Not-crying and the art of self-awareness

I am always on a journey of self-development. It’s only been in the last few years that I have become more self-aware. I am learning to listen to my body and to heed it when it tells me that I need to rest, or that I’m feeling flat. I am aware now that when I’m feeling blue that it is a state of mind and something that I can work though. Well, sometimes I am aware of this. Sometimes I fall into a heap and not-cry.

I don’t know if it is special to me, but I am a very good not-crier. Not-crying is when I am feeling so emotionally raw and on edge that I want to cry, and yet I can’t. My mind goes blank and I just stare, looking at nothing in particular in a state of despair and sadness. No tears well in my eyes, no sobbing or anything like that. Yet my brain switches to this off mode that is like nothing else I ever experience. So I figure it is something significant, and call it not-crying.

I’ve often felt weird about my brain. I was diagnosed as being hyperactive when I was a child, and I realised when I was studying Primary Education at Uni (thank goodness I didn’t stick with that!) that I probably had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Oh Shiny! More completely unrelated stuff - makes sense, no? (by

What I find is that I am one who bores quickly of things when I’ve mastered them, or at least mastered them in my own brain. I also feel like my brain never switches off. Some conscious thought is going through my brain, trying to make its way out. This occurs regardless of whether I’m trying to chill out or get other things done. It’s only when I’m having a not-cry that I feel this void of thought.

So it’s no surprise then to learn that since I have these thoughts running through my brain all the time, that I often find myself falling into the trap of negative self-talk and putting myself down when I’m feeling crap. I am not perfect and yet being someone who writes about fat acceptance, I think people expect me to be. Or more correctly, I expect me to be.

I sometimes feel bad about the things I eat, even though I know I shouldn’t put a good or bad emotion on food. I sometimes berate myself for not being able to fit into my clothes, even though I know that my body will move between my natural weight range. There are days when I’d happily give up and just allow myself to be brainwashed yet again into thinking I’m defective and evil for being fat.

I’ve learned enough though to know that I can’t go back there. I was miserable there. I had no idea who I was as a person. In fact I think I was trying to pretend that I was someone I wasn’t. I was pretending to be ok with being fat, and clearly I wasn’t. I read all the books and had all the recipes on how to lose weight. I’d regularly think about joining Weight Watchers, which I think I last did in 2005 or 2006. Man I was such a sad person back then, and yet I thought I was happy.

Now I know I am happy, at least a lot of the time. The times I feel like crap I at least appreciate later on knowing that I was feeling like crap. I’ve learned so much from my crap moments that I can’t really trade them. I wouldn’t be me without them.

I think it is hard to be accepting of ourselves, whether we are fat, thin, tall, short or whatever. I reckon that if I wasn’t fat I wouldn’t be happy with other things. So to hell with going backwards, I’ll happily keep moving forward. I just need to remember to cut myself some slack occasionally.