Undefined

I am triggered by everything:

A photo of dancers I used to idolize when I was 16 and starving, desperate to be even half as skinny as they were and still are. I scroll past them. My brain does a double take. I back track. I scrutinize their emaciated arms, their collar bones, their sunken cheek bones. They are all smiles, superior in their anorexia, mocking me. Twenty years have gone by and they are still thinner than thin.

I see my reflection in an unsafe mirror…so that’s what thighs and hips and stomachs look like after two babies in quick succession – well mine anyway. A vast, mass of undefined lard, rolling and oozing and overflowing, fleshy like raw dumplings, doughy like unbaked bread, ever expanding…never ending. Never ceasing to amaze me in horror to fascinate me as I stare. “Is that really me?” I don’t recognize myself, this untamed, unmanageable, out of control lump. I don’t fit into my clothes or my brains neatly, compartmentalized boxes: bulimic ballerina has been replaced with fat stay-at-home-mum. Fat, frumpy, fleshy, unfit to be a mother or an anorexic.

I read an ED memoir a friend lends me. I stop. I put it away on a shelf where I cannot see it. I pick it back up a week later. It makes me remember that I used to purge just as easily as I breathed. After this long, would I even notice if it crept back in? If I slipped a couple of times that were more intentional than unintentional? After all, there are days where I seamlessly substitute my calories as I go. Latte? No, americano. Vegan mayo? No, mustard. Salad dressing? Not necessary. More pasta? No, more veggies. Two slices of toast? No, three quarters of one slice is more than enough for breastfeeding two babies. I shake so much, so often from hunger. I don’t get any thinner.

I don’t want to think of the other bad days where I unintentionally eat two muffins instead of one. When I eat half a bag of chocolate chips and then wonder why I’m carrying this “baby weight” 7 Months later. I’m surprised when these things happen. Half a packet of digestive biscuits later I am unsure where I went wrong. But I’ve never pretended to know so why start now?

The Numbers Game

The numbers tumble at first, falling rapidly, swirling past my stout calves, up along my tree-trunk thighs and settling on my broad, starving, ever-expanding stomach. The thrill of the numbers shrinking is a high no drugs could ever reproduce in me. I laugh from my double chins, my rolls shaking, heaving. I have done this before; I can do it again. I will do it a million times over if I must. The first few days are heady with delight and obsession like a new lover but an old love affair remembered. I am beside myself with starvation, with renewed determination to see the scale swing down to where my self-worth was last seen waiting for me. Perhaps my sanity will be there too?

After a few days they stop, stalling. A stalemate. We stare at each other; this is hostile territory. A new lover becomes an old enemy. Swords drawn at dawn after a night of purging, I step on the scale to weigh my loathing and self-hatred. The needle swings past numbers that I long for, that I dream of, that I want more than this life itself. They speed past – up, up, upwards to places, figures, sums that I know will eventually kill me with their truth. I would get on my knees and pray if it would help my quest for thin. Plateaus of pain, of discontent, of frustration and the foreshadowing of what will come. There will never be a consolation prize for fat.

Avoidance…Denial…Whatever

Ode To My Fat Ass

Me

After my doctor accidentally told me how much I weigh today…

Evil

Every Day