hunger pulse

"We all have a sickness
That cleverly attaches and multiplies
No matter how we try..."
-Dig, Incubus

Life put together.  Life pulled apart.  Life semi-assembled.

Most people are screwed up.  Maybe everyone is screwed up to a certain degree.  And it's weird to realize that.  I've been envious of people who I thought had their lives together.  It happened a lot throughout my life but never more than when I was in college.  When I was in high school, no one really had it together.  Some of my peers were more organized in their future plans than others but we were all still slaves to the educational system.

But college came around and there was more freedom.  Most of the kids I saw chose to be there.  It was a part of their plan.  They chose their schedules and professors and classes.  And they began to assemble themselves into the adults they wanted to be.  They knew their strengths and utilized them.  They were forming themselves, from their clothes and hair to their behavior and attitudes to their education and careers.

I walked around and saw so many people who I thought had it together.  My first roommate, Keith, seemed like he had it together.  He knew who he was, even if he was a giant asshat.  But he embraced it and was comfortable with that.  He was also a musician and good with girls.  My other roommate was an extremely talented artist.  His work was fantastic and he had drive and passion and knew exactly who he was and what he wanted out of life.  He went on to work on the latest Chipmunks movie.  Good for him.

Even the roommates and classmates I had who were not fully formed at least had some direction.  They all spoke of far away dreams in a sleepy manner, as if they were slipping away into a daydream of what their day job would some day be like.  As for me, I was just trying to lose weight, just trying to get my next project finished, just trying to make it through the day without cracking.  I had no goals beyond the sunset because I was weak and incapable of being okay with who I was.  All the social/emotional/physical/spiritual development that a lot of adolescents experience in high school was lost on me.  I was always behind everyone else.

Everyone experienced physical changes during puberty but mine happened before my balls dropped and my voice deepened.  I got fat first.  And that was a hard adjustment to make.  And when I went through puberty, I got fatter and pimply.  And that was even harder to bear.

While everyone else dealt with their changes, even embraced them, mine made me feel hideous.  Guys started shaving and girls started wearing bras and everyone got braces and I hid in my room because my face and waistline had exploded and when I was forced to go outside, I wore layers of clothing to hide my belly, which just made me hot and perspire.  I was the token fat sweaty guy.  Nice to meet you.

I was ashamed of myself and never socialized because of it.  And then I lost the weight and I felt better about myself but I was already years behind my classmates.  They were already starting to form real relationships with people based on commonalities deeper than an enjoyment of television shows or songs on the radio.  They were discovering who each other were as people, how they felt about the world and life and the future, how they felt about their significant other.

And right when I started to think I could really be something, when I felt good enough to become an actual person instead of a label, I gained the weight back and ended up a hermit again.  I realized the only real relationship I had in my life was with food.

My classmates focused on their futures with their girlfriends and boyfriends and the colleges they would go to and the professional world they would some day enter.  But I couldn't get to that point.  I couldn't see beyond my belly.  Literally.  I was stuck in the moment, stuck in my body and that's all I could envision.  I had to lose the weight, had to be thin.  To me, everything else was determined by my weight.  If only I could be thin, I'd be social and make connections and fall in love and fall away from the depression that drove me deeper away from the world.

Diet pills and exercise and leafy green vegetables and dirt road walking.  Sixty pounds lost.  I was ready to enter college.  I was the average weighted, slightly less sweaty guy.  Hello again.

I was thin(ner), although I still felt fat compared to others, and I felt I could finally concentrate on my life instead of my body.  But I realized, "Oh, crap, I have no social skills."  I met new people and didn't know what to say.  I interacted with girls but didn't know how to flirt.  I didn't know how to carry a conversation.  I was awkward.  I was shy.  I was an oddity.  And that was saying a lot being surrounded by art school kids.  I had focused so hard on emptying my stomach that I forgot to fill up on friends.  And that is where I noticed the other ones who had friends, had good bodies, had ambition.  That's when the envy came in.  That's when I saw others who looked like they had it together.

I realized I had nothing more than a slightly less fat body and no ties to anyone.

I got pretty depressed about it and started to gain the weight back.  After my first quarter, I returned home and my mom pointed out that I had gained weight.  Once I got back to school, I took drastic measures to lose the weight and maintain it.  I stopped eating and started walking around the park for hours.  I lost the weight and kept it off for the remainder of my time at college.

