eating disorder – Entirely Unlike Tea

The day I stopped being normal! By Kelly Dixon.

“Normal” my least favorite word, as who even defined normal? Who decided that when people follow the same pattern, that is the normal? What if that is the “weird” and I am the normal. Essentially we are all a little crazy, some people just hide it better than others.

I remember the day I crossed the divide and hugged my presumed insanity.

I was 8/9 years old standing in the unheated school pool, freezing. I peered down at my blue swimsuit clad child’s belly and thought, “I am fat.” That was the day I slid off the cliff of childlike normalcy into the crashing ocean of crazy town, and it continued to consume me for the next 10 years of my life.

I have never been shy about telling people I am / was an anorexic, it is not something I hide, it is also not the first thing I blurt out, but it is an intrinsic part of me. It has single handedly created my personality. I am not ashamed of it, I actually do not wish I had never had it, I mean I cannot change what was. People need to know why I do not follow their sense of normalcy, why I am a little bit kooky. People need to realize that If you have never had an eating disorder, you truly will never understand the body dysmorphia, the power and control, refusing food thrust upon me, being force fed, the happiness I felt when I could see my bones protruding aggressively from all parts of my body, picking myself apart in a mirror through dark eyes, sunken back in a face that was a skull. A skull that sat like a bobble head on my emaciated 10 year old body, and all I saw was rolls of flesh, spilling on to the floor. You will never understand the relief I felt punching my stomach, scratching my arms and bruising my knuckles releasing the anger that filled my shrinking torso. I was a 10 year old child when I was at my first worst, I was eating an apple a day and no clothes fit me and I was struggling to move. The day I finally reached out for help to my parents in 1987, my father had to carry me into the Children’s ward of Maidstone Hospital, where he gently deposited me on a sickly, green covered bed, and that is where I stayed for the next 4 months. Unbeknownst to me the doctors had told my parents if I didn’t go into hospital I had about 2 weeks left to live. To be honest I didn’t care, because at age 10 I secretly was over living, it hurt too much, it consumed all of my day, and all I wanted to do was hide from the panic, the hate and the loathing I had for myself. The loathing that is still a wisp of a shadow in my 40 + year old body today.

What I have never told people, is that as soon as I came out of hospital I went back to my old ways. I was a master at hiding my food, it was stashed in shoes, under my arms, snuck down toilets. Where at age 11 a teacher was monitoring me constantly, and that was life until I reached my second “worst”, and I finally was admitted into a newly created eating disorder home for children. Kelly Krystina Dixon age 13 was the second group of inmates. I was there for a whole 5 months, hidden away from my family and friends. I never went back to “normal” I created a whole new me that embraced her madness.

You may call me crazy, weird, nuts, mad, hey go ahead. Because it was at age 8 when I first acknowledged the sanity shift. It has taken me 30 years to love it, that was not an easy acceptance. Because, at age 8 I stopped being like my peers, I was the difficult, unstable, the weird, emaciated loner kid that no one knew what to do with. They tried to understand me , to help me. They locked me up, sent me to therapy, force fed me, shouted at me, sobbed at me, begged me, pleaded with me. Sadly or thankfully, I have a force inside me that is unmovable by others, only when I decide, can a change be made. From that pivotal moment, when my young eyes caught sight of that swimsuit clad belly, there truly was no going back to pre crazy Kelly age 7 1/2, she was gone, destroyed, extinguished maybe she never really existed. I promise you she did, she really was there, and she was stolen.

I have spoken a lot about my eating from the moment I started to get better, but the early years are shaded, I actually have never written the details, the pain, the anger, the hatred I had. The eternal feeling of hunger, the hair on my arms as my body tried to keep warm, the fact my body was eating its muscle to stay alive, the hair on my head was a fine cloud of wisp, my heart rate was so low, just to keep me in this world. I have never discussed, the fights, the fits, the throwing of food, the night running of a small child as she desperately tried to waste calories in a sleeping hospital, the fact I was never allowed off my bed for a whole month to conserve calories, the fact all my sport was taken away from me for years, the perpetual bone chilling cold, because I did not have enough fat to keep warm in summer. No one knows apart from me, my parents and my brother. Who have always been by my side, my army of warriors, who loved me.

