What We Have is a Failure to Communicate

I am not ashamed to admit that my mama* is my best friend. Actually, I think it's pretty cool. We have been through hell and high water together, and during the very hardest times (escaping an abusive alcoholic marriage, etc) it was just the two of us. She remarried when I was four (my stepdad adopted me and has been the best father I could have asked for), and now I have two brothers, but we still have the sense of always being a team, the dynamic duo, partners in crime. Not that we don't argue and push each other's buttons, but usually we can do it and then laugh about it minutes later.

Some of the only times we have serious conflicts, though, are because I have a hard time making myself heard. This is exclusively with ED stuff, in every other area of my life I have no problem telling her pretty much anything. When it comes to the ED, though, I can't. It's not that I'm trying to hide anything from her, I know better than to even try that. It's that I just don't know how to talk about it. If I can't explain it to myself, how the hell am I supposed to sculpt that amorphous swirl of feelings, anxieties, and frustrations into a form someone else could ever being to interpret or understand? Until she made an effort a few years ago to finally lose her "baby weight" (ten years after the last baby, but better late than never?) she had never been on a diet in her life, she has a great body image and no confidence issues, so the ED thing is pretty engimatic to her.

So while she has been upfront about not being able to fully understand the complexities of having anorexia, she has been extremely supportive. They forced me into therapy when I was younger and I was resentful as hell, but now I know it probably saved my life. (Although that therapist was such a bad experience that I refused any kind of professional help for the following seven years, just got back on the therapy wagon this past winter).

Since then she has been fairly hands off, meaning she hasn't tried to force me to make changes, but she has let me know that she cares and will do whatever I need/want as far as recovery support. She does periodically ask me how I’m doing with things, and lets me know that the ED is always on her radar. I have a ton of guilt about how much it costs her for me to see H. and L., and I know it's a significant financial burden, but she has never once complained or pulled any kind of a guilt trip.

So, yaddah yaddah, in spite of having a compassionate and supportive mother I still pretty much behave like a dumbfuck when it comes to my health, and I lack the skills to communicate to her when I am having a particularly hard time. Recently, though, I mustered up a lot of courage and confronted her with one issue that had really been bothering me: clothes. She loves to shop, and she frequently mails me outfits that she "just picked up for you, isn't it cute?" The thing is, she knows roughly what size I am, and so she buys that size. Which, of course, would make sense to any logical, reasonable person.

Well, the problem is that very often I fail at being a logical, reasonable person, and clothing is a huge trigger for me. In theory I'm supposed to be putting on a significant amount of weight. So far that hasn't been very successful, but that's beside the point right now. The point is that I am indeed trying to Psyche Myself Up to Being OK when I do start outgrowing clothes and seeing changes in my body. I've even started collecting "skinny clothes" from my closet to turn over to H. But having more "skinny clothes" show up in my mailbox periodically is sort of hard. Sort of very frustrating. I'm trying to convince myself that I'm more than a size, that the number doesn't matter, and then boom, another package arrives with reminders of how small everyone expects me to be. I know that's not what she intends at all, she's just trying to be helpful by sending gifts, but it's still an issue.

So I told her that. It's really hard for me to bring up ED-related emotions, and I had to think for a long time about how to word everything. Finally, I decided to quit being a wimp and told her to stop sending me clothes (for now), and explained why. She was surprised, she "hadn't thought of that," and said of course she didn't want to make things harder. Great, issue addressed, problem solved, score one for articulating feelings.

Except that just a few days after I returned from Central America (last week), she mentioned she’s “getting a box together” for me. This is fine, Mom’s Boxes are usually collections of food, mail, books, cosmetics, whatever she feels like tossing in. But then she started describing several outfits she picked up for me. Then she acted utterly confused when I got irritated with her.

I hate being put in a position where my inability to think/feel like a normal person is put under the spotlight. I mostly hate it because I know I’m the one that puts myself in the position time after time. Normal college girls would probably love to have outfits bought and sent to them by a very fashion-savvy mother. But I don’t, and I told her that, and she either 1) Didn’t listen, 2) Didn’t take me seriously, or 3) just plain forgot. She is too smart of a person for any of those to be a legimate excuse. I understand that she doesn't 100% "get" the underlying issue, but I made a pretty specific request.

So I reiterated that I don’t want any clothes, not until I figure out what my weight is going to settle at. Then she got defensive, and said she thought that it was “only pants” that I didn’t want. No, mama,* fat is pretty smart about distributing over your entire body, and the way shirts fit across my torso is every bit as triggering as how tightly jeans cling to my ass.

I still fit into all the stuff she sends, but I’m not supposed to want to, and I’m trying to convince myself of that . . . and I don’t know how to make her understand that whole situation when it’s still something that I struggle with on a daily basis.

H. has me keep a list of reasons I want to recover, and I have definitely decided to add “Being able to ENJOY clothes shopping like a normal daughter.”



* I use the conventional spelling here, but in my charming southern drawl this word is pronounced "momma." If you can't tell the difference when you read it to yourself, well, bless your heart, just don't worry about it, but you really should consider spending some time below the Mason-Dixon. ;)