And then I graduated and got depressed and died and gained it all back and once again, it starts over.  I can't focus on anything other than my body, being lazy and unhealthy and slowly expanding, my body bloating from death and diet, feeling lethargic all the time and getting winded from any bit of physical exertion.  I still can't focus on my future because I am stuck in the gelatinous sphere of self-perception.

But, you see, my problem is evident.  You can look at me and tell I have a problem with food.  And this is where I get mixed up because I can see thin people and think they have it together but of course that's not always the case.  I have an acquaintance who gets blackout drunk several days of the week.  He's thin but in my humble opinion, he has a drinking problem.  I have another acquaintance who is thin but she throws up to keep herself that way.  She also jumps from relationship to relationship to fill the hole her father left when he abandoned her and her mom.  She's always with someone but I often wonder if it's genuine, if she truly cares or if she's just covering up.

People can be addicted to drugs or sex or alcohol (or even V-necks) and in some ways, it's comforting.  I am not the only damaged one out there, grasping for a reprieve from the pain.  But my damage is on display for everyone to gawk over and judge.  There are some days when I think I'd rather be addicted to drugs than doughnuts.  At least I'd be thin.  And that's such a terrible way to feel and it just underscores the severity of my problem.

We all have demons, don't we?  Are we all required to claim a vice at the beginning of our lives?  Sex and insecurity and drinks and damaging ourselves.  It's all a part of the same problem.  It's all a bandage for the hurt in our lives.  There comes a time in our lives when we break and then we seek out something that feels good, that fills in the cracks.  And I am in the gluttonous group.

It sucks to know I'm part of an epidemic.  Fat kids and french fries.  I wonder how long it will be before I see my fat stomach crossing the street or a close up of my face as I'm stuffing it with a greasy pizza, just like those clips they show on television when they are covering a story on "Fat America."

I never really wanted to be part of an addiction.  I know I have an addictive personality.  It comes out in small ways like how I'll become obsessed with a band when I discover them or how I'll devour all books by an author I find intriguing.  And then it comes out in big ways like with food.  That's why I've never wanted to drink or try cigarettes and sex freaks me out.  I always fear I'll become addicted.  I have no concept of moderation.  I don't understand that you don't always have to indulge in everything.  I'd hate to know I was a slave to something.  Cigarettes really illustrate how an addiction can drive a person.  I see all the time how people have to interrupt their lives to light up and it actually gets on my nerves.

But am I really any different than a smoker?

All I can think of is food.  I can't wait until my break at work so I can eat.  I can't wait until my lunch break so I can eat.  I can't wait to go home so I can eat.  I have trouble sleeping sometimes because I get so excited to wake up and eat breakfast.  I'm not so bad that I have to stop what I'm doing and walk outside, go behind a building and inhale a burrito but it's still always on my mind.

As much as I don't want to be strapped to anything, as much as I want to be free from the slavery of addiction, I am addicted.  Food is my vice, my best friend and my downfall.  I've given up twenty-six years of my life to food and it's gotten me nowhere.  I am a mess.  I am depressed.  I am nothing.  I am fat again.  I am addicted and I always will be.  It's inside of me, forever swimming shotgun to the blood in my veins.  It's absorbed into me.  It's the pigment in my skin.  And it's always pushing me toward food, always turning on me, a hunger forever magnified, a connection forever denied.

I always fight it, every day.  And it's exhausting.  Maybe that's why I'm always tired.  Maybe that's why I've gained the weight back so many times.  I can only fight for so long before the muscles weaken, the resolve dies, the addiction reigns.  And the strength comes back and I lose the weight again but the strength is undulating, wavering in the face of something stronger.

The hunger is a zombie that feels no exhaustion, the strength a fallible human that tires and trips and becomes consumed.  The hunger comes, wave after wave, forever crashing through the door of my will and eating at me until I submit one more time.

I can't write my book because I'm too busy convincing myself not to eat a bag of chips.  I can't pursue a job as an animator because the thought of eating distracts me from drawing.  My obsession with food has turned me into an apathetic corpse with attention deficit disorder.

And I'm insatiable.

The stomach forever rumbling, the mind forever wandering, the hunger forever pulsing.