What know one knows is I have never written this down, that I am now sobbing at my desk as I sit back in that dark hole of child hell, of fear, of nothingness. I didn’t care if I died, but of course something in me so desperately wanted to live, wanted to fight, wanted to sit back in the sun, and be a child who had friends and fitted.

This has been a good thing to “share”, it may not be what many want to hear or read, but eating disorders are here and they are everywhere in varying guises. They provide a destructive safety net / control in a place where you have no control.

So, please take this as you will. No I am not normal, and I never will be. I will be open, wild, honest, true, believe in the magical, raw and blunt. I do believe that I am also kind and I would truly help anyone in need, I am the person who stops the car to help the lady cross the road, to smile at the person alone on the bench, to hug a stranger crying, and tell people I love them. I know what it feels like to be alone, laughed at in the school, bullied in the playground, in life and constantly told I am weird. But, if weird is not normal then maybe that’s ok by me.

If you don’t like my “different” it is ok to walk away.

Open and Unashamed.

As always, I will start with a caveat.

I write this piece not to generate a circle of shock, sympathy, or embarrassment. I write this to be honest. To allow people to lift their heads and look away from the shame of difficult moments in time. To know that experiences no matter how terrible, hard, or heartbreaking should not be hidden. Do not conceal emotion because it might make the other person uncomfortable. Or hide beneath its cloak of darkness, as this will only shield your light, and dull your emotions.

Experiences are factual, they happened, and it is fucking OK to share what hurt, as much as what made you smile. Life does not define you, it created you, experiences educate you on how to live, about good people and bad people. It teaches you that you are strong, and from each uncomfortable act, a flicker of kindness can be ignited. Allowing you to reach out from under the suffocating blanket of mortification.

Most of you know my story. I have always been extremely open, probably to the chagrin of many. But it is my survival tactic, once I have voiced it, it can be looked upon, analyzed and allowed to float away. I mean, It is not like I walk up on a first meeting and say… “Hey, I am an anorexic, I have been depressed, self-harmed blah blah blah”. NO! Shit the only person I did that with was with Kieron, as I thought he was way too nice for me and could not believe he genuinely liked me. I thought I could scare him away. Instead, he told me he loved me.

Here is my list in black and white. Know I am not ashamed, yes these things can be hard, but I also know that many people have gone through the same and hold on too tightly to a guilt that is not theirs. I know many who have been through excruciating experiences and they have survived. Like all of us with baggage, they continue to live and love their lives as best they can. Especially on the days life allows that freedom from pain.

In Chronological Order: –

~At age 6 I was abused by a man in my parents’ circle – the details are not needed, my parents now know, and are heartbroken. It is no ones fault except his. It was a long time ago, and it was from that moment life started to hit me hard. It created so much pain that I have diligently had to work through. I acknowledged it in my 40s with the help of a Psychologist, and then a heavy wave of relief flooded through because everything now made sense. I am not ashamed, I was angry for long time and I cried a lot, but this was not my fault.

~Therefore, at age 9 I developed a severe eating disorder. This is why I purposely hurt my body, this is why men frightened me, this is why I was in and out of hospital, this is why I was 2 weeks from death at age 10 (malnutrition) this is why I was told to stop running, and this is why I do not like my body. But I am not ashamed, I know exactly what I am.

~I had a “Me Too” moment. As a female I know most of us have. I am not ashamed.

~I do not like my body. I am like a spider, I have no breasts. I have learnt to understand and appreciate my body. It does not mean I think it is pretty.

~I was told when I was age 12, I could not have children. But with time, hard work (on myself) to get to a good weight, at age 30 I had my first period; yes, my first. I went on to have 3 beautiful boys. My body is now a machine to me, but it is amazing, if defied the odds, my hatred, and gave birth to life. I am not ashamed.

I lost a baby. This broke my heart and it still hurts today. It was extremely early in my pregnancy, but it hurt, it hurt so much, I felt like my body had let that sweet baby down. I am not ashamed; we do not talk about this ENOUGH as women!

I developed crippling anxiety at age 34, I had panic attacks often and they were not rational. Each day I woke up thinking I would die from a heart attack, or a meteor would wipe out the world, we would die on a plane, in a car, I struggled to do anything. The boys have seen me collapse in a ball crying, Kieron has had to listen and try to understand why I rushed myself to ER when I thought I was dying. This is where my running has helped, my anxiety improved with my discovery of abuse, this is not my fault. Medication and hard, fucking hard exercise have been a life changer. I still suffer today and that is OK.

