run

Week Five, Day 1

Tuesday, August 8th, 2023

Content Warning: depiction and discussion of ED and body dysmorphia.

What does it mean when you can’t see yourself? I don’t mean like how a vampire literally can’t see their reflection; I mean, what does it mean when the view you have of yourself is so warped that you can’t see the truth of your own body? 

Is that something you’ve experienced, too? 

If you have, you know firsthand it’s a wild thing. 

Body dysmorphia is a fucking wild thing. 

Yeah, hey, happy week five, starting off strong with this one today. But it is. It’s wild, and it’s hard, and, honestly, it’s probably the worst thing about my ED. Which might be crazy to hear, but it is. In a lot of ways, my body has adapted to all of the shit I’ve put it through, and while it seems absolutely batshit and traumatic and hyper-abusive on the page, my body is, for better or worse, acclimated to it. It knows how to handle starvation and purging. It knows how to run on 300 calories a day. Now I’m not saying that any of that is good or that I should continue any of these things. Not at all. But, in many ways, this is what makes the disorder so dangerous, this familiarity and habitual way with which I am able to hurt myself. But the dysmorphia is the thing that hurts my spirit the most. That is the thing that I wish I could just snap my fingers and have disappear. Because then maybe I’d be able to see myself the way others do. I’d be able to be like, hey, yeah, you are beautiful, and be able to say it without any kind of contingencies attached. 

Ugh, I don’t know, y’all. Saturday was such a great run, but I’ve been doing a really slow burn since Thursday, since my appointment with Mari. I’m very much burrowed down inside of my head. The way my dysmorphia works, and I firmly believe that dysmorphia can exist inside of anyone at any size, but how mine works is that I can’t tell if I’ve lost weight. I think that’s part of the reason I’ve been so extreme with the starvation and the purging and the binging over the years. I can’t see the results of the harm, so I push beyond what a normal diet would be. I can’t feel myself in my body, so I walk the line of self-destruction on the off chance that it might bring me inside of myself enough to see a change. 

I can, however, always tell when I’ve gained weight. Shocking, I know, but I can, which is why I’m freaked out. Because I don’t think I’ve necessarily lost weight over the last few months, but I don’t know that I’ve gained. I feel like I’ve been in this incredibly frustrating plateau, so when Mari asked why I’ve been gaining weight, not only is that literally the worst thing you could say to me, but it also really freaked me out. 

Have I been gaining? 

And if so, how have I not noticed? 

Have I shut down so much that I can’t tell that I’ve swung the other way? 

But then why do all of my clothes still fit? 

Or was it the way I was sitting on the exam table that made my hips look bigger? 

I don’t know. 

I don’t fucking know. 

What I do know is that since Thursday, my food consumption has taken a massive hit. This happens to me when someone comments on my weight. Fuck, I haven’t had a physical in three years because the last time I was there, my doctor told me she’d like to see me lose 25-30 pounds, so like, in my mind, as someone who will do anything not to disappoint you, I can’t go back there until I’ve lost that weight. Because this is what my life revolves around. I am at the mercy of my weight, and the way my weight moves in the world, and the bringing up of my weight, and the denying of my weight, and the way my weight somehow affects you, and the weight of my fucking weight like a chain around my neck, dragging me down, kicking and screaming and I am tired. I know that not every thin person has an easy life, I’m not at all saying that, but Jesus Christ, what a gift it must be to go through one day, one fucking day, where your body is not the constant thing on your mind. Where you don’t feel like a prisoner inside of this fat suit that you can’t take off no matter how hard you try, I’m looking at you, BRAM. 

