Photo

A few weeks ago, one my student workers had her last day on the job.  She decided to corral some of us up to take some photos to remember her time here.  She the took the photos from her phone and emailed them to all of us.

The email is still, unread, in my inbox.

I've made a ton of progress recently - I have been shopping in stores and buying clothes in sizes I have not purchased in a long time, all without a meltdown.  I've been looking in the mirror and trying to find what's neat or cool about my body as opposed to what's not (or what society thinks is not).  I have been working out more in a way to appreciate my body and loving that I might be starting to feel strong again, as opposed to on my way to becoming skinny.  These things are huge (no pun intended).  

And yet I still can't bring myself to look at any photographs that have been taken of me recently.  Selfies?  Fine, I've controlled what I look like and deleted the less than pretty ones.  Something someone else took? Forget it - it's just better I not look.

This is a habit and a feeling I need to break for many reasons.  For one thing, a photograph is meant to capture a moment in time, a memory.  Those photos my student took of us?  I wish I could look at them and think "How sweet on the last day!"  instead of "wow, I am fatter than I thought". Or, "Wow, I look thin or better than I thought."  The thing is, it shouldn't matter what I looked like in the photograph, but rather the memory.  How can I relive memories if I'm afraid of myself?

A friend on Facebook tagged me to find five pictures of myself where I felt beautiful.  The little game had been making its rounds on the social media site and I was praying it wouldn't find me.  When it did, I knew I had two choices.  I could ignore it and refuse to participate.  Or, I could accept it as a challenge to really find photos that I do remember feeling beautiful in, divorced of the fact that I felt beautiful only because I looked thin.  That last sentiment was nearly impossible.

So I found some photos of myself, and some not of myself.  I came up with a couple from my wedding, because our photographer took absolutely stunning shots all around.  One was with my husband and the other with my great aunt who passed away a year ago.  Of all the photos, the one of her and me is simply my favorite.  Then I chose a photo of when my husband and I broke ground on our new house.  Another I chose was when I was front row at my favorite band's concert - a photograph of me in complete bliss, front row center, captured by one of the band's photographers that wound up on the band's website.  The final photo was of my bike - without me on it - because when I ride, I feel strong and that makes me feel beautiful.

Even so, these five photos of myself are reminiscent of thoughts I have when looking at photos of myself.  I know damn well when I first saw each of those pictures I chose for this challenge, my first thought back then was "do I look fat?"  The sad thing is, nearly every single photograph taken of me in my 31 years on earth is stained with that thought.  Perhaps some childhood photos are untainted by my thoughts on how I looked, but they certainly bear the weight (sorry, pun!) of what my relatives thought of my body.  After all, I was made very aware that I was a bony kid who suddenly come puberty wasn't so thin and lanky anymore.

Even worse, there are photos where I remember what my exact weight was at that point in time.  There is a photograph from a family vacation where I was my lowest weight at that point in my ED-fueled journey and I sure remember that more than what was happening in the photo itself.  I see a picture and I remember weights, sizes and what I ate or did not eat that day.  For me, the photo is not a memory, but a benchmark of my body's journey towards (and away from) unsustainable thinness.

It's very hard for me to look at pictures from a few years ago before I started recovery.  I mourn the way I used to look and the compliments I received - after all, it is still desirable to be thin in this society, and it's still such a wonderful thing, as a woman, to receive a compliment reinforcing that desire.  Since a lot of these photos are on Facebook, not only are my internal comments stored for me to remember when looking at a picture, but sometimes there are old comments right on the site about how my body looked.  Trying to find pictures for the above challenge reminded me of this - a certain picture of me standing on a rocky beach in Maine invited the comment "Love this picture!  You look soooo skinny!!"  At the time, this was the greatest thing anyone could say to me and it quite literally changed the way I felt about myself for that day.  Now, it's sad for so many reasons - for riding the wave of that comment to the fact the "compliment" was even given.  I was standing at the Atlantic Ocean on a beautiful mound of boulders - simply gorgeous scenery - and the comment I got on the photograph was how skinny (thus presumably great) I looked. 

And here's another weird occurrence in the social media photograph world.  On Thursdays, it's throwback Thursday, or #TBT on Facebook where people post older photographs as a "throwback".  A couple weeks ago I chose a photo from my graduate school commencement to participate in TBT, and I did so with trepidation.  At my graduation, I had fully relapsed and fell to my lowest weight ED weight again and I was surprised how weak I looked in the pictures.  I chose a picture of my husband and I and re-shared it for TBT.  The compliments and likes I received were more than I expected.  While I didn't allude to the fact that it was a very sick time for me, I couldn't seem to get outside my ED thoughts - do people like this photo because I look thinner?  What if people saw me now - would they gasp in shock at how much bigger I am? 

What I am most afraid of with seeing recent photos is that I am going to relapse.  Even though I've built many walls around my ED to keep it out, I feel this is one thing that would make everything crumble.  Or at the very least completely change my day so I am sulking after seeing myself.  So what should be my goals?

 - I want to look at a photograph and think of the memory first.  I want to see what else is in the picture - and who else - and soak it all in.
 - No matter what I look like, it should just be that - what I looked like in that still picture.  That it actually doesn't mean that is what I look like - how many times do we see pictures of friends, but then see them in 3D in life?  Definitely not the same.
 - I want to laugh at a bad picture of myself.  I do!  If I have a double chin, or something that looks outrageous, I want to laugh at it.  I want to say to myself "Ha!  That one didn't turn out too well!"  If this is a set of photographs, then I want to laugh as say "Geez, bad picture day!"
 - I want to celebrate a good photo of myself - but that's it.  I don't want to rely on the reassurance of a picture to make me feel a certain way.  I don't want a good photograph to elevate my mood to extremes because it shouldn't really be that important.  Just like the scale, an image really can't be the indicator of a good or bad day.
 - I want to be in lots of pictures, instead of avoiding it in fear that I might actually see myself.

Do I have my work cut out for me, or what?