I have been taking Prozac since I was 10 and I have seen multiple Psychologists. – I am not ashamed

I AM NOT ASHAMED, and I will NOT apologize for writing this.

This is me. I feel that people who go through this and more have something to give back. They have a light you must see, they have a light to share, they understand people, they are there to hug you hard when you hurt, to listen to you when you are sad. Because they know. They are not weird, broken, or damaged goods. It is those cracks that let you SEE THEM, to see their heart. They can help you; they can love you “right” if you let them, do not turn your back or hide, they will never judge you.

We need to talk about all these topics and more, so much more than this tiny list. People are out there being hurt, discarded, and forgotten every second of every day. Open you heart, your arms and experience and tell them – “Please do not be ashamed, I understand, and I am here for you”.

Truth of a child.

I have no grand notion of making this piece long and full of empty, laborious words. It does not need flowery sentences or elongated wordage. It is the “truth” in its blatant and short honesty.

For most of my life I have had a weight in my chest, it is the burden of an unknown knowledge, the heaviness of the past, that when ignored, it drowned me, suffocating the life from my lungs, stripping the flesh from my bones trying to scrape out all that my body knew. Then one day 18 months ago I walked in to ANOTHER shrinks office, looking for an answer to something I knew the answer to . My question was, do I too have high functioning autism, like my son, am I the cause of his brain makeup? Is it my fault? What I was truly looking for, was a person who would not look to fix my symptoms of mental distress, but to look deeply in to the WHY I have them.

Instead I came out with the truth. The truth I had always felt. It was standing ominously in the fore, glaringly bright in all its glorified awfulness, I was no longer able to hide. The crevasse was open and it was vomiting over everything I thought to be true.

I have struggled with the, “should I share, should I hide it” dilemma. But that is what I have being doing all my life and it ate me up. It literally festered in my cerebral cortex and stopped my ability to eat, it created a self loathing of my body so harsh, I denied it food and wanted to destroy the memories it secretly held. It gave me nightmares, that I would wake up from screaming in fear and not knowing why. I would jump if someone touched me, I developed anxieties and fears never known before and I did not know why. I was scrabbling for control. I was labelled mentally unstable, the kid with mental issues, the weirdo, skinny kid, the loner. My heart and soul shrouded by the thin shell of an emaciated child, so delicate she could shatter at any moment and that is exactly what I wanted to do. Shatter all over the floor and be swept away. But did I? No, I was resilient. I was, unbeknownst to me, fighting and I was fighting hard to stand back up and be Kelly.

I will not write down the raw images in my head, that always sit on the periphery, to creep in and shock when I am feeling vulnerable. You the reader do not need to know details. You just need to know the truth and that it is ok to share. Because, to share is to reveal, to bring the dark into the light and expose it. To reveal all its ugly. We can unite, love and move up and away from what holds us captive. Lifting up, supporting, cradling, caring for each other.

I am crying

I feel sick

I am acknowledging

When I was about 6 years old, a dark, odious man, an adult I knew, took away something from me that was not his. A room with no light, unable to breathe, my head in a flowery counterpane. Crushing me, suffocating me and then darkness,. The rest became a shadow, a reaction of my skin.

All that was left were nightmares. I did not know where they had come from, my brain shut down and I retreated inward. That was how I was to stay, until I walked into that sunny office age 41 looking for something else.

The thing is, when I finally let that door open and everything wash out, I could see, I could see me at 6, I could feel met at 6. The thick sludge of disgust oozing out on to the floor, I could look at it, I could hate him, I could stop hating myself. You know what the hardest thing has been all my life? It has been the not knowing WHY I am the way I am. Why I am unemotional and unfeeling to any intimacy. I am not a nut job, or weird. I was created, created by someone who took away my control and my right to say NO.

After the days of aftermath pain, crying and anger had washed away, all that was left was relief, relief it was not my fault. Everyone looked at me when I was a child as if I were broken. Yes I was broken, but that was when I was enduring something I had hidden, Now it was there, in all its terrible reality, stretching its arms towards me, as I looked at it, acknowledged it and at age 41 I finally walked away.

The weight was gone. That guilt did not belong to me.

When I was 6, I was sexually assaulted, there I have said it through tears and relief that I have given it to the air. I have voiced its pain and am now old enough to say that I am ok and I am worthy and good and you can love me and I deserve it.

When he took me away in that dark room, he inadvertently gave me a strength, a resilience to push through hurt and pain. It became a part of life, I chased it, I stopped eating, I would punch my stomach, scratch me arms, I developed an anxiety that locked me in a fog of fear. I drank too much and would fall over, I dabbled with drugs. I was hiding and I was destructive. I met Kieron and he saved me, he taught me that I could be loved, that he loved me for all that I was, and he waited for me. I discovered running, I could release, I could chase the pain and create it, by running far, fast and long. The feeling of exhaustion fed my need to hurt in a healthier way. The world became less heavy, the sun shone again.

I have written this, as it is time, time to let people know, to allow people in, allow them to share their story and know I will not judge them, but love them ever more.

I used to recite this poems verse in my head when I was sad as a child. If I could not lie in the grass with the breeze in my hair, smelling the earthiness of the ground and watching clouds zip across the sky, I would recite Wordsworth to calm me.

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud – William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

I leave you with this – please don’t feel sorry for me ever, I do not need it, I am well and happy. Please just look to care for others. Please protect and fight for the quiet, lonely wanderers because we really need you to see us.

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
― William Wordsworth

Love Kelly

Body Slammin!

Yes, it is quoted from a Prince song (love Prince).

This week in Kelly’s world, I ran head long into an emotional wall of everything. The stress that I have held so tightly hidden in the dark recesses of my mind, finally exploded out and blinded me. All sense of rational fell to the wayside and I lay there raw, burnt and exposed like a flapping fish, flailing in the mess of my cerebral matter. OMG I love being dramatic.

First up – I am so fucking tired, secondly I am so fucking tired and thirdly my kids always have to tell me something urgently at 2am – SOOOOOO FUCKKKINNNNGGGG TIRRREEEEDDDDDDDDDD.

Let me also say that as a family of 5; this includes 3 small boy fire breathing dragons, we decided to move across country, which technically is like driving across 6 countries to a completely new state. There we are shadows of our former selves, jacked up to the eyeballs on gas station fayre and we rock up to our new abode with no friends or family. All of this is achieved, slap bang in the middle of a pandemic. Stupidity, springs to mind in hindsight, or maybe lets just rip the band aid off, really fucking hard! OUCH! Anyway that is what we did, armed with masks, disposable gloves, a whole bunch of excitement and gung ho, All Griswold like, hammering it through in 28 hrs. and a Harry Potter Audible.

We arrived, we unpacked, we melted down. BOOM

Well I melted down and it keeps sweeping over me in waves of remembrance for the excited high of the “Let’s do this war cry”. Now cometh the slump, the loneliness and the inability to meet others due to social distancing. I know I should be stronger or pretend to be, but, I am not sorry that I am not. Because you know what it really is ok to feel, to be sad and to accept those feelings and then move on. So, I will sit uncomfortably in these emotions, look upon them, feel them, nor hide or run away, I will let them wash over me and float away. This may take 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, but they will go and I will emerge having learnt something about myself. That I am a fucking, selfish cry baby, but at least an honest one. But, if I cannot do that, the sadness will eat away at my brain, that then stops me eating and I will become ill again and I cannot do that now, because I have a husband and children who need me.

So if you are sad, be sad, angry, be angry, but share and you can always share with me.

Love, Kelly “it is ok to be sad”

Sometimes I just do not want to….

COPE.

As the Rona drags on people all over the world, either in lock down or social distancing at home are rapidly starting to fade. At first everyone was all gung ho, fighting in unison, fighting the good fight, the right fight. Joined in one goal, united to save the world, unnamed heroes for the weak, compromised and elderly.

We were strong and shiny, relishing in this new world of change and as they say “a change is as good as rest”?

However, time has creeped on and some poor souls are still navigating lock downs and the rest of us are social distancing. The shiny patina is cracking and the levels of distance are getting closer, as people become bored, tired, depressed and sloppy.