And then there’s this other thing, too, right? This big truth that everyone just tiptoes around where you can’t just outwardly say that you want to be thin. You can’t admit that that is your endgame. Because, even though society is hurling these standards at you, to admit that is what you want is somehow vapid or dangerous. You can say you want to be healthy. You can say you want to make a “change,” but to come right out and say that dirty word? People look at you with worry in their eyes, concern furrowing their brow, and then there are the sometimes follow-up questions of, “ok, but what’s under that? Why do you feel the need to be thin? Why can’t you be happy in your body as it is now? Why do you want to be thin?” And it’s like, seriously? Why do I want to be thin? Because being fat is fucking hard. And we don’t talk about how hard it is. Not nearly enough. It is hard to exist in a world that thinks you are lazy and disgusting and not worth the energy to properly care for. It’s hard to be walking around and having people make assumptions about you, your health, your mental state based on the size of your hips. It is hard to try and justify why you deserve to take up the space you do. It is exhausting to constantly validate yourself and build yourself up, putting on layer after layer of emotional armor to get through the day just because someone might think they are entitled to say something, anything, about your body. It is hard to love yourself when you have been taught that to be fat is not to be worthy of love. 

But I do love myself. 

Well, I love myself enough. 

Rather, I am trying to love myself.

Which might not sound like the right thing to say, but it’s where I’m at, and I think I’m trying to make it right by osmosis. 

So, yeah, I am trying to love myself. Every day is a beautiful exercise in meeting myself where I am at, of treating myself like I treat the people in my life. Some days, I succeed and am my best champion. Some days, I fail miserably. Today, I’m somewhere in the foggy middle where I want to wrap myself in love and grace, but that voice is there at the back of my mind telling me all of the ways in which I am not enough and how it is because of this body and its size. 

This fucking voice, y’all. 

If I could exercise him out, spinning head and green vomit, I would. I would swallow holy water until I drown. I would sleep on a bed of crucifixes if I could just get this voice out of my head. Because the fucked up thing is that sometimes it sounds like me, this voice that tells me that I’m nothing, that I’m an embarrassment, but if I stay with it long enough, if I peel back the layers of masking, I know this voice is not really mine. I don’t think I was born with this kind of self-hatred. But I learned it. From someone very specific. And it’s there to this day. This voice. His voice. And it’s hard. 

I don’t know. 

It’s tiring. 

Color me tired. 

I will say, in spite of everything, I am looking forward to today’s run. I’m excited to move my body because, yeah, I feel better when I do, and I’m excited to get outside and to focus on the breath and to find a rhythm. I joke a lot about thinking like a runner, but I’m starting to get it. As a goal-oriented person, I’m finding that I really enjoy this sort of, I don’t want to say meditation because it really doesn’t feel like that, but this sort of quiet calm where for 31 minutes or so, I know exactly what is expected of me. And I can just move my body in a way that feels good and challenging and not worry about how it looks or how much space I’m taking up because Riverside Drive is wide as hell, and I belong out there. 

So, yeah. A lot rambling around in my brain today. Not all of it good. But I am going to focus on the next 31 minutes and try to do my best. Because that’s all we can ever do, right? 

POST-RUN MORTUM

Running Time: 31:00 minutes

Distance Achieved: 2.14 miles 

Tunage: Summer Playlist 

Again, I’m tired today. More emotionally than physically, so this part will be short, but all in all, I felt good about this run. It was one of the longest running intervals, a whole five minutes, and I didn’t want to die at the end of it. 

I’m also holding consistent at this mileage, but I’m worried that if I stay at this pace, I won’t hit my goal of a 35-36 minute 5K. I know I didn’t set that as a goal in previous posts, but since I did the breakdown of the numbers and such and since that shart told me that a beginner should hit that mark, it’s been in the back of my mind. If I try to keep this pace, though, I won’t hit it. So I have to work on getting my stride a little stronger. 

I think I can also be more intentional with the walking intervals. Keep them brisk and moving so that it’s not a full stop of momentum. 

That’s all I got for you today. Let’s both, you and I make a pact that we will treat ourselves with kindness and compassion. That we will extend ourselves the grace we give to others and that we will try, even though it feels hard and foreign, to love ourselves. 

Because, after all, I love you, and you’re doing a kick-ass job. So maybe I can be too ✌️