allmydreams's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- guarantees aren't easy a couple weeks ago, i was going to write some sappy diary entry about how i had finally come to terms with my body and how nice it was to be able to look in the mirror and think, "i'm happy with this." but between the end-of-the-semester slam of work, exams, and my trip to nyc, i never got around to it. so here i am a few weeks later, ostensibly physically identical to the person i was in late april and early may, feeling like shit. and i don't have it under control, and it really fucking sucks. you know how they say that guys think about sex like 60% of the day or something? well, that's a low estimate of how much i think about my body and the things i put it. i had this big realization (well, maybe it wasn't so big) that i've just been faking it for a couple of months. just because i'm not openly talking to matt or someone about how i just can't stop throwing up, or just because i'm not still throwing up, etc doesn't mean that i'm not still thinking about it most of the time. it doesn't mean that i don't compare my body to every other female body i see. it doesn't mean i don't feel guilty after eating anything, or that i feel like i have control over what i eat. i put on this front because i realize how fucked up it is, and i think i usually come off as a pretty self-confident person. i tell people how stupid it is that they worry about the way they look, but on the inside i'm doing the same thing. seeing my shrink last week for the first time since february probably brought this to light, but it didn't really hit me until today. i have, admittedly, come to terms with the fact that i have an occasionally fairly severe problem with body image and other matters related to food consumption--but i had pretty much convinced myself that since early march or so, i had things under control. and at the same time, i'm still too ashamed to even talk about everything. sure, i give my shrink and some of my friends a basic idea of what's going on, but i've never talked about the full extent of it to anyone. and well, that's a bit troubling for me. i just don't even know where to start. and when i think about how i could fix it, my brain just stops. people tell me stuff like, "you look fine, you shouldn't worry about it," as if it was something i could just stop doing...and i just don't get it. incidentally, i really hate it when my shrink says things like, "well, how do you think you could make yourself think about it less?" i just want to be like, "i don't know, you dumb bitch...isn't that the reason i'm here?" anyway, last week she asked if i would be happier if i lost weight...and intuitively, i wanted to say yes...but then i thought about it, and i realized that i would probably be even more unhappy because i would live in constant fear of gaining weight. my shrink says, "doesn't it make you feel better to know that you're in the ideal weight range for your height and age?" the first thing i think when she says this is that yes, at least there are lots of people who are fatter than i am. but then i remember that i live in boulder, the thinnest city in america, and that i am on the higher end of that ideal range, and that it really feels like most people i know have better bodies than i do. last semester in my deviance class, we had to read an article about anorexics and bulimics--and after i read it, i just felt so helpless. i think i experienced every single contributing factor, from the dancing all my life to the upper middle class lifestyle to the perfectionism to the baby fat and the mother with really fucked up views towards food herself. i am such a big mess right now. and i guess by right now, i mean more like the past twelve years of my life. how fucked up is it that before i even had a chance to be warped by the media, i started living on salad? you want to know the real reason i became a vegetarian at the age of eight? it's because i thought that would be a good justification for dieting, because i was fat. and of course i eventually lost weight, but i never really stopped feeling trapped in a body that i hate. and i just think it's not fair that the only time i really got to be thin was a time when i was running and dancing and throwing up and still pre-pubescent. i want to get over this so badly. i don't want to think about my body like this, and more generally i don't want to hate my appearance like this. it's such a selfish obsession...and the terrible thing is that i know it's absurd. i know i'm not horribly fat, i know i'm fairly attractive...but that doesn't stop me from feeling worthless whenever i'm having a fat day or a bad hair day or a bad skin day or a bad anything appearance-related day. i sort of figured that pretending to be normal about it would eventually pay off if i did it for long enough, but i'm doubting that now. i'm going home to nashville this weekend, and i have a feeling it's just going to make things worse... 2:45 pm - 2003-05-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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