All Is(n't) Vanity

Content warning: this post is about disordered eating/body image and weight issues. If this is triggering for you, please proceed carefully or refrain from reading at all.




I weigh myself pretty much every morning.

Scratch that - I weigh myself in the morning and in the afternoon. And sometimes right before lunch. And sometimes right before bed, to see if I can face the number when I wake up.

I have two scales - one which usually shows my weight as two pounds heavier, and another which syncs to my phone, which I only step on if I like the weight on the first scale. I know the second scale is more accurate based on various trips to the doctor where they, for some reason, weigh me every darn time.

I didn't know sinus infections demanded a weight check. What the heck.

If this sounds disordered, well, it is. When I was in middle school, I used to weigh myself on the old scale in my grandparents' bathroom. It was one of those slide scales, and I'd balance it carefully, heart in my throat, hoping to get down to a particular number. I won't post my various numbers here - listing weights is pretty triggering for those who have lived with eating disorders - but as I have mentioned before, I never dipped below what was considered "healthy" on the BMI chart. Somehow, despite the restrictions, the rules I made, the foods I refused to eat, I never qualified for the diagnosis - I was never anorexic.

Ha.

And I'm definitely not anorexic now - gosh, how I love food. I eat, for the most part, whatever I want; smaller portions, now, but I do go to town on Cheetos and Reese's Cups and enjoy the heck out of them. I need a good steak every couple of weeks, and last night I made a French toast casserole topped with bacon (great choices, Alice). So I am considerably less disordered than I was twenty years ago, without a doubt.

But disordered eating - disordered thinking - sticks with you. It doesn't matter how much you weigh, what you eat, your dress size, your waist measurement. It doesn't matter if you love going out and getting creme brulee at any and all opportunities, or if you grab a box full of pastries on vacation, or if you dive into a bag of Cheetos with unreserved glee. Once you hear the seductive call of disordered eating, it will never be silenced.

Three years ago, I was quite a bit heavier than I am now, and I was still disordered. Having a history of anorexia and bulimia (yeah, I'm going to claim those words, and the heck with the DSM) plus alcohol abuse meant that when my inhibitions were lowered I ate a lot of (and drank so many) calories.

And then, over the course of my biological father's illness and death, I leaned into my disorder, resurrecting a teenage Alice, controlling my stress and pain through the oldest and most familiar method I knew. I watched the number drop on the scale - yeah, I bought a scale to bring with me down to South Carolina, again measuring myself in my grandmother's home. It felt so good. It felt better than facing down cancer and losing. It felt so much better than longing to receive amends and knowing I would never get them. And as that number got lower and lower, I was spurred on, invigorated even as I was so profoundly fatigued.

Disordered eating is a drug. A drug I embraced in my recovery from alcoholism. A new - and old - addiction to lose myself in. 

I'm three and a half years sober, just about, and I've basically maintained my weight for a year and a half. I fit into my high school clothes. And this morning, I weighed myself, and I was .2 pounds under my "goal weight," and the first thing I thought was, hmm, I bet I could get down to the next multiple of ten. What I weighed as a high school freshman, rather than as a senior. 'Cause goodness knows, I want to relive those years (uh, not).

It's not about vanity. I wish it were. If it were about my looks, I'd have kept on five to ten pounds, retaining a plumpness to my face which filled out my emerging fine lines. A little more heft to my tush, my bust. Eating disorders don't make you pretty. They don't make you feel pretty. I have to look at pictures of myself to know what I look like at all. If I gave in to my inclination to lose a few more pounds, I would start to disappear.

And that is, after all, the goal. To be unseen. To hide. To escape the pains and chaos of life by becoming insubstantial.

You can't hurt me if I'm not here.

Oh, that sentence, in and of itself, hurts a lot.

So, no more weight loss. Another addiction to kick. Keep on maintaining, keep on eating, keep the weight off and keep the weight on. Get compliments and try not to think about them, where they come from, why people prioritize thinness. Go to the doctor and get weighed and choose not to care. Don't give in, but do, maybe - eat a lot sometimes, and a little other times. Accept the waist measurement which is slightly larger than it was when I was eighteen; consider doing crunches again, because building muscle is good, right? Be happy about a larger bust; be thrilled at the disappearing tush.

Hate yourself, love yourself, worship at the altar of addiction and recovery. Prioritize family and friendships. Make the food, eat the food. Get enough red meat. Take a vitamin. Maintain. Maintain. Maintain.       

It never goes away.

Yeah.

I'm happy with my body, truly. That's the funny thing about where I am right now - I don't think I need to be thinner, not for health reasons, certainly, and not for my appearance. I feel pretty great. But man, thirteen year old Alice is kicking me around the block. Because it's not about how I look; it's about how it feels to lose weight. My body is secondary. Disordered eating is about the mind. But I'm in recovery, always - from alcoholism and from (what doesn't qualify as, how stupid) anorexia. And recovery does feel so much better than being trapped in addiction. I'm motivated to be well. I don't want to live in my illnesses anymore.

But if you have an opportunity, dear reader, to give a hug to someone who has struggled with disordered eating - even and especially if that person is you - give that hug unreservedly. Because we are fighting a lifelong battle. And for once, we need to be seen.