I hold my hands up, I may be one of them, letting the slide begin. My hands bleed from the amount of times I wash them and they hurt, I want them to stop hurting. The new life is now OLD, our resilience and stoic determination has turned into a secret longing to escape and break all the rules. The slide of darkness has begun and the depression and anxiety I fight so hard against, are digging their tiny little claws deeper and deeper into my skin and are beginning to break through to the bone.

I’m tired and the anxiety is knocking hard at my shell. Every day I fight off a little panic and then another panic waves over and my breathing gets short and I am convinced the virus has come to drag me to the nearest hospital. A mist settles, stubbornly at the periphery of my vision and I see the world through a haze. Nothing is clear and all is obscured. I want to run hard, to run far and hope I can out run my fear. I want to drink to ease the adrenaline, but my eating disorder will not allow it. Because, walking hand in hand with my anxiety is little Miss Anorexia and she can be very persuasive; albeit a very slow runner, as she does not eat enough. My tools are in place and my sanity understands the whirlpool I peer into, trying not to dip a toe in and get sucked into oblivion.

I need to get out, we need to escape. The world needs to be released, to conquer fears and viruses and figure this shit out. I am a shadow, sucked dry of trying to be fun, positive, creative, a good mum, a caring wife, a thoughtful friend. I want to be selfish, self centered and just walk out the door, not to come back for a day.

Sadly, the days will continue and I need to figure my crap out, look at it, accept it and see myself for who I am. Slightly damaged goods with a time well earned, super hero cape, that floats all glittery and shiny over my broken core. I know my life is not as bad as others and I am not sad. I am just trying to cope, the only way I know how and if that includes a 20 mile run, a eating disorder and a few panic attacks, that is mine to own and I will not apologise for being honest about it and showing it to you. It is my gift to you, to share, to reveal and to understand your feelings are yours and yours alone and no one else is allowed to minimize them and tell you they are irrelevant. They are yours, a gift of your strength and for you to release the burden, as this can lessen the pain. I am here to take that for you and relinquish it with mine.

I am exhausted. I am your friend, I am honest, I am raw, I will not apologize.

Signed

K. K,” so over being good” Joy

Perpetual Motion

I am always in motion. To be honest, I am happiest when I am using my body; gliding through a series of precise movements to get from A (somewhere) to B (nowhere). I revel in change, I thrive off new beginnings in far flung places. Rebuilding my life, my home, my circle of friends once again. I wake before dawn with a longing to fire the synapses and engage my muscles and run. Out the door and down the road, in to the enveloping security blanket of the morning black. Yes, people may think it strange, but if I stop a vice closes over my body and I am trapped, strangled by my own inactivity. My muscles grow tight, shortening fast, as if trying to crush and splinter the bones beneath. I am in the box of my childhood, where a moment in time obliterated my being. Squeezed every drop of life out of me and took away every choice I ever had, and I just had to wait. Wait in the void until I could breathe again, and I could run…..

Why does a child stop eating? A child who is desperately trying to regain some sense of order in her life. A child trying to hang on to any tangled thread of control in her 10 year old hands. That is what makes a child stop eating. A child who wants to become so physically small, that no one can see her. A child who wants to destroy her body, so she can climb back out of her withered chrysalid and be reborn as the butterfly. A butterfly who can rapidly move her wings, and fly away to regain her life, embrace the change and rebuild.

Instead the withered child was placed in a hospital. Thankfully, she was too young to be locked up in the local mental asylum next door, and thrown in a padded room. Instead she was placed in a hospital to be force fed and told not to engage one single muscle. And so I was placed on a months bed rest and that was when I truly died.

I could not run or escape the suffocating darkness that lay on me as I slept. I could not break free in to the sunlight and feel the breeze on my skin. I could not sprint from my fears or my emaciated body. Instead, I was left to wallow on a bed under a exposing strip light; watching my shrunken skin grow yellow and begin to decay. Because there was nothing else, I was left there, incarcerated, straining at the chains to fly away. My choice of movement was once again not my own.

So you wonder why I run, why I want to keep running, why I never want to stop running, because it is my choice, not yours. Why one day I will run 100 miles maybe I’ll run 200, maybe not, but I will run and I will run every day if I want to. Because, It is mine, it moves me away from the forced stillness, the pressure of my nightmares that hold me captive at night. Lost in a dark room, an invisible presence crushing me until all I can see are the veins in my eyelids as I squeeze them so tightly my head hurts. I will let my body move, I will fly out into the light and let the rain lash my face, the wind whip my skin, let the snow settle on my eyelashes and the sun scorch my shoulders. As I run, as I run far, as I run towards life, coping, sometimes winning but vowing to never let movement be taken from me again.

