I wouldn’t say it was my best idea, but when I was 17 years old, I decided to just stop eating.
It was surprisingly easy. I set myself up so I didn’t have any choice. I wouldn’t eat any breakfast, and then I’d go off to school with no money and no lunch. I’d spend lunchtime in the library or walking around talking to people in the cafeteria while they were eating, and the weakness and the stomach growling felt like victory. When I got home from school I’d eat a can of soup or an apple, and at dinner time I’d tell my mother that I had too much homework to take a break, or I’d mention that I already ate before my parents got home. No one noticed. No one really seemed to care.
It was surprisingly easy.
I started out weighing 125 pounds, and at 5 foot 2. I was convinced I was hideously fat. Eventually stepping on the scale turned into a game, and every time I would lose another pound, I’d tell myself that I wanted to see if I could drive it down even farther. And I could. All I had to do was not eat.
It was surprisingly easy.
When my father saw me that summer his eyes sort of bugged out of his head and he told me that I looked like a waif, but he was the only one who seemed concerned. Everyone else told me how good I looked. My mother bought me new clothes, smaller and smaller. We wore uniforms to school and I had to roll my uniform skirt up twice to keep it from falling down. I bought myself a pair of the smallest shorts I could find, covered with stars, and I’d try them on every night in front of the full length mirror in my bedroom to make sure they still fit. Then I’d pull down more and more things from my closet, trying on everything I owned, posing and preening in the small corner of my bedroom where the mirror was. I could do this for hours, and when I was done, everything I owned would be piled in a heap in the bottom of my closet. This was my favorite way to spend an evening. It made me feel calm, and beautiful.
There was a moment I will never forget as long as I live, when I stood up in biology class and one of the popular girls looked up at me, bitterly, and said “You are so skinny” in a voice tinged with envy. It was one of the best moments of the entire year. I keep it wrapped up, safe, in my memory, even now.
People were nice to me, for the first time. Boys who had ignored me told me I looked good and kicked my seat, flirting. I got asked to dances. And I kept on not eating.
Eventually I started to feel sick, all the time, and that made it even easier not to eat. I had a note and a doctor’s permission to eat in class, if I could, and I would eat one green apple, slowly, throughout the course of the day. No one could figure out was wrong with me. I weighed 89 pounds.
This may have been when I first realized most doctors were idiots.
I still felt too fat to wear a swimsuit in public.
I wish I could tell you about the day I hit rock bottom, about how I smartened up and my brain got fixed and about how now I love my body now and happy happy joy joy, but that isn’t what happened. No one ever said anything to me about my weight, and eventually I went off to college and I couldn’t keep myself from eating anymore, and i gained some weight and then some more and eventually I’d end up weighing almost twice that 90 pounds, and I’d be at the other end of the spectrum, wishing for the will power not to eat again. I’d lose sixty pounds and then gain some back and then get pregnant and gain some more, and since that day I first decided to stop eating, I’ve spent the rest of my life feeling guilty over every bite of food I’ve ever put in my mouth. Eating feels like failure to me.
I don’t know if I learned any lessons from starving myself into a skeleton. The sad truth is that I’ve felt fat since the day I hit puberty. I felt fat at 180 pounds, when I was, and I felt fat at 125 pounds and at 90 pounds, when I wasn’t. I feel fat now. Before I had Eli when I running every day and I worked my ass off, literally, to get to my goal weight and I was wearing a size four, I felt fat. There are always too many curves, too many handfuls I can pinch disgustedly. My body is never right.
So yeah, no magic answers. The only progress I have made is that intellectually, I know that it’s not a good idea to just stop eating, and I would never do it again, no matter how much it may sometimes seem like a good idea. It’s not a good idea.
A good idea would be to learn to love my body at any size, but that’s one of those bossy little thing people like to just toss out at you, things like “calm down” or “You need to let go” or “Just relax” - but when they dispense this advise, they never tell you HOW. I am waiting to learn to love my body. I would love to just relax. I need to know how, though, because I have no idea where to start.
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