The Finding Place 🩵

The choice is yours.

There is something in the Finding Place. The Finding Place is that little corner of your mind where you know you have something that needs to be looked at, examined, and it’s waiting until you’re ready to see it. Sometimes it’s a memory. Sometimes it’s a feeling. Sometimes, it’s nothing you can name, but you know it’s there.

This essay has been in the Finding Place for about two weeks. I’ve had a lot going on in the past two weeks, no question, but that hasn’t stopped me before. I was rolling these essays out like nobody’s business, jotting them down before falling asleep— because I couldn’t not write them— or feeling eager when my alarm went off at 4:45am so I would have time before the kids woke up.

The trouble with the Finding Place, is that once you know something is there, you have two options. You can ignore it, let it know you aren’t ready, shy away from whatever truth it has to reveal to you, and run the risk of losing it forever.

Or, you can open your eyes and face it.

In this particular instance, I have been straddling the in-between: I acknowledged the Finding Thing, I’ve been thinking about it without sending it away, I’ve mentioned it to Mr. K, and I even wrote a Note telling you guys that I was avoiding it. So I’ve been trying not to send it away, because I know better, but I just haven’t been ready to look yet. And it’s created a logjam.

It’s happening even now. I decided I needed to face this thing, I started writing, and now I’m on the fifth paragraph and I still have yet to begin.

Okay.

Here it is.

One time, I gained 100 pounds in 3 months. I spent my whole life being fit as a fiddle, not even just average. I was the hot one. And then, one day, I wasn’t anymore.

I was six months pregnant when it first happened, but it wasn’t that I had been eating too much or letting myself go. I ballooned like Violet Beauregard turning into a blueberry while Willie Wonka looked helplessly on.

One day, I looked like this.

And the next day, I looked like that.

(For my theory on how this was even possible, I’ll link that essay at the bottom)

This is something that has caused me pain and shame and anxiety and hopelessness at different times, but I’ve mostly made peace with it. It took a few years, because I had three more babies in short order, but I did lose a lot of that weight.

I don’t know why this thing is in the Finding Place. I don’t know what to say about it. I don’t want you to know this about me. And I don’t know what words to use to make it pretty and inspirational. I find it to be disgusting and humiliating. Like, I am literally afraid I will lose readers by sharing the photos that illustrate the reality of what happened to me.

My mother was fat. And I hated her for it.

My dad was cruel about my mother being fat, and she hated him for it.

My sister was fat, and I used that as the label in my mind that justified my intense hatred for her.

And I always stayed out of it by being fit.

I sought my dad’s approval by being the hot one. And I blamed my mom’s weight for the pathetic entropy of their marriage. From a young age, I saw the transformation pictures from their wedding to barely a year later, and I venomously believed that letting herself go was the reason there was no love in her life.

The thing of this that I don’t know how to write, is that I recently had some new memories surface. I have known for a dozen years that I was sexually abused by an older cousin when I was small. Really small. And it has taken about that many years for enough of those memories to present themselves for healing.

One of the first things I wrote here was about how I had a dream that this predator had lost his power in my life, and the relief I felt at being able to finally release that monster.

I don’t know if it was the writing of these essays that unlocked something new, or other events that I’ve been going through in the larger landscape of my life. The chicken and the egg. But even as I was telling you that I was freed, I learned that I am not yet.

I downloaded distinct, unmistakeable memories that I was also sexually abused by my father, and my grandfather, and my great uncle.

And I suppose there is no way to talk about how I sought my dad’s approval for my physical appearance, or the hatred and jealousy I felt toward my mom and sister, without acknowledging that those feelings were obviously rooted in the events from those memories.

I have known these things for six weeks, and the traffic jam has been piling up in my Finding Place. I can’t remember the last time I allowed a backlog to accumulate there. I have become accustomed to dragging my dragons out and slaying them.

But this time, I don’t want to know.

And I don’t want to learn.

And I don’t want to feel.

But self awareness is a real bitch. I have come too far to turn back. I have seen too many who chose to send the Finding Things away and never let them return. I have watched their lighted countenances disintegrate like the waxy visage of the wicked witch of the west.

I lost a lot of that weight, and I’ve gained some back.

I’ve fought my way to clear so much space in my psyche, and now more Finding Things have filled the vacuum.

I tend to possess the discipline and willpower to clear one area at a time. I am, in fact, unusually good at it. I can gradually stick with daily exercise and counting calories and patiently losing half a pound at a time. I can clean out a closet and organize my office by sorting and purging randomly accumulated belongings one by one.

Or, I can use that energy to face the Finding Place.

So, for now, the extra pounds will stay. The dried up markers and forgotten craft supplies will sit on the shelf next to books full of projects I’ve been meaning to get to.

My kids will not remember that the laundry room didn’t look like a Better Homes and Gardens magazine or that my body didn’t belong on the cover of Women’s Health.

Because they will also not recall witnessing the withering of the adults in their life, like I did.

What they will have etched into the story of their childhood is the warmth and power of parents who never gave up. The example of what it looks like to stay wholehearted, even when it would be so much easier to be brokenhearted.

When they are ready, we will teach them about the Finding Place. We will help them find their Finding Things.

Until then, we will keep working on our own, one day at a time, and they will remember a mother who blossomed.

I don’t really know what is tied up in this log jam. But today, I’m going to look.

🩵🩵🩵

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Here’s a little more about the potential cause of that weight gain: