The Slide Into (fat) Madness

During the first year of my principalship, my stress level grew and grew and grew. And so did my meals. Every weekday, I got up at 5am, worked until 7pm, had dinner, and then worked until midnight. Every weekend I spent at least one 8-hour day working. I even dreamed about work almost every night.

"Just a little more," I would think to myself. "If I can put in a good, hard week now then maybe next week will be easier."

"Next week" was never easier. Semesters continued to crescendo with intensity, and the breaks between were spent trying to reinvent the wheel into something that felt more doable, more effective. It never worked. For the entirety of my time as a principal, I worked from before sunup to after sundown and there was always more to do.

What really ate at me, though, was the isolation. I had gone from being a peer among my teacher friends to being their boss. Rather than staying out until 3am at happy hours, I found myself buying a round and then leaving so other people could have fun. I did not have a spouse or family to come home to, so at times the emptiness was palpable. In order to keep going at that pace, I had to tell myself that it was all going well and getting better.

"Great" I would tell my friends and family when they asked how I was doing. "I am right where I am supposed to be. As soon as [insert item here] happens, we will all be able to take a breath." Or I would utter the sentence that all educators say to end the conversation when people point out (rightly) how bonkers their workload is.

"I just love the kids," I would croon. "It's a labor of love."

One year as a principal turned into two years, and two years turned into three years. And the pounds kept coming. On average, I knew I was gaining 20 pounds a year and that I was in trouble. I began buying clothes with elastic waistbands. "One Size Fits All", they proclaimed. My lower body was jiggling so much that I started wearing biker shorts under everything instead of underwear. The hooks on my bra were holding on for dear life.

"I'm too busy for all that", I would tell my relatives when they asked after my dating life. "I am working on my career."

In summer of 2019, I began to feel discouraged about the way things were going. More and more was expected and I had less and less to give. On top of that, someone very close to me was ill and my nerves were raw and the worry was constant. My performance faltered. My best friend, Z, had a Come to Jesus conversation with me over a tray of waffle fries soaked in ranch.

"Are you happy?", she asked.

I was not even mentally close to being able to answer that question honestly, so I told her that this (horrible) life I had been living was, in fact, exactly what I wanted, and she offered me her spouse, who coaches administrators, to help me. After several coaching sessions, it was clear to me that my heart was absolutely not in it. I began having panic attacks and got an ulcer. After a panic attack that took me to the hospital where I was intravenously sedated, Z took matters into her own hands and made me an appointment with her therapist. I fought her when she suggested that I take the next day off.

"I mean, you are bleeding internally," she pointed out as I wept into the full block of cheese I was devouring. "Maybe it's time to get some help."

One day, I just decided that I'd had enough. I decided to stop fighting and just stay in bed. I put on Grey's Anatomy and ordered every meal in. Nachos, fast food, fettuccini alfredo, ruben sandwiches, and ice cream sundaes. I consumed every meal in my bed and watched TV. I didn't shower. I didn't sleep. I didn't answer my phone.

"My bed is safe," I told myself. For 9 days I sat there and ate and watched TV. I looked at pictures of my grandmother (who, when she passed, was morbidly obese and my favorite person in the world), and remembered her sitting in her rocking chair crying and eating. "Are you here with me?" I would whisper against my pillow. "I don't know what is happening to me. Is this what happened to you?" I had a beta fish that I did not feed because I lost track of time. It died and was floating on the top of the water for days in its own decomposition. I watched it with interest. "Is that what would happen to me if I died?" I wondered.

What strikes me most about that time is how easy it was to give up. How close that chasm of black is. How simple it is to slip beneath the surface. All you have to do is stop fighting. And then, like any great hole, it's almost impossible to crawl out. On the 9th day, filthy and ragged from lack of sleep, I suddenly had a moment of clarity in which I knew that my next move would determine my fate. I could either Face This and hopefully get better someday, or sink deeper into this soft, black place and potentially endanger my life.

I flushed what was left of my fish, found a psychiatrist and began my journey with anti-depressants. At that point I was weighing in at 200 pounds. The medications did not "fix me" by any means, but after a series of weeks they helped me out of the chasm. I was still sitting on the edge, but I could sit there and look around and imagine that someday things could be better. For the next several months, I leaned into EMDR with my new therapist. For those who have not experienced it, EMDR includes the use of bilateral brain stimulation to help people process their deepest, core memory traumas. I found it to be an incredible experience overall, but it takes a lot of time and energy to process each incident of trauma, and, mid-process, people can feel extremely raw. Panic attacks under my desk continued. Soaked in sweat, I would sit under there with my eyes squeezed shut, gasp for air, and count.

One thing that became crystal clear through EMDR is that my job was absolutely not the right fit for me. There were too many things I had to do that were so far removed from the classrooms I had once loved. As a principal in a public charter school, especially one that serves marginalized populations, there are so many (ultimately) utilitarian and high stakes decisions to make with a totally insufficient well of resources. Resources which include people. "Would you be able to teach reading today?" I would ask a teacher at 7am when their colleague called out. "Could you make it work with two smaller planning periods instead of one long one?" Or, "I can't hire an extra teacher to get class sizes down. If I do that then I can't afford to pay for subs."

Some of the sentences I had to utter were so, so bleak. "It's hard, but these are the breaks", I'd be told when I reached out to other administrators I knew for help. "Making really tough decisions and being the face of those decisions is what this work is."

"What do you want to do?" my therapist asked me. "Have you thought about what is next?" And out of nowhere the answer came to me, so clearly.

"I want to move to California," I said. "I want to live near my brother and my cousins and nephews, and be there when my parents relocate for their retirement, and live by the beach and start a new life.

So, for my own health, and (ultimately) the good of my school, I am grateful that I was able to make the decision with the support of my administration to step down from my position, effective January 2020, and move across the country. I cried as I made the announcement, sitting on a cafeteria table. I chose to serve as a dean of students for the remainder of the year and support my replacement best I could.

I filled my refrigerator with cottage cheese and cucumbers and apples and salmon. Hopeful foods. Maybe I can get this under control, I thought. Maybe now I can start again.

Of course, I don't need to tell anyone what happened in March, 2020. What we didn't know (what nobody knew then), was that a global pandemic was about to grip the world in its claws for the next two years. Our spring break was extended by a week. Then a month. Then any hope of returning to school that year was effectively dashed. Like the rest of the country we tried desperately to keep school going through a mass distribution of technology, google classroom, and daily calls to every student but it was essentially a lost quarter. During that time, I attended all of my school meetings by zoom, but I was so close to leaving for good that I was basically invisible. Once, I fell asleep during a meeting and no one told me or cared. I just woke up to an empty room.

Needless to say, it was the perfect time to plan a cross-country move with basically no plan. But I had also reached a point of desperation and something needed to change. NOW. My eating grew out of control. Stuck in my apartment, which was the worst possible thing for my mental health, I ate and ate and ate. By the time I made it to California to live with my uncle for the summer I was 220 pounds. Every day I ate and searched for jobs and ate some more. It took three months of constant searching to find a new job at the height of the pandemic.

With hard work and a little luck, I accepted a position as the director of a smaller program in working with college-aged students with disabilities, and it did turn out to be a great fit. I moved into a studio in Monterey, as the first COVID vaccination was still months away and I didn't know anyone yet. My saving's account was totally depleted and I was scraping by paycheck to paycheck, so my first apartment had no heat, no kitchen, and only plywood subflooring. Every day I worked in an empty office and went home to my empty one room apartment. I looked forward to eating. It was comforting and something fun to do. Everything was closed down, the forest fires were demolishing the central coast, the sky was apocalypse orange, and I just walked my dogs in the same circles every day. I returned to eating in my bed (because I didn't have a proper table) and it made me shudder every time.

For the last year and a half, I have worked hard at making friends, finding balance, saving money, and reconnecting with family. I have real life coworkers now, a great roommate, and have found my niche this beautiful seaside town. But the challenge that been my constant companion since my breakdown is the weight. Today, I top the scales at 255 pounds and my doctor told me this week that my blood sugar is higher than normal, indicating a prediabetic state.

Looking at the data of the past several years, one thing is clear: If I continue living how I am living and do not change a single thing, I am going to be 300 pounds and diabetic before I am 40 years old. I am 36 years old right now. Once again, I find myself eyeing that chasm (this one filled with gummy worms and pizza instead of just inky blackness). Once again, I am choosing between sliding into that chasm or working hard to protect a quality life for myself. I really hope I can lose the weight.

Regardless, in this moment I find myself in this wholly unfamiliar state, and I am determined to examine it. Maybe in understanding this experience fully and sharing it I can rise above it. Isn't that all any of us can hope for?