Acceptance

It's amazing how quickly a person can get aid when brain abnormalities are discovered. A week and a half after applying for state disability, my request was granted. I opened and read the letter with as much excitement as when I received my acceptance letter to graduate school. Actually, with more. While graduate school acceptance letters are written in the positive, state disability letters are written in the negative: "We have determined that you are unable to work..." This negative statement at first led me to believe that I had been denied. "Unable" is usually not something you want to hear in a letter. But my disillusionment was soon corrected, and unlike receiving my graduate acceptance letter where I opened it and then went back to bed in sickness, with this letter I actually ran down the driveway with a grin from ear to ear. Finally I would be able to receive monetary compensation for my inability to work. Finally my disorder would be taken seriously.

With this officialism of my disability, I walk a tight rope between acceptance and perseverance. I have come to terms with the fact that I may never get better, and this has proven necessary in order to get my life in a place where I can function in my limited space. This doesn't mean I've given up on my goals. I'm still getting my degree, still working on my writing, and starting the process of moving to Seattle through subsidized housing which will take about a year. But what it does mean is that I'm allowing myself to be taken care of by the government. (I've never been happier with America.) I'm allowing myself to be okay with buying clothes from Target. I'm also allowing myself to be okay at 150 pounds with a distended stomach.

My physical appearance has caused me a lot of grief. I used to be 100 pounds, so adding 50 more to that frame has come as quite a shock. A few days ago my grandma, who is starting on Prednisone, pointed at me in fear saying, "I'm going to get fat like you." I don't know whether it was a difference in what I was wearing or just a different attitude, but yesterday she actually said I looked good the way I am. So did a former lover who I ran into a couple weeks ago and hadn't seen in years. This lover herself has always been overweight (yes, I had a fling with a girl in my college days) and I have always considered her to be absolutely gorgeous. What made her gorgeous was no doubt the way she carried herself. She acted like a hot commodity, and so she was. Not only with scrawny me but countless men with whom she came into contact.

I still wonder how to feel sexy when my clothes are off, and I still wonder what I'll tell men when they ask me what I do for a living. I see the latter scenario going a bit like this: Man: What do you do? Me: I'm a writer. Man: What do you write? Me: Book reviews, mostly. Man: Oh, can you make a living off that? Me: (blushing), well, I try. Man: What was your latest review? Me: Umm, I can't remember... It was a year ago. I've been in school. Man: Oh, so do you have your degree: Me: Not quite yet. Man: So are you in school now? Me: No, not really. I also write screenplays. Man: Oh, have you sold any? Me: Well, not yet. Now, I know I don't need to answer to anyone about how I spend my time, but the fact is, up until I got sick I worked all my life, and it's hard to define myself outside of a paycheck.

Acceptance and perseverance is not just a struggle for us disabled folk. It's also a struggle for just about everyone. Today, as I sit at my desk by the window and gaze out at the bright blue sky, I'm accepting my distended stomach because my legs do not feel well enough to walk around the block, nor have they for the past week. I'll accept my inability to read today and instead zone out on the couch in front of the television, waiting for my creative juices to get flowing at about 2 a.m. for an essay I'm submitting to Glamour. When the actual brain fog lifts, I'll read, I'll shower, I'll walk... but when my symptoms are heavy upon me there's nothing to do but embrace them. And now I have the government behind me when I do.

The look of fibromyalgia

I used to be rail thin, thanks to good genes and a sensitive stomach that didn't digest much. This, in conjunction with my big boobs and perfectly shaped butt, gave me quite the ideal body. Of course I took it for granted and envied the girls with a little bit of meat on their bones. As they say, we always want what we don't have. I wore bulky clothing to hide my breasts because they felt too big in comparison to the rest of my body, and I didn't wear my first bikini until I was about 29.

Now I take five medications and have gone from 97 pounds to 145. As an apple I carry most of my weight in my stomach, and it has been quite the transition to learn how to love, accept, and clothe my new body. I finally understand why women are so obsessed about weight and why they count calories and put themselves down. I now understand dressing to hide your flaws instead of to hide your sexuality. Now I wear low cut shirts in order to accentuate my breasts instead of pretending they aren't there, in order to draw attention up to my face and away from my protruding stomach.

The Catch-22 about fibromyalgia is that your illness makes you take medications which make you gain weight, but it also prevents you from being able to exercise to get the weight off. I did Jillian Michaels' "30-Day Shred" until it gave me a new repetitive strain injury in my shoulders. I did a walking DVD twice until it put me in a flareup that lasted for a couple of days. There is a direct correlation between exercise and flareups which contradicts my inherent drive to be active. Instead I regulate myself to Tai Chi, an exercise bike, and walking (not in place), but only when I feel 100% which in the winter is not often.

I abhor the thought of taking off my clothes and having a love interest see my round belly. I may have learned how to dress my body, but what about when the clothes come off? Every woman's fear is looking like her mother, and when my fibromyalgia hit my body grew to look like my mother's middle aged one, only now she exercises enough to keep the weight off so that even she and my grandmother are thinner than I am.

On Monday my roommate and I start diets to lose weight after one party and before another. Luckily my new abode has an exercise room attached to the complex, complete with an exercise bike and a treadmill, two of the exercise machines I can actually use, and which have helped me lose weight in the past. My ideal goal is 130, my attainable goal is 135, and my realistic goal is 140. I will diet in part because of body image but to a larger degree because I like being aware of what is going into that body. Ironically ever since I have gained weight I am much healthier in my eating choices. Now an entire bag of cookies has consequences where it once did not. On Sunday I will wear a killer (stomach hiding) dress to a hopefully killer event, and in two months I will wear a festive 80s outfit hopefully a few pounds lighter.

I want to end this post with an positive spin but in all honesty, I can't. I'm human, I want the body of Salma Hayak, and I want to look good naked. If I can't look good naked, I want the body health to be able to do something about it without flareups telling me I can't. So, what do I do? I don't have all the answers, or even in this case just one answer. Just that I hope my next boyfriend can rub my Buddha belly and feel like the luckiest man alive.