Designing Intimacy

The Body Issues Post

Putting the negativity behind the cut…

Stepped on the scale this morning and I’m down another 4 pounds- that’s 9 pounds total. Only 3 more to go until I’m rid of the weight I put on during finals and Christmas.

Though I doubt the body loathing with disappear in those 3 pounds…

Ah the joys of dieting (for me at least).

It amazes me sometimes though how I can be…everything that I am, yet still struggle with not crying when I look in the mirror. Hating my body is a really hard cycle to break. Especially when I grew up hating it. Because of my sisters. Fucking bitches. I was a little chubby when I was younger and my sisters made it seem like it was the worst thing in the world. I’m convinced it’s because of them that I gained weight and got really fat (instead of just having an extra 10-15 pounds). I also totally blame them for my eating disorder that came soon after. And I told them as much.

I can actually pin point the exact day the flip switched in my brain. It was November 15th, 2000. I was 14 and a freshman in high school. I remember that was the first day and I went the whole day without eating (probably a first for me). And the next day, when I finally ate dinner, I felt so damn guilty.

I then proceeded to drop 50 pounds in about 4 months. I got down to about a perfectly healthy 155-160. (Which is what I weighed the previous year, yet it was considered too heavy for my family). And of course everyone was happy for me. Hell, I was happy for me. I was finally slim and was able to wear cute clothes and not feel so self-conscious.

Oh yeah, except for that whole beginning to cut thing.

See, that’s the downside of an eating disorder- it really fucks up your perception of yourself and steals your self-confidence. So even though I was happy about the weight loss, something else was still taken from me.

And that resurfaces every time I try to lose weight and/or relapse. Because you see, I’ve been pretty healthy for the most part during college. It’s like once I left the constraints of high school, a weight was lifted off of me. But now…I dunno. There’s a very blurry line for me between dieting and being eating disordered. If anything I think I’m standing on the line right now. Because of my heightened insecurity with my body and my uneasiness with intimacy (sorry Jefferson), it sends a warning signal to me.

(And since I left to go get a school book and some lunch, I’ve lost my train of thought.)