Darkest little secret….

WOW that sounds sinister?! Why do secrets languish in the shadows of guilt. Why is it wrong to admit the truth to something that is deemed against the norm? Am I scaring you yet? Pssttt, I am not a killer, sorry that would have been exciting gossip for the parents at the school gate? No, I do not have a favorite child, well to be honest that actually changes on a daily basis. Hey and before you mount your towering horse of parenting judgement, I love them equally, but for their differences and quirks. One cannot quantify love, it cannot be seen or held, only felt and how can one measure a feeling. Well I cannot. Good for you if you can.

Lets get it out there…

I Kelly Joy, GULP, sometimes wish I had a illness so great, that I am bed ridden for a few days. Enabling me to get off the whirlwind that is modern life. Hey and before we go all batshit crazy on this, I do not mean cancer or some other terrible heartache many humans have to navigate, just a nice dose of “friendly virus”. It can be uncomfortable and hurt, so it allows me to have a perfect excuse, just to not to get up. I can hide under those dark, deep covers of sanity. Away from the family chores, the cleaning, the responsibility of my children, my work, the bills, the scheduling, the driving. All the things I can never get to, that compound on my shoulders, weighing me down. My fight to push myself to a sub 3 HR marathon, balancing work, running and family, trying to cook a nutritious home cooked meal, bake cakes, organize birthday parties, vacations, getting to each of my children and giving them what they need at any given moment, to fight aging and look attractive against the sea of under 40 parents, the fear my husband may leave me for a younger model. Be put together and calm, follow social rules, think of others before myself, a good friend, a kind person, give back, organize Christmas, keep in touch with family abroad… ARRGGGHHHH I Just cannot keep my fucking head above the water line. I almost drown daily and thank god I am a pretty good swimmer, as I have always swam against the tide.

Can you believe, I curl up and cry and hide, SHOCKER? Sometimes I wish for a dose of friendly flu, so I can avoid and hide and sleep, I just want to sleep all bloody day and not empty the dishwasher for the 10 millionth time or listen to my kids kick the shit out of each other, not cook dinner, fold washing …. just sleeeep. Crazy huh?

Before you go all preachy and worried. No I am not depressed, never have been, I love life, I love adventures, I love my boys. My anxiety is gone, so have my panic attacks (thanks to my 40 miles a week of running), my anorexia is managed, I have great friends, an awesome husband, but life is messy and busy and cluttered and sometimes I want it all to stop for 24HRS. Like the Thanos SNAP and then we go back and start again, clean slate, tidy life, to go forth and mess it the fuck up again, as that is what life is, a long messy transition from birth to death. With so much love, living and being thrown in between.

Dirty little secret it may be? I am sure people will think I need help, or am nuts, or not coping, but who the fuck does not need help, is normal ( I hate that word) and is coping, no one I know on the inside. Why should it be a secret, why can we not share and care, love and help, laugh and cry together over this tectonic ride we are on, forever moving and changing.

I will always feel every moment, I will cry hard and laugh loudly, enjoy the good, balance along walls, cartwheel in the grass, sing to my favorite song, love with all my might and not apologize for my honesty. But I will be honest and not be perfect and a pain in the ass, a bee in your ear, revealing all I am and reflecting all you will not share and with that I am giving you permission to reveal, break down, join my party in life and that is my gift to you. I give you my dirty secret and honesty, so you can be you and release and know I am way crazier and needy than you will ever be. Don’t mind if I do.

You are so very welcome.

KKJ

The cracks of aging….

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what if the beholder is YOU? And you really hate the way you look?

Its common knowledge I had body issues. As a child I was deemed an ugly duckling, but that was probably because I had an emaciated body and a skull for a head as my mind and body was ravaged, then abused by Mrs Anorexia. Well I got over that, but I have always been very critical about the way I look. Yes I am shallow, as shallow as a puddle. you would never drown in my puddle.

