bloody marty mix
1995-1996
Thursday, 18 September 2008.
40 Years in 40 Days [ view the entire set ]
An examination and remembrance of a life at 40.
For the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I intend to use my 365 Days project to document and remember my life and lay bare what defines me. 40 years, 40 qualities, 40 days.
Year 28: 1995-1996
For at least a year, my relationship with food had been spiraling out of control. I am unsure what triggered the acceleration of this unhealthy obsession, but whatever it was, by the spring of 1996, I was fully within its grasp.
Still maintaining my studio apartment around the corner from where Dave and I lived, I arranged to spend Wednesday evenings over there, ostensibly to work on art projects. It was plausible, as Dave and I had both begun working through Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" in order to boost our creativity. But I wasn't boosting my creativity. I was stuffing it. I would walk to the grocery store and buy crazy amounts of food, all the while making up stories in my head to justify the purchases to onlookers, clerks, and bagboys, whom I imagined were staring at me, judging me. I would take my haul up to my apartment, and spread it out on the counter, and dig in. I ate voraciously. Great quantities of food just disappeared, and I ate until my stomach ached from it, and then I ate some more. I would eat until I was crying with pain. Then I would clean up and return home to Dave with a smile on my face.
I kept this up for months, hoarding and hiding food, bingeing and compensating with a surreptitious fast the next day. I existed in a dark place of secrecy and shame. I knew something was terribly wrong. I was really happy in my life with Dave, so why the fuck was I doing this? Why couldn't I just stop? It was clear I needed help. For the first time in my life, I acknowledged to myself that there was something seriously wrong with my relationship with food, and that I needed to be honest about it, not just with myself, but with others. In order to save myself, I needed to drop the dark veil of secrecy and stand exposed and vulnerable.
When I told Dave what was going on, I was shaking with fear, trying with all my might not to burst into tears. It was as if the mere mention of an eating disorder would cause him to suddenly recognize how truly ugly and monstrous and broken I was, and recoil in horror. Instead, he held me close, told me that he loved me, and promised to help me find my way through it.
I contacted the Eating Disorder clinic at Northwestern Memorial and submitted myself for evaluation. Diagnosis: Binge Eating Disorder and a mild case of Body Dysmorphic Disorder. They hadn't told me anything I didn't already know, but it felt strangely liberating to have the piece of paper labeling my affliction. I felt as if I had come fully out of the darkness and into the light, which left me free to pursue avenues for making myself well again.
I immediately got myself into therapy and began the long journey back to myself.
Who am I?
I am fat.
This is a remarkable thing to say in this culture. "Fat" is considered an impolite word. One is never really supposed to use it, whether in reference to someone else, or to oneself. People go to great lengths to couch it in cumbersome verbiage like "I am a large person" or "I am a person of size" rather than use the word "fat."
For me, it is critical that I call it exactly what it is. While I am currently recovered from my eating disorder, I have never shaken the Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I am unable to accurately process mirror images of myself. I simply can not see the totality of me in a full-length mirror. It is as if the edges of my form fall out of focus. I can see them if I trace them around with my eyes, but if I try to look at the entire image at once, they're no longer there. This phenomenon is damn near impossible to explain to anyone who has not gone through it. The closest approximation people usually reach for is the funhouse mirror that distorts your shape and shifts its distortion as you move closer to it. Every mirror is a funhouse mirror for me.
Because of this inability to process my mirror image, I have to exert a tremendous amount of rational energy to gain an accurate understanding of what I look like. Instead of glancing in a mirror and getting an instant mental snapshot, I have to trace the contours of my features and piece them together to construct the whole in my mind, without exaggeration or self-flattery. I cling to the rationality and deliberateness of this process, because without it I'm lost.
And so, yes, I am fat. I own that. When I began to get my eating disorder under control, I found it was far easier to stop the compensatory fasting than it was to stop the bingeing. I put on close to 50 pounds in the struggle, and it has never come back off. I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me, or that I never have days when I want to hide in the darkness rather than let anyone see me, but having lived the alternative, I'd rather be fat and alive than thin and dead.
