The Heaviest I've Ever Been in My Life

This is the story of when I wrote nothing at all and weighed the most of my life.

When I was my heaviest not just physically but also spiritually.

When I was smiling for the camera but so heavy emotionally my best friend's grandma took one look at me and said, "Honey, I don't know what's weighing you down, but you need to go behind that barn there and have yourself a real good cry...cry until you can't cry anymore."

It happened the summer after my freshman year of college.

I came home without a plan and, unable to find a job or viable internship, ended up going to live with my aunt a couple hours away.

It seemed like a great opportunity. I'd live with her (and therefore not have to pay for housing or food), work at her company (where she offered to pay me double the highest hourly rate I'd ever made), and help her around her house.

She was also newly sober, and the thought was having me around would be good for her.

But I never once considered how bad it would be for me.

At first, it was fun. Fancy office job, big city, lots of shopping (her treat!). We had a 9 to whenever-she-decided-to-leave-for-the-day schedule Monday-Friday. Though sometimes we played hooky and didn't go in, but she would still pay me for helping her around her house. On the weekends we went to art galleries, did more shopping, and went out to dinners that cost more than I made all week (her treat, she insisted!).

And, because she was withdrawing from alcohol, there was lots of dessert.

Lots and lots of dessert to make up for the sugar alcohols she wasn't getting.

Within two weeks, I'd all but completely abandoned the workout routine I had settle into in college. It was too hard to go for a run after I'd eaten a (second) bowl of ice cream.

Not long after, I realized she hadn't entirely stopped drinking.

She did a pretty good job trying to hide it, but when she would come up from doing laundry and started slurring her words, it was pretty obvious what was happening: She was sneaking booze.

I wanted to help her. Wanted to say something. To be brave enough to call her on it.

But I wasn't.

Nor, do I realize now, should I have been. I was 19. I had no business trying to save a middle-aged alcoholic from her own demons.

Yet, the pressure weighed on me as our living arrangement became more and more toxic.

I started eating even more chocolate chip cookies and even less broccoli to try and shut out the voice inside me saying, "Speak up! Say something!"

Started watching more sitcoms and reading less literature to turn off the alarm bells going off in my brain.

And, most dangerously of all for me, I stopped writing.

Not just writing, though, I stopped using my voice entirely.

Of course, I still talked to people. "I finished that brochure you asked me for." "I'm fine with wherever you want to eat for dinner." "I'm going to bed, I'll see you in the morning." Those sorts of things.

But I wasn't expressing myself. Wasn't sharing my sadness, my disappointment, the betrayal I felt.

Without a voice, without any real, authentic self-expression, I stopped living.

I was just...existing. Somehow managing to (barely) function. But I wasn't really living. I felt like a zombie going through the motions of life.

Wake up. Drink 2 cups of coffee just to be able to make sense of the words on the computer screen. Go to work. Eat lunch—something fried because it made me feel a little bit of pleasure....but then made me feel heavy and exhausted—then another round of caffeine. This time a sugar-filled Starbucks frou-frou drink that was really just a milkshake with a shot (or three) of espresso. Finish work. Go shopping. Buy something for the temporary hit of retail therapy dopamine. Dinner (out), of course followed by dessert. Home to watch TV until it was time to go to bed. Take unhealthy amounts of melatonin to be able to fall asleep. Wake up, repeat all over again.

That was all my life consisted of for months.

It was a terrible way to exist.

Completely disconnected from my voice, my body, myself.

Which led me to be entirely at the mercy of someone else's toxic habits.

A lifestyle that all but killed me.

When I finally got offered a job in my hometown and returned, I was the heaviest I'd ever been. I looked like I'd gained the freshman 15 (and then some)—except I hadn't gained them at college, I'd gained them after.

One day I went to my best friend's little brother's birthday party. Before I got out of the car, I "pulled myself together," ready to put on a smile and perform for the gathering.

My friend's grandma saw me and hugged me the way only a grandmother can. "How are you?" she asked.

"I'm tired, Grandma Sue," was all I could say.

That's when she looked at me and saw right through it all. In one moment, she took in all my heaviness, physical and emotional. Not one to bullshit, she told me to go have myself a good cry and not stop until I couldn't cry anymore.

Later that same day, my best friend and her mom sat me down and had an intervention. "We're worried about you. We think you need help."

Turns out, my smile wasn't fooling anybody but me. I was the fool.

My friend and her mom encouraged me to go to therapy, but I knew I didn't want to talk to anyone. I couldn't. I was blocked when it came to genuine expression. Then they asked me a question that made me realize that I did, in fact, need help: "Are you thinking about hurting yourself?"

I wasn't. I assured them of that. But I was not okay. I didn't want to kill myself, but I also had no idea what it meant to really live life anymore. All I knew how to do was function, get by.

I promised them I would get help, and I did.

For me, help came in the form of massage and craniosacral therapy—somatic release.

At one point, the massage therapist put her hands just above my throat and it started to burn. Truly, it felt like my vocal chords were on fire.

Then I opened my mouth and took a deep breath. It felt like I'd been underwater for minutes and had just come up for air.

I could breathe again.

I went home and I wrote. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.

What I know now is that the body really does keep the score. I needed help to unblock my throat chakra, the center of self-expression, of my voice.

But at the time I understood intuitively only one thing: I could never stop writing again. I was truly afraid that if I did, it would kill me.

I've never tried to find out.

I've kept writing.

I slowly eased back into exercising. Started eating healthier. Paying attention to my body. Taking care of it so it can take care of me.

And the weight slowly melted off.

No forcing. No dieting. Just honoring.

And writing.

To me, it's no coincidence that the heaviest I have ever been is also the period I stopped writing. It just makes sense that I was heavy because I was carrying around all those thoughts and emotions within my body. They had no place else to go. I was heavy because I was swallowing my pain instead of expressing it.

Write nothing, weigh the most.

But write more, weigh less. Physically, emotionally, spiritually.