Narcissistic

Kelly Workout has gone AWOL from the gym recently. I think she got discouraged at how slow her progress at the gym was--and of course life got in the way. Her partner is out of work at the moment, and her mother-in-law is visiting for two months, and her annoying, manipulative live-in sister-in-law went ahead and got the dog that they all agreed (after an enormous blow-up from Kelly Workout) not to get. Her home life has just exploded, in other words, taking her with it. Poor thing. And--surprise--she's suddenly started to get sick, often. It started with a cold or the flu that lasted several weeks, and that overlapped into a pernicious staph infection for which she had to take a huge dose of antibiotics. Just as she was getting over that, she began to have kidney pain. That was the last news I heard of her.

I'm always interested in how health is affected by outside events that cause us stress--and by how willfully blind people are to the debilitating effects on their health by stress brought on by outside events.

In my own life I know, for example, that nothing brings on depression--and weight gain--faster than denial. The more I retreat into denial about a situation, the sicker I get. For me, stress doesn't manifest itself in colds and infections and kidney pain. Other people get those things. Instead, I can use the number of days I am unable to leave the house to measure my stress level. Or I can use my bathroom scale to measure the distance between who I am and who I want to be. Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't mean that my mood or my happiness hinges on the number on the scale. What I mean is, the scale is a barometer for my--let's call it--stuckness. The unhappier I am, I mean, the higher the number goes. (I've also seen it work in reverse for some people. The unhappier they are, the lower the number goes.) The more scared I am, the higher the number goes. The more useless I feel, the higher the number goes. Until I tackle the unhappiness and the fear, the number keeps climbing.

Tackling the problem has always meant heading straight for creativity. I have to create something or somethings to get back on track. The creation of that something has to require a concentrated, sustained effort, too, which makes the process similar to meditation. In fact, it's almost like active meditation. The created something has to have a use, beyond being my lifeline, I mean. It has to have some beauty or other value to it in the end.

Questions To Ask Yourself On Sleepless Nights

How much of a relationship is there between who you are and who you want to be? How much distance between the life you imagine for yourself and the life you have? Who are you really--and when did you decide who you are?

Here are some old photos of me, dedicated narcissist that I am:



Is this me? Yes, that's me in front of the Sydney Opera House. I look happy, no? I was twenty-seven years old, had just finished a stressful set of classes in tropical and conservation biology. I was in a strange space then. I was happy to have gotten my weight down to three hundred pounds (I had lost nearly 30 pounds learning how to swim so that I could go diving and snorkeling in Australia), but I was really unhappy in some fundamental ways, too. Can you see it?



Is this me? Yes, that's me. I look happy, no? Dave took that picture of me a couple of years ago. He called this my "winning smile." I was on my way to an interview with Pfizer (yes, the drug company that recently announced plans to lay off about 1,300 of its research scientists). I was hiding all the nervousness I felt. I don't remember my weight at that time, but it's close to the weight I am now. (I did get the job. I turned it down in the end, reasoning that I didn't have what it takes to work for Big Pharma.)



Is this me? Yes, that's me. I look happy, no? Nice collarbones, huh? I was close to my lowest weight ever here. I was about seventy pounds lighter than when I started sixth grade. Seriously. I was living on about a thousand calories a day and working out anywhere from one to three hours a day. I couldn't walk barefoot because I had no fat pad on the bottom of my feet. I remember at that weight that I could count all my ribs. I had to wear long underwear under my jeans to stay warm. And still, I continued to diet.



Is this me? Yes, this is me. I look happy, no? I weighed close to four hundred pounds in this photo. (I actually stopped stepping on the scale when it got to 397. I know I kept gaining for a time, but I stopped getting on the scale. I didn't know what I would have done if I had actually seen 400 roll up.) I couldn't cross the street without getting winded. I was in school and working, but I don't remember anything from these days. That lack of memory is a characteristic of my darkest days.



Is this me? Yes, this is me. I look happy, no?

In all seriousness, if I think about the image of me I want to project to the world, the last image comes closest. I don't mean the collarbone and rib-baring thinness. I mean the look on my face. That comes closest to reflecting who I am on the inside. What that says about me, I'm only just beginning to explore.