Sunday's essay rant: Food and I, the endless dance

I know that my relationship with food isn't exactly "normal" or healthy, that it hasn't been for ages - certainly not since I was a 12-year old kid, with my parents begging, yelling, threatening, pleading with me to have "just a few spoonfuls of soup, please!", and me crying into my soup as if that was the end of the world, wailing like there was no tomorrow, thinking that they were torturing me, trying to destroy my life; that they wanted to purposefully turn me into a fat and hideous monster.

Here's the thing though - I have never felt "hindered" by that, I have never felt restricted in my liberty by the desire to be slim, the desire not to eat.

I have felt, instead - perhaps falsely - that the times I was most at liberty, most at peace with myself, were those where that desire came to fruition.

Times when I was fasting every other day and going to the gym often twice in 24 hours, were the times when I felt "right" and freed from the oppression and restriction that masses of fat and the crushing failure associated with them impose.

Really, it is the other end of the scale, no pun intended, that has always made me feel trapped, imprisoned.
The moments when I'm bingeing, eating far too much although I'm not even hungry, eating and eating because if I'm not eating nothing then, hey, I might just as well eat everything.
Because I am unable to distinguish a margin of "just right" in between extremes, because there's either all or nothing, so every bite that passes my lips seems "too much".

And once that first bite of too-much, of more-than-nothing has been consumed, the day has turned into a bad day anyway, and I might as well, no I actively need to make it official by wrecking it with ridiculous amounts of food, so as to punish my transgression, so as to show myself just how properly I have messed up.

I am sure a lot of you are all too familiar with the mechanisms I am talking about...
The thing is, that I cannot bring myself to see the restricting/starving side of things as the oppressive, abusive partner in that dance.
I realize it is a masochism tango on the whole, still only one participant seems hurtful, the other endlessly liberating.

The days were I actually manage to consume few enough calories so as not to trigger that switch in my brain to flip, as not to trigger a binge because "it has all gone wrong, anyway" - those are the good days.
I feel proud then, like a bulimic who has manged to keep their food down for a change, has managed to eat little enough so they won't feel the need to purge.

Only I don't purge when that switch gets flipped, when I've had that one piece of fruit salad too many, I simply start bingeing where I have been eating "reasonably" before.
I've always hated the thought of purging enough to avoid it on most occasions (I go out of my way not to throw up out of "natural" causes even), which I guess is some kind of blessing - and still I engage in that ridiculous "all or nothing" scheme, where everything spins out of control as soon as I feel I haven't stayed completely in the straight and narrow with restricting my intake.

I don't know what that makes me or where it will lead; all I know is that I want to go back to the good days, where I keep myself in check and keep my intake in check, where I starve myself just enough to be skinny and free.

And I know that am unable, at this point, to see those days as anything other than liberating, highly desirable.

PS: Getting graphic on the subject of food, I'll add today's estimated calorie intake which stands at about 620 (Half a grapefruit, a cup of steamed veggies, 170g of soy yogurt mixed with applesauce - they incidentally list the same calorie content per 100g -, a 70g piece of a boiled potato, a smoothie at 133 cals, 2 cocktail gherkins, half a slice of brown bread and 40 g of Gouda).

Meh, that's ok, about same as yesterday; yet I feel full and vaguely guilty.

So much for the no-binge-days being liberating, eh? I guess it only makes me feel that way when I am already skinny, otherwise the hideousness of the bod cancels everything out.

Oh well, gotta think positive though, and a moderately successful restricting day is certainly good news.

Back to Zero

I am starting this blog because I need to get back on track.
With my life, with my body.

I am not doing well right now - I am depressed, as I've ever been, and I'm going through a bad episode at this point.
There's medication I should be taking, but I'm not.

I know what it does, why it's supposed to be helpful, but I just can't stand the thought - of something, anything, any entity messing about with my brain, influencing my emotions.

I've always been sceptical of that, the concept of forced-upon chemistry invading my head.
My brain is messed up enough as it is - I don't wanna add to it with pills.

At the very least, I want the messed-up-ness to be my own, to have originated in the depths of my own f*cked-up brain chemistry, not inside of a plastic bottle.

So, they're just sitting there, prescribed and paid for on my bathroom shelf, untouched.

The most important part though, that overshadows everything else, is to get my weight back under my control.
I've let myself go, and I don't feel skinny anymore. I AM not skinny anymore.
I am fat.
I have become a fat, disgusting slob.

I am not dancing through the Void right now - I am slouching, I am lying on the floor barely able to raise a limb.

That has to change, and soon, but in order to dance again, I need to be lighter.
I need to be thin again, thin and fit, thin and muscular - like the wispy, wiry wraith I know I am supposed to be.

So, I am starting here.
Starting on this blog, to give myself some semblance of control from the very start, a place to raise myself up, a place to let myself down, a place to bitch and rave and unwind.

I've been lurking about and reading a lot of thinspirational blogs around here, you're all fucking amazing to me and even though you do not know me and we've never met, I feel like you've already helped me a ton on my journey.

So, thanks to all you wonderful ladies out there, thank you and starve on.