Hi. I’m here. I haven’t been posting as much lately. Or maybe it just feels that way, since I’ve been working my program in so many other ways lately. For instance: 12 meetings in 12 days.
And I am exhausted. And I have no idea what to write. I guess I’ll write that I am starting to feel a bit of recovery, and I’m glad of it, but part of me doesn’t want to let go completely. Doesn’t want to really, fully surrender to the process. See, the thing is, I am remembering the perverse fascination I had with eating disorders before mine really ballooned into existence–remembering books I read about anorexia by flashlight in my sleeping bag at summer camp, thinking how exciting and strange it would be to just not eat, how weird to not be able to see what you looked like in the mirror, how wonderful and glamorous to be so skinny and depressed; I remember thinking I’d never have the willpower to pull that off, being such an awkward, frumpily-dressed kid, a so-often-unable-to-stop eater. I remember being an adolescent who felt uncomfortably large and even womanly–matronly, almost–at the age of twelve when her period came, and compared to her best friend, a very small-boned best friend, who didn’t menstruate until she was past sixteen, I remember feeling old and big and sickened by myself.
Interestingly, I didn’t have these memories on hand until tonight–just now. This evening, I went to a Body Image focus meeting where the qualifier recalled the moments in her childhood that cemented the self-loathing, the not-good-enough-ness. Even during my own share, I didn’t have these memories unburied yet. I said to the room that I didn’t recall hating my body until I started college. Interesting how things then rise to the surface.
When I was in middle school we were taught how to have self-esteem. We learned what body image was. We were supposed to be confident, to be happy, healthy, and heterosexual. Most people seemed not to take issue with this kind of training. But for whatever reason, growing up, I felt a lot of shame. Shame when I played football with my dad in a big t-shirt in the front yard and he said he could see my breasts. Shame when I broached the topic of purchasing a B-R-A with my mother: yes, I had to spell it, not say it, lest one lose one’s dignity. Shame when it was time to start shaving my legs (I did it secretly, so as not to lose the bet I had with my cousin that I’d hold out till I was 16). When I needed sanitary napkins. When a curious 7th grade boy tried to wrest such said napkin out of my locker, then out of my hand, then he begged to know what it was, and he finally opened it up and threw it on the ground for all the 7th grade world to see. When afore-mentioned small-boned best friend wanted to know if I had started my you-know-what? Forget it. I wasn’t talking about it.
Talking about it wasn’t what anyone had done with me–my mom handed me a book to prepare me for the changes my body would undergo–so I didn’t see fit to do it with anyone else. I talked, I lost something. My dignity, for example, or the bet I had going with my cousin. Not to mention my childhood: at all costs, I must not lose sight of my childhood.
So puberty was tough. And high school? I guess I still remember feeling big-ish, remember having bigger thighs than other girls at ballet camp did, remember what it felt like to have breasts that moved uncomfortably (and visibly) when we did bourées and sautés across the floor. Remember eating a larger percentage of my lunch (um, 100) than many other girls there. And once, at lunch, one girl mentioned something off-hand about bulimia; I remember laughing ; she shot me a vengeful look and said, “Actually, it’s a really serious problem and I had it for two years. Don’t be so rude. God.” As she damn well should have said. But at that time, at my tender, innocent, sheltered age–fifteen, but still hanging on to that childhood!–I still didn’t believe eating disorders were real. They were fascinating, yes, attractive somehow, but forget about it. Once I started eating, I could hardly stop, and my young digestive system never once told me to. I had never met anyone who willingly restricted their eating, and vomiting to lose weight sounded impossibly silly to me at the time.
I remember avoiding too-tiny shorts and midriff-revealing tops–not necessarily because of my body, but because I knew I wasn’t allowed to be sexy (this was never articulated, necessarily, it just was). I avoided sex, drugs, and alcohol at all costs: or else childhood would be lost, lost, lost.
Just some memories. Paralyzed fish that have surfaced after long underwater years. Skimming the surface.
Yours in recovery,
L.
