Bodying

I’ve been able to eat more the last couple of days… like… soup… and a few pieces of meat.  Which, really, isn’t a lot of food, but after four days of 1 teaspoon of unflavored gelatin… a day… this seems like feasting.

My stomach isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely better.  I’m still anxious about eating and still eat small amounts then wait to see if it’s going to hurt, then eat another small amount…

I skipped lunch today because I was too afraid that I would eat and then be too sick to teach again like happened last week.

But… you know… progress.

Except I’ve lost 20 pounds now (not from the ulcer… only lost 2 pounds from that…) and, I’m starting to realize that I’ve lost 20 pounds.  In a… visceral way, as opposed to an “Oh, the number on the scale is representing a smaller quantity than it did previously” detached, analytical kind of way which is how I’m used to thinking.

I’m starting to see it in my body when I stand in front of the mirror.

And that’s weird.

And technically, I’ve only really lost the weight I GAINED from my doctor’s incompetent treatment plan of last fall which made me gain 25 pounds.  I had lost 5 of it on my own, but the keto (apparently) has knocked off the other 20.  So I’m back to the size I was a year ago…  Which doesn’t exactly feel like progress…  Except… it does… just… I could have been 20 pounds lighter than I was a year ago instead of back to where I was a year ago, if my doctor wasn’t incompetent.  But, you know.

The weird thing is being able to see it, physically, in my body.

I have had body dysmorphic disorder since… my earliest memory of it that I can triangulate in my history is around the age of 10 or 11.  I clearly remember looking at myself in the mirror, standing in my underwear in my bedroom, and seeing… curves… chubbiness… seeing fat in my face, in my belly, in my legs.

So here’s the weird thing.  I can triangulate that time with other events in my life and I have photographs of myself from that same time period… in leotards… because I was in ballet…

I was not curvy.  I was concave.  The only part of me that curved was where my bones showed through my skin… my ribs showed, my collar bones showed, my jaw showed, my shoulders showed.

But I REMEMBER that image in the mirror…

And I remember so many mirror images throughout my life…

When I was performing and dancing in high school and I remember comparing my body with those of other girls in the dressing room and talking about the parts of us that “jiggled” and other girls looking at me like I was crazy and telling me, “That’s muscle, not fat” when I showed the placed I jiggled.  (I never did develop curves…  I was lean and I was muscular, I was never curvy.)

But I REMEMBER looking in that mirror and seeing someone so much fatter than everyone else.  I remember the curvy girls simply looking… female… to me.  And myself looking fat.

I finally stopped saying anything about it though, because they would so often roll their eyes and tell each other (in front of me) how much they hated girls who tried to say they were “fat” when they were just “strong” and how pathetic that was and how attention-seeking.

I learned to keep my mouth shut.

But it didn’t change what I saw.

And then, in college, I was put on Prozac…  and then on other drugs, and finally on bipolar meds and I really did get fat.

But I’m not sure if I realized completely that there was a difference.

And now I’ve been this way so long, I’m not sure if I can comprehend my own existence as other.

My therapist discussed this with me today.

What happens if I lose more weight?

Part of me feels pretty safe because I’m pretty sure I won’t… that this is just correcting what my doctor did, and now I’ll stay at this weight again…

Part of me is trying to wrap my thinking around the possibility of returning to that body I had before… before the drugs…

I don’t know what that would be.

But I know I will NOT be in a room with my doctor again if I get thin…

Because it feels… terribly unsafe.

I think of all the things that have happened to me even as a fat woman.

And the things that happened to me when I wasn’t fat…

And…

I realize no body feel safe to me.

But a thin body definitely feels less safe than a fat one.

And yet, my anorexia still whispers that I will have worth when I’m thin…

That it wasn’t so hard just eating a teaspoon of jello a day.

I wasn’t even hungry.

And it’s so convenient.

And there’s something kind of satisfying about the discipline of it…

And… the freedom… from food…

And worry…

And shame.