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1995-1996
Thursday, 18 September 2008.
40 Years in 40 Days [ view the entire set ]
An examination and remembrance of a life at 40.
For the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I intend to use my 365 Days project to document and remember my life and lay bare what defines me. 40 years, 40 qualities, 40 days.
Year 28: 1995-1996
For at least a year, my relationship with food had been spiraling out of control. I am unsure what triggered the acceleration of this unhealthy obsession, but whatever it was, by the spring of 1996, I was fully within its grasp.
Still maintaining my studio apartment around the corner from where Dave and I lived, I arranged to spend Wednesday evenings over there, ostensibly to work on art projects. It was plausible, as Dave and I had both begun working through Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" in order to boost our creativity. But I wasn't boosting my creativity. I was stuffing it. I would walk to the grocery store and buy crazy amounts of food, all the while making up stories in my head to justify the purchases to onlookers, clerks, and bagboys, whom I imagined were staring at me, judging me. I would take my haul up to my apartment, and spread it out on the counter, and dig in. I ate voraciously. Great quantities of food just disappeared, and I ate until my stomach ached from it, and then I ate some more. I would eat until I was crying with pain. Then I would clean up and return home to Dave with a smile on my face.
I kept this up for months, hoarding and hiding food, bingeing and compensating with a surreptitious fast the next day. I existed in a dark place of secrecy and shame. I knew something was terribly wrong. I was really happy in my life with Dave, so why the fuck was I doing this? Why couldn't I just stop? It was clear I needed help. For the first time in my life, I acknowledged to myself that there was something seriously wrong with my relationship with food, and that I needed to be honest about it, not just with myself, but with others. In order to save myself, I needed to drop the dark veil of secrecy and stand exposed and vulnerable.
When I told Dave what was going on, I was shaking with fear, trying with all my might not to burst into tears. It was as if the mere mention of an eating disorder would cause him to suddenly recognize how truly ugly and monstrous and broken I was, and recoil in horror. Instead, he held me close, told me that he loved me, and promised to help me find my way through it.
I contacted the Eating Disorder clinic at Northwestern Memorial and submitted myself for evaluation. Diagnosis: Binge Eating Disorder and a mild case of Body Dysmorphic Disorder. They hadn't told me anything I didn't already know, but it felt strangely liberating to have the piece of paper labeling my affliction. I felt as if I had come fully out of the darkness and into the light, which left me free to pursue avenues for making myself well again.
I immediately got myself into therapy and began the long journey back to myself.
Who am I?
I am fat.
This is a remarkable thing to say in this culture. "Fat" is considered an impolite word. One is never really supposed to use it, whether in reference to someone else, or to oneself. People go to great lengths to couch it in cumbersome verbiage like "I am a large person" or "I am a person of size" rather than use the word "fat."
For me, it is critical that I call it exactly what it is. While I am currently recovered from my eating disorder, I have never shaken the Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I am unable to accurately process mirror images of myself. I simply can not see the totality of me in a full-length mirror. It is as if the edges of my form fall out of focus. I can see them if I trace them around with my eyes, but if I try to look at the entire image at once, they're no longer there. This phenomenon is damn near impossible to explain to anyone who has not gone through it. The closest approximation people usually reach for is the funhouse mirror that distorts your shape and shifts its distortion as you move closer to it. Every mirror is a funhouse mirror for me.
Because of this inability to process my mirror image, I have to exert a tremendous amount of rational energy to gain an accurate understanding of what I look like. Instead of glancing in a mirror and getting an instant mental snapshot, I have to trace the contours of my features and piece them together to construct the whole in my mind, without exaggeration or self-flattery. I cling to the rationality and deliberateness of this process, because without it I'm lost.
And so, yes, I am fat. I own that. When I began to get my eating disorder under control, I found it was far easier to stop the compensatory fasting than it was to stop the bingeing. I put on close to 50 pounds in the struggle, and it has never come back off. I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me, or that I never have days when I want to hide in the darkness rather than let anyone see me, but having lived the alternative, I'd rather be fat and alive than thin and dead.
[ view previous | view next ]