Getting to Know Madeleine, Agoraphobia and Obesity, Part 2
confronting one of these monster women, these one person crowds? It made her skin crawl just to look at them, made her want to vomit up her lunch as though her body wanted to make sure she was never like that. She wanted to push that woman into a ditch somewhere and leave her there stranded and helpless, trapped there by her wicked mounds of flesh to be eaten by rats while she struggled like a beached whale to right herself and get away. "Yes," Madeleine thought, "that would be justice."
Well, Madeleine, is an extreme voice. She does not sugar-coat her feelings or cloak them in the social niceties. It's clear exactly where she stands. Unfortunately, I don't think that she stands far from the place that many or most of us who carry an extra body around to punish ourselves for being human stand, if we really admit the truth. She does not stand far from where our culture stands. It does not approve of fat people. Actually, it does not approve of fat women. Men, for some reason are not judged as harshly for extra weight as women. But that is the subject for another day and topic.
The messages that we as individuals take from society are ultimately only reflections of our inner vision of ourselves, the voices of our inner Madeleines and Marges and Marys. The first step in disabling them of their power is listening to what they have to say. Hearing it for the cruel insanity that it is. One of the "agreements," in Don Miguel Ruiz's book The Four Agreements is to understand that the cruelty that life dishes out to us "isn't personal." That's true of the voices of judgment that come to us from outside, but also true of the internalized mothers and monsters whose voices often dominate our lives. Ruiz' analogizes it to being offered a cup of poison, which you can choose to drink or not to drink. For so much of my life, I have dined on that poison as though it were nectar from the gods.
Madeleine's voice inside me will not be silenced easily. She has been there almost forever. Instead of being charmed by her certainty or fearfully drinking her brew of hate, I know that I have to stop and listen with my heart. However powerful she may pretend to be, Madeleine's voice is a voice of
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