Disgusting shit, I think as I look at my reflection in a store window.
I pinch at the parts of me that were once thin, flat, and slim.
I don't even recognize myself... I feel like I am in a living nightmare where funhouses are everywhere.
Is it dysphoria or do I look like this?
I would cry, but the medication makes me feel dull. Like an ache that can't be expressed, like an important thought that was easily forgotten.
I think of not eating for a day or a week, or a month.
I think of running again, instead of lifting weights.
I think of ramming my finger down my throat... even though that was never something I did.
My mind is racing and accompanies chatter sounds like the inside of an audience before a concert or other show.
Why am I still dealing with this? Why are the thoughts still there?
Why can't I leave this in my past for good?
My life has been exceptional, I want to say each day gets better than yesterday, but I still yearn for it...
The power, the feeling, the close-to-death sensations.
I want it so bad, I can taste it... Like air.
I just want to be skinny again, I just want to disappear.
I just want to feel it: the ribs, the hip bones, the collar bones. I want to feel it so badly I can almost feel the ghost traces of a skeleton covered in flesh, muscle, and fat.
I yearn for it like a toxic abusive ex, I keep going back to; "because I love him, I can change him, it's different this time."
Nobody can stop someone who thinks that way.
I want to tell someone, I want to tell anyone...
"I feel so fat, I feel like I am not in my body, I don't feel comfortable in my skin, I just want to lose 10, no, 20, no 30 pounds, and then I'll stop. I promise I'll stop"
But I don't say a word, because nobody in my life wants to hear that, and because, no one ever gives me the thing I want to hear.
I don't want to hear what everyone says, "You're not fat, you're not skinny... You are curvy, and curvy is in. You don't need to lose weight."
It's not what I want to hear... I don't even. know what I want, maybe I just want to feel heard, I want to be understood, I want, someone to just hug me and say nothing.
~~~
One day, I meet a girl, named Fabiana, she had a young innocence about her, and she reminded me of me at that age. So well read, yet somehow so ignorant of the real world.
She tells me she wants to lose weight, which horrified me because to me she already looked thin. She tells me she wants to lose 20 lbs, which mortified me.
She tells me, she stopped eating breakfast and lunch, and sugar.
I heard enough, it triggered a bomb in my heart and mind. How could she think she needed to do any of that?
So I sat her down, and I told her my story, I told her of those long winters with only coffee in my belly, I told her about the constant cold that hit my bones, I tell her that I use to eat 800 calories a day and burned 1000, and cried, pitched a fit when I couldn't finish my routine. I tell her it almost killed me, I tell her it turned me into a moody bitch, who pushed away friends and family that never came back.
I tell her it started by skipping a few meals and turned into something I no longer could control. I tell her my hormones, metabolism, my brain, my skin, hair, and nails were all ruined in those 10 long years.
I tell her I couldn't keep a job, a friendship, or a relationship at that time because all I cared about was being thin enough. I tell her the science behind everything because that is the only thing I consider myself an expert in... and only because I was so desperate to have a normal life again... I told her no one could help me... I had to die and wake up to decide... I needed to stop.
I tell her those were 10 years I could never get back.
She cries for me and doesn't know what else to say but, "wow."
After a moment of silence, she says, "I didn't know any of that. How is that not taught in schools or something.. about the metabolism, the hormones, all of it?"
I shrug and we part ways.
Two weeks later she comes over to me and tells me she has been eating regularly again, and doing the things I told her she could do to just live healthfully.
She tells me I really helped her, and I need to share my story, she tells me I have to help other people.
And I smile, and say, ok I'll try.
She left for college and I worried she would feel pressured to be a certain size like I was.
But I have spoken with her every day and she's been alright.
She still thanks me, and we share reels all day.
I feel shitty, like a fucking hypocrite, it keeps me up at night to think I would let her down, I would disappoint her. I wouldn't be able to help anyone when I am still suffering myself.
Because the reality, is when I look in the mirror sometimes I don't like what I see, and sometimes I avoid my reflection, I avoid people, I avoid being seen and perceived. I avoid group photos and any taken of me.
I avoid my own shadows. It's true, that's my reality... as pathetic and sad as that sounds.
And the reality is, I still struggle to eat normally, to be normal, I still struggle to be still, to sit down, to be around others at parties with food. I still struggle and I am drowning in my own thoughts... but I just can't let her down...
I can't.
and thats why I have to keep going, that's why I am still alive.
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