ana-sthetic

Raising my shirt above my nipples, I inspected my torso in the bathroom lights.  Seeing the swooping shadows slice across my skin always made me smile.  It meant progress.  It meant the fat was melting away and allowing my ribs to show through the pallid skin.

Every morning, after peeing, I'd raise my shirt and check on my shrinking frame.  It felt good to see those ribs.  It didn't feel good to diet or exercise but it was nice when my pants fit, when my chest was flatter, when I could run my hand down my stomach to smooth out my shirt and could feel the cool metal of my belt buckle without the lump of fat resting on top.

It was a struggle to not eat my favorite foods, denying myself sweets, getting up and exercising, waiting, wondering when that promised energy was going to kick in.  It was difficult, frustrating and exhausting.  Yet, the presence of the bones helped me get through another hungry day.  I loved food but I loved the feeling of being thinner as well.  I think, although I love food and thinness equally, I disliked myself, thus the food always won out.  Because I didn't like myself, I didn't take care of myself, didn't discipline myself, let myself go in more ways than just the physical.

One of the reasons I was able to lose weight was because I felt I was doing it for something.  I had a goal, some kind of image in my head of what I wanted to look like and how it would benefit me.  When I was in high school, I always had a fantasy that I would transform myself over the summer and come back and be different, thinner, better.  I didn't want to be known only as the fat could who could draw.  I wanted my peers to see me in a way they hadn't before, see me as someone who was desirable, handsome.  Approachable.  And the summer before my senior year, I did it.  And I was noticed.  And it felt good.  But, I still had a long way to go. 

Community college rolled around and I began to look to the future once more.  I knew where I wanted to pursue further education and I once again went on a diet and exercise kick, losing more weight than I did in high school and becoming the thinnest I had ever been in ten or so years.  I did it because I was preparing myself for real college, preparing myself for people and projects.  I knew college would be such a huge transition filled with enough pressures and I didn't want my physical appearance to be a hindrance to the large amounts of socializing I was planning on doing.

I was thin and felt good by the time I got to SCAD.  I slipped up during the first quarter, falling victim to the clichéd freshmen fifteen but I was back on track after winter break.  I kept myself accountable and started vlogging about my weight loss and checked my ribs every morning in the mirror.  I weighed myself every week.  I went to the gym with my roommates.  I had class and three different projects to work on at any given time so there wasn't much time to eat.  There was even a time when I severely restricted my food intake.  I didn't exactly starve myself but I was pretty close to it.  It didn't disturb me, though, because I felt good at the end of the day.  Yeah, I was hungry and tired but I felt I had finally managed some kind of mental control over myself.

And then I graduated and came back home and let myself go again.  With Mom's Southern cooking and no more classes or a job, I sat at home and managed to undo all the years of hard work, slowly swelling back to my high school hugeness.

Of course, it wasn't apparent to me how large I was getting as I sat around all day in elastic sleep pants.  It only became obvious when I tried to actually go out and do something and put on jeans and couldn't button them.  How could I get so big so fast without even noticing?  I stopped vlogging, stopped weighing, stopped lifting my shirt in front of the mirror.  I lost all accountability.  I also discovered Ben & Jerry's brownie cheesecake ice cream, so that didn't help matters.

I've lost and gained weight so many times now that it all seems like this large smear in my memory.  I can't differentiate days from doughnuts.  And I find myself at the bottom, yet again, looking up that long ladder of weight loss and wondering if I can make that climb one more time.  I'm not sure if I can.

Of course, not having a job wasn't the reason why I gained the weight back.  Well, not directly.  I mean, it was the reason I gained weight but not because I was bored.  It was because I was depressed.  College turned out to be a giant wreck of three years.  And with no job and all that time to reflect on my tumultuous time there, I ate to cope.  Despite all efforts over the years to control my eating habits and exercise regularly, I never learned to eat for nutrition instead of filling a void.  When it came to food, I suppressed the physical act of eating and completely ignored the emotional baggage that made me binge.

And for months now I've been saying I'm going to lose the weight again, that I'm going to go through that arduous weight loss journey once more.  But, I haven't because I know it's hard.  I've been there before and knowing how difficult it is makes it all the harder to get started.  It's difficult to learn how to deal with my feelings through methods other than food.  Nothing I've tried seems as satisfying.  Admittedly, I haven't tried very hard. 

But you know what's not hard?  Pizza, pasta, cookies, sweet stuff.  Cheese.  Bread.  Starches and carbs.  It's comforting.  It's my anesthetic against the everyday external conflicts and incessant internal torture.  And I know it's temporary and ultimately more damaging but sometimes I'm so hurt and angry that I just want to stop the pain in that moment and I don't care how I do it.  Fix it now, figure it out later.  Just stop the pain.  Just get rid of the sadness.  I'll deal with the consequences another time.  But, I don't.  I deal with the consequences with more food.  With inactivity.  With hating myself just a little bit more.  Instead of wanting to put out the pain, I should have just sucked it up and dealt with it.  I guess a little hurt never killed anyone but what if you're already dead?  I think it hits me harder.  I also think I'm incredibly weak and give in to way too much way too soon.

I need something else.  I need someone to care.  I need to care about myself.  I need to know that I am worth working on.  That I am not stuck in mediocrity.  I need to climb out of my festering funk.   It's easy to fall, to let your problems snowball, to just go with gravity.  It's hard to stop mid-fall.  It's as simple as catching yourself but when you don't have any hands or feet you just continue to tumble.

I'd like to one day be able to see my ribs again.  Not break them with bad habits.