my skill, a website to facilitate sales, marketing myself and my work, and of course actually making art, which is my passion and my bliss.

This brings me to social media.

As I said earlier, body positive social media accounts were (and continue to be) extremely important to my journey to healthy body image. Because of the amazing people behind those accounts, I’ve learned the value of existing boldly in this fat body of mine. Simply living life in a fat body without constantly scrambling to change it or hide it is an act of resistance to a patriarchal society that tells women and femmes that we must only be small, willowy; making sure we don’t take up any more space than absolutely necessary. That we only deserve to be happy if men find us sexually appealing.

These fat, body-positive bloggers, fashionistas, artists, activists; they put themselves out there on social media. To represent fat women and femmes. To diversify society’s visual diet (how can people learn to expand their definition of beauty if they never see different body types portrayed positively?). To destroy harmful stereotypes about fat people. To let other fat women and femmes know that you can be fat AND happy. Body-positive social media accounts and the communities around them changed my life, contributed vastly to my mental well-being, and have provided vital tools for my eating disorder recovery. Not only do I want to continue participating in those communities, but I want to do for others what they did for me: be a bold, body-positive, fat femme presence on social media. I want to be a bold, radically inclusive voice in my small sphere of influence, and be intentional with the media I generate.

Another place I spend time on social media that has been life-changing and life-affirming for me is LGBTQIA+ groups and accounts. I joined them a few years ago because I knew I was bi/pansexual, but as I read more and more information and engaged with more people, I learned that there was language for something else that I’d felt all my life: I figured out I was non-binary gender-fluid. Labels aren’t all that important in and of themselves, but finding out that there is language—a NAME—for this profound experience one has been living with, and that others experience it too, and celebrate it…For me, that was revelatory. To go on from there to talk to and connect with others who are able to relate to my feelings and experiences in ways that no one else around me could was similarly meaningful and affirming. Especially during times when there is so much anti-LGBTQ rhetoric swirling around: in politics, in the church, on the news, from people I thought were friends.

I have also learned so much through engagement on social media. The common refrain is “no one changes their mind because of Facebook”, but in my experience, that rings false. Through conversations with people on Facebook (that often lead to research I never would have done otherwise), over the years my perspectives on a number of things have shifted, and I have witnessed the same happening to others as well.

“Couldn’t you do all those same things in person?” You ask. “Isn’t it better to be face-to-face?”

Well, sure. I’d love to be able to engage in person even half as often as I do on social media. I’d love to get together in person with friends more often, show up physically for in-person activism, go to local LGBTQ spaces and events, attend every family function, get coffee with ex-friends to sort out our conflicts, with the hope that–if we could talk in person–we’d come to an understanding.

But, here’s the thing (and this brings me to my last—but still very important—point on social media, and why I am no longer feeling guilty for spending as much time on it as I do):

Disability is a major isolator. Due to lupus and fibromyalgia, I deal with chronic pain and fatigue, the levels of which are often unpredictable. For many reasons, this makes it extremely difficult to lead an active social life, and it definitely means that I have to carefully prioritize the in-person interactions I do have. If it weren’t for social media, I would be effectively cut off from the outside world the vast majority of the time. This is true for a lot of disabled people.

I would also be unable to engage in the social activism I’m passionate about. The phrase “keyboard warrior” is used disparagingly, as if on-screen words are useless; as if awareness via the most-used media platform today is unimportant, as if confronting bigotry in the exact place people are now being radicalized—online—is a waste of time.

As if there’s not so much that can be done to help a cause from a keyboard: donating funds, organizing and sharing lists of political candidates that support human rights around election time, elevating the voices of activists that are doing amazing work, contacting government representatives, listening to the voices of marginalized folks that are not privileged with any other platform from which to share their message, etc. etc. etc.

As a chronically ill person, resources like the internet and social media are all the more valuable to me because my physical resources are so often depleted.

All of that said, I have experienced social media being very draining in a lot of ways, especially during certain news cycles. During times like that it can absolutely be healthy for me to step back for a bit, or purpose to only engage in certain groups.

But I’m glad to be able to say that now, when I spend less time on social media, it is truly in a way that is productive for my own mental health. Not because “taking a break from Facebook” or doing a “social media purge” is what people with “real lives” do, or because I’m worried that people will perceive me as “having nothing better to do” or “desperate for attention”.

I’m glad my 2018 went differently from how I’d hoped it was going to in the beginning. No one experience totally changed me, but all of the experiences, new friendships, risks, and information added up to ultimately be unexpectedly transformative.

In 2018, I feel like I started settling into my skin in a way I hadn’t before.

I came out publicly as non-binary/gender-fluid, and started embracing my queerness more than ever.

I overcame my internalized ableism and started to see my wheelchair as a mobility aid that enabled me to live life more richly, rather than a representation of my limitations; my perceived “weakness”.

I stopped dieting, at a weight much heavier than I ever thought I would be able to accept for myself, and had an amazing experience with The Empowerment Photographer embracing my body. I signed a full model release, so that my images can be used elsewhere to represent and resonate with other fat queer disabled femmes.

I learned a lot about trusting myself, knowing that some things I do may be a little much for some people, but that embracing my eccentricity and free-spiritedness infuses my existence with joy and makes me excited about life, and that is SO with the weird looks and unsolicited comments; the rejection from certain types of people.

 

I’ve taken to looking at myself, and my life, as art. My art. My masterpiece in progress, my kaleidoscope of color and light and life.

Arnold Schoenberg said, “If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.” Maybe I’m not for everyone. And maybe that’s ok.

I was tasked by a friend with writing a love letter to myself, and this is what I came up with:

“You’re a kaleidoscope, and you used to think that was bad, but maybe it’s the best thing about you. You’re turning out indescribable and unexpected, and you’re clearly not for everyone. But that’s ok. The people who matter have held you up to the light and found beauty in your eclectic patterns and erratic shapes; your bright and shifting colors. I know all you want is to be a prism; to turn the limited energy the universe gives you into effective forms of love, art, and justice. You heat up too much sometimes, but that just means you care, right? Maybe too much passion is better than not enough, and celebrating who you are is better than trying to force yourself into a mold that doesn’t fit. Keep trying.”

Self-acceptance, as those of us who have had to fight tooth and nail for it know, often means absolving oneself of arbitrary “sins” foisted on you by various parts of society. Forgiving yourself for yourself, and then celebrating the very same when you realize that forgiveness wasn’t necessary in the first place. I think I’m finally there. Most of the time, at least.

I’ve finally learned to live happily

Here at the intersection of “too much”

And “not enough.”

Here I rise from my knees at the burial ground

For sins that I no longer claim.

My shame healed no one,

Least of all me.

But maybe my bold existence—

Vulnerable, bright,

Radical with acceptance

Empathy and advocacy—

Can be medicinal.

This is my dissent.

This is my rage into art.

This is my pain into joy.

This is my kintsugi.

Celebrate with me,

Or go,

And leave me to the light.