When I was younger I always knew I was not ugly, but I was never comfortable in my own skin to truly love myself. So in classic style I used to seek approval about the way I looked. I did not care it could be male or female I just needed the reassurance that you thought I was pretty. I always needed new clothes, a different hairstyle, a new cool lipstick to chase the you are fucking ugly demons away, to shut that part of me down, that personality trait is a very ugly part of me.

I wish that I did not care. I wish so hard for that. But in a land where most of my friends are having Botox, lip fillers, boob jobs, its so very tempting to join in. To join the my forehead does not move crowd. Part of me would like to grow old disgracefully and not go down that route.

I have entered the 2nd year of my forties and shit its all going south, the crows feet are deeper (I would almost say a crow would be very jealous of these feet), yes I can affectionately call them laughter lines, but believe me, superficial Kelly really wishes she had not laughed quite so much. The deep crevices beginning to channel their way down the sides of my mouth, could almost be called a continental divide, fuck why did I have to smoke for 10 years of my life (because I loved smoking that’s why).

I drink coffee, I drank alcohol to excess in my twenties, occasionally in my thirties and the yearly reminder of why not to do this in my forties. I dabbled in narcotics and naughty white powders, danced in dark club’s until dawn and have still not had a full night sleep since having Rugrats All of which have eroded and broken my three layers of epidermis. Regretfully awesome, to have had so much damn fun that something had to give. Hey but I consume blueberries, spinach and avocados, they should fix the damage, right? Right?

Technology does not help my withering confidence and increasing hatred of looking in a mirror. As HD photography highlights every tiny crack in my face, I find myself refusing to smile, turning my head to show my better side, to always wear sunglasses to hide those eyes, oh those deep set eyes of mine, how I despise you. But I keep taking selfies (oh dreaded selfie) over and over again, take, delete, take, delete, hoping that it is not true that somehow a pretty picture will come out and I am 20 again. Now every picture is just revealing what I do not want to see or know. Aging is a process I cannot stop and have to embrace so hard that it becomes something I love and not battle against (or at least suffocate) How? Answers on a postcard please. Or a Whats app. Whatever works.

My bathroom cupboard is bursting forth like a vomiting “Rosemary’s baby” of anti wrinkle creams, hoping that each will reverse the inevitable or at least putty fill the current cracks. Sadly, mending my face is not mending the way I think and feel, or the huge break in my mind to get a grip of. I really need to get a grip. I am bloody old for Christ sake, I need to not actually give a shit. Old people never give a shit about anything.

My husband gets better with age, I just get worse. How does that even work?

Trawling through Instagram, I cannot believe these 40 plus year old celebs look so amazing, young and so so so beautiful. I want to be a stronger, better person, to figure out how to erase the ugly glasses at which I judge the physicality of my being. I may just have to stop wearing my glasses, I look better blurry. 🙂

My kids call me old, yes I am old, being old makes me sad, what makes me angry is that I cannot rise above the aging process and not give a flying fuck. The key has to be to live like a puritan, never use a mirror and to never go out in the sun. But is the aspiration of a sagging youth worth not having fun or experiencing anything ever again. No it is not. I am at a stalemate and I need to win.

Clearly I just need to drink more water, as this seems to be the answer for everything 🙂

Or grow a very long fringe.

Or ALWAYS have my hair tied back for a DIY face lift.

Or just bathe in Kale.

Or if you know a good plastic surgeon or have discounts on Botox, please give me a call.

Run Kelly Run!

There have always been three constant presences in my life, apart from my parents and brother of course. 1) A love of / obsession with making and eating banana bread, 2) an infatuation with “The Sound of Music” and with that comes the magnificent Julie Andrews and 3) a natural ability to run. 1 and 2 have never wavered in their prominence but 3 has.

