I don't know the first time I felt unbeautiful/ The day I chose not to eat/ What I do know is how I changed my life forever/ I know I should know better.
So this one's kinda hard. I've been hiding it for so long, with only a handful of people knowing about how hard I struggle. And they don't even know how much I'm still fighting. I know I said Gaston #1 was next, but he's being put on the back burner (where he belongs, in a nice, hot pot) for now. This has been on my mind for so much longer. Before I even decided to do this. The words have always seemed to falter, but I have to get it out. Dwelling on this has been doing more harm than good to my fragile psyche.
I have an eating disorder. I've had it since I was a teenager. I can't pinpoint the day I decided it was a good idea. I know the reason, tho. I didn't fit into that cookie cutter mold and my body was the issue. How could I control how my body looked? By controlling what I put in it.
In high school I cut down my eating to one meal a day, dinner. That way I could hide it from my family. School and friends were easy.
I'm not hungry
I was snacking last period.
I had a big breakfast.
You go ahead, I'll be in the library.
I forgot.
I got really good at coming up with excuses. But when I got that worrying glance, I'd nibble a little to stop it.
I was loosing weight and people were noticing. Complimenting how great I looked. I never saw it. I saw the flab that was still there. That only meant one thing. Time to cut back how much I was eating at dinner.
I wasn't OCD enough to keep track of the weight of things. I never intentionally threw up. I just stopped eating and willed my body to not get hungry. It worked. I still don't really feel hungry. I just know I need to eat.
The benefits to not eating were great. I was dropping pounds like crazy and I had my period down to two days a month. The bad stuff I just ignored. I'm good at ignoring. I was getting what I wanted, my body be damned. The fact that I was constantly tired or dizzy or blacking out didn't matter. I was loosing weight and people liked it.
In collage I cut my eating to practically nothing. I was down to snacking when the dizzy spells got really bad. The only time I would eat an actual meal was when my roommate wanted to get back at her parents and would take me out to the most expensive restaurants. And, for a semester, I had breakfast with my lab partners.
I never gained the freshman 15. I lost the freshman 30-50. And I would have kept it up if one of my friends hadn't noticed what I was doing. In all honesty, she prolly saved my life.
Every time she saw me, she asked when I ate last. And then promptly shoved food in my direction. A lot of food. And she wouldn't stop watching me until I ate all of it. That was the first time someone had a negative reaction to what I was doing to my body. And it slowly started to change how I saw myself. Very slowly. But I still decided than that I needed to stop. Before it got to the point where I couldn't.
I hadn't reached the point of no return, yet. But I was close. I don't know the damage I physically did to myself. I never went to a doctor for it. I was, am, ashamed I reached that low.
However, I do know the mental damage I did to myself. I struggle with it every day. Now I have to force myself to eat. I'm on a schedule, thanks to work, and I have to force myself to stick to it.
There are days when I'm okay/ And for a moment, for a moment I find hope/ But there are days when I'm not okay/ And I need your help/ So I'm letting go.
I have a lot of good days. Okay, they're mostly good days. But good days can suddenly turn very, very bad. And those days scare me. Those days make me question if stopping was the better deal. It's so easy to skip a meal. One meal turns into two. And then I'm back to small snacks to keep the questions away. It scares me how easy it is to revert back to not eating. All because of harmless words that cut like a knife.
You've put on more weight.
You should go up a size.
You could stand to loose some pounds.
You should join my group. It's about loosing weight and keeping it off.
Is she pregnant?
I always knew that I wouldn't fix this part of me. I would always have to fight every day just to eat normally. I just never expected to find myself considering it again. I thought I had at least gotten over that. I guess I was wrong.
I don't want to go back to the dizzy spells or the blackouts. But the compliments. Is it worth it just to get the compliments back? To have people not be negative about my weight. Is it worth it to get them to stop?
This runs thru my head every single bad day. And it's been running thru my head a lot lately. And it scares me. It scares me how easy it would be to stop. I could hide it again. That was the easy part. No one questions "I'm not hungry" and "I already ate". It's not like I have to fight thru the hunger pains this time.
I'm still fighting. I'm still making myself eat. I still try to ignore that voice in my head. Ignore the offhand, negative comments. But each bad day breaks the dam a little more. Eventually my band-aids aren't going to hold the cracks together. And that day, the hell day, scares me to death.
