Delilah’s Mirror Episode 7: Delilah The Inner Slut

I’m coming to the conclusion that for me (note: I said ‘for me‘), being fat is a 50 – 50 proposition. 50% physiological, 50% psychological. And I’ve turned the corner from physiological to psychological. I’m making the right WOE food choices automatically, without pain or agony. Therefore, I can only conclude that I’m into mental housecleaning territory. This kinda goes along with those emotional motives for getting/staying fat and about having to deal with (perceived) inappropriate feelings of sexuality.

Recently, my brother got married. Now, all year long I’ve been alternately on and off the wagon, but losing very slowly. But for some reason, the day after he got married, I said, “This halfhearted thing is bullcrap! Today I’m going to be good, and for the next two weeks I’m going to be good. We’ll see what happens after that.”

What happened after that is the longest good streak I’ve ever had. Almost no effort. I don’t know why this happened this way. What I do know is that along with cheat-free (meaning, basic Atkins plus very little dairy or artificial sweetener) came a libido that went through the roof. This causes some problems for a woman who’s 32, unmarried, fertile, with religious restrictions on the willy-nilly seeking of sexual pleasure.

So as I’m examining what this means to me as a low carber scientifically (hormonal changes, fat-burning side effects, etc.), I’m slowly realizing that there is something else to be dealt with. The Inner Slut. You know her. She’s the woman who sees a beautiful man and says in her most Kathleen Turner voice, “Come to bed, baby. Do those wonderfully delicious and naughty things to me.” Then she leads him off to her web. She’s the woman who does not shy away from burning glances and micro-miniskirts and thong bikinis. She’s the woman who knows her own sexual power over men and uses it to polished perfection.

She’s the one who doesn’t care if her name and number is on the men’s’ bathroom wall. She’s the one with the Voodoo Queen hair and the walk that screams, “I’m yours – if you can catch me!” She’s also the woman I’ve been keeping locked inside by a layer of fat. No opportunity, no sin, right? She’s the one I never learned to deal with on appropriately on a nonfat level. Now, in a weird series of coincidences, I’m having to deal with her ANYWAY, despite still being covered in a layer of ugly fat.

So since directly confronting her (which I have never done before), I found something surprising: I like her. I like exploring the possibilities of being her. I like learning how to be her. And that scares the bejeebers out of me. Because, you see, the aforementioned religious restrictions don’t go away just because one decides to accept that one is a sexual being with a greater need to copulate than to eat. (Note: I said copulate and not make love – which in an of itself presents an entirely different set of problems!)

After a lot of emotional house cleaning this weekend, and writing, and sorting it all out, I’ve come to realize that it’s her or me. One of us will win. If I buckle and find pleasure-without-meaning where I can get it, she wins. If I learn how to deal with her appropriately without that layer of ugly fat that screams, “Keep away!” If I can find an appropriate man and an appropriate situation, I win.

I want to win! I want her to serve me instead of me serving her. I’m itching for a fight, I’m geared and ready and willing – with that evil glint in my eye – to make her work FOR me instead of against me. Part of that is making correct way of life food choices that I don’t even blink at. And oh, by the way, I’m not sure how this chicken-and-egg situation works out, but I’ve lost the most weight in one shot since I began to figure out what I was doing wrong with the low carbohydrate way of life and how I could fix it so that I would actually lose weight. Then the Inner Slut came calling.

Where does the seriously wanting to lose weight and doing-whatever it-takes stop, and the emotional housecleaning start? And vice versa? Is this a spiral type arrangement or a double helix?

When I call her the Inner Slut, I am not being deprecating. I don’t know how else to put it. I feel she is akin to the Holy Prostitutes or Temple Whores in Egyptian/Greek/Roman mythos. I found that my Inner Slut was shamed by my fatness and so she hid, thinking I wasn’t deserving of her presence or male attention. Perhaps she was right. Cause-and-effect-and-cause. Every time I got momentarily thinner, she’d go, “Yippee!!! She’s gonna let me come out to play!!!” and then I’d see her and go, “Hold on, there, girl. I don’t know how to deal with you. Back you go!” And she would go and sulk quietly until the next time I got this dizzy idea to lose weight.

I’m working toward making her a part of me, but until I am comfortable with my body, and I acquire the ability to choose wisely those situations I am not sure about, she will be at odds with me. I believe part of the reason I’m now losing at a faster rate is because I’ve come to accept that this exists, and for the first time I am willing to try to deal with it head-on.

But she scares me not because she’s easily seduced, but because she’s so willing to be the seducer. She’s a predator.

I have great courage for the rest of my life – just not this. I am very much an alpha female in all other aspects of my personality. It took a friend of mine calling me a coward for me to face the fact that in this one area, yes, I am very much a coward.

The Inner Slut is not.

One odd thing that awakened my Inner Slut (you know, I think I’m gonna call her Delilah) was my brother’s wedding. My mother, three of her sisters, my dad’s sisters, and two of my female cousins (and I) sat around talking in the hotel room after all the hoopla was over and the newlyweds had gone off to do whatever newlyweds do at 10:30 at night by themselves (like I would know). And the conversation turned randy.

Now understand, my mother and my aunts are the most straight-laced women you have ever met in your life. So deeply religious, I truly thought I was brought by the stork because my mother would never experience something so divinely naughty as sex.

There ensued in that hotel room the most surprising and pleasing conversation I have ever been witness to. Female/maternal bonding of the highest order, of the kind spoken of in Women Who Run With the Wolves. And I learned that I was not alone. That the women in my family did have Inner Sluts of their own, and that they were comfortable with them!

As you can imagine, I did not participate in the conversation. I only listened. But I am very grateful that that night’s discussion happened.

And…well, I’m fertile (I can FEEL it!), and I want children – badly. I guess Delilah needed to make herself heard before all my eggs ran out.