I was a pretty decent runner as a child and was heavily involved in athletic training 2-3 times a week and then run meets on top. I did everything, from the hurdles and sprint to middle and long distance. Then at the grand old age of 10, I developed a pretty debilitating eating disorder (anorexia nervosa) and of course the running had to stop, as my body was actually eating my muscles to keep me alive and hence there was nothing left to actually run with. Sub sequentially, I was actually carried in to the local children’s hospital when I was 10 years old and left there for 4 months to vegetate. To sit on a bed and not move and there was definitely no running. Of course this quickly halted my running career and I never went back to it. I am not sure why? Maybe it was because it reminded me of a time when life was easier and achievable, light and free, not controlled and regimented (my own doing I may add). Then anorexia plunged that light into darkness and politely spat out a withered, haunted, less able version of myself. She may not have been who I really was, but I embraced her all the same with her long limbed gawkiness and not a muscle in sight. She was a safe way to look, not fat, but not dying, not muscular and manly looking, but lean and androgynous. I still exercised, but it was mainly walking and swimming, nothing that would require strength to be healthy or actually have muscle tone, as muscle weighs more than fat remember and weight = fatness in my warped, starved, fucked up mind. Years passed and I was happy in my sub existence and then suddenly my iron fist of control of my brain and its failings became weak and old issues gained some gusto and force and ate away at the grip I held. I was crumbling under their weight, but I needed to drive them back and become strong once more. Note; My brain lacks in serotonin and the best way to gain natural, kick you in the arse serotonin is through… ……. yes ……… exercise.

So, due to my mental struggles I discovered my body and mind needed more, it was craving to be pushed and forced away from safety and comfort, to become tired and exhausted, strengthened and liberated from its boundaries, to be crushed and rebuilt (wow now that was a dramatic sentence)

Therefore, 30 years on from pulling them off, 1 marriage and 3 kids later I am yanking on my running sneakers once more. Inspired by my ultra marathon runner husband and an innate need to push my body and earn 2 hours of quiet time, I’ve decided to sign up for a 1/2 marathon in January (baby steps) and then a 25K trail run (through the alligator infested Everglades) in February. Am I decidedly cool and inspired or fucking nuts, I’m not quite sure. As I had always vowed I would never do anything that may make me lose control of my bodily functions and really these may just do it. As in my world there is no hanging on when I need a shit, its now or a whole big mess to clear up. Now when running, I feel this could be a huge issue. So I may just have to take an enema a few hours before. People, this is a major fear of mine, so please be kind if I shit myself “Bridesmaids” style in the middle of Naples 5th Avenue, at mile 11.

My training is to be a cross train affair with 1 x 4 mile run, a yoga class, 1 swim in the week and then a long run at the weekend. Last weekend I completed 9 miles and I felt strong, it was an exhilarating feeling and actually made me cry as I never believed my body could still do this. Note this is the longest I have ever run, in my whole life and I did it alone, with my only company being a blog about cake baking. Did you know that before bicarbonate of soda and baking powder, that a cook may of had to beat eggs for 2 hours to get the same leavening effect. Now that is a a lot of beating by hand 🙂 The continuous pounding of my feet on the road, the slight discomfort of my knees, the ability to calm my breath and regulate it (I have anxiety) into rhythmic, steady breaths was empowering (I do hate this word, its kind of new age wanky), it settled me and pushed me into a space of meditation. Which I find I can never do sitting still with my eyes shut. I was alone, so I could notice the little things and sights, small details were prominent as manicured shrubbery and well built houses bobbed past to the steady pounding of my feet.

One hour and 30 minutes passed and I was sad to stop, the personal achievement overwhelmed me, yes I know its only 9 miles, but that is 9 miles, I never thought I could do. I must admit the amount of calories I burnt appealed to my suppressed anorexic self, the serotonin pumping through me sated the bitch I call anxiety, she is always looming with intent, my muscles were soft, stretched and fluid, when they are usually tightly wound and stiff. I felt good, my body beaten, but my mind rested and I remember my childhood, the need for this, my love of this and the sadness of those lost 30 years. I’ve felt so happy and calm and rested and driven. I am emerging from the years I left my self to fallow, curled up in my shell, protecting myself, scared to push the boundaries and crack that shell. A 10 yr old Kelly Dixon is in there, she is ready to come out and show you who she really was then and really is now in her older 40 year old form. She is no longer frightened or controlled, but open, raw and ready to just be. Not frightened or ashamed of who she is, the kooky, weird kid and now the kooky, weird adult. But you know what? I have missed her, she is resilient, sharp, honest and kind and I am proud of her. She will continue to run and run and push and finally break down everything she has built and reveal her vulnerable core, still 10 and waiting to truly live.

Next I will run 11 miles and then 13 and then who knows maybe I will double that – I had better buy some diapers 🙂