One of my best friends has a blog called Me On A Diet. It's a daily dose of gut-laughs, but also a very poignant read. I highly recommend it!
Anyway, his latest blog entry reminded me of something I frequently wonder if I have, at least to some degree...the dreaded condition known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Every time I think I have it, I quickly snap out of it and replace those thoughts with "no, you really ARE the most fucked up looking 'human' to walk the earth, bitch." Healthy, right?
Just yesterday, I was messing around w/my hair...lemme just interject that anyone who knows me even a little knows how thoroughly I loathe my hair, and how I've possibly created a NEW form of BDD that's focused solely on hair and head shape. I don't wanna talk about it. Except to say that while I was getting ready yesterday, I asked my husband what he would think if he saw me walking down the street - wouldn't he think, "half of that girl's head is missing! Why the FUCK is her head so tiny, and her hair so FUCKING FUCKED??? WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS???"
That's pretty much how I phrased it, too. He just looked at me with a "bitch, what in the HAY-o are you TALKING about?" sort of expression. I refused to believe that he couldn't recognize how freakish I am, and how unlike ALL OTHER HUMANS my head shape is. Oh, I should clarify that I'm growing my bangs out - I have VOWED not to quit doing it this time. I AM going to do it for the first time in my life, and somehow I think this will lead to me obsessing less about my hair, and spending less time trying to style it (while of course concealing the fact that I look more like an alien than a human if I DON'T style it).
Dudes...WOW. I mean, look at what I just wrote. Are these the ravings of a sane person? Do you see what I'm dealing with here? A LUNATIC INHABITS MY BRAIN. Well, the good news is, there's at least a part of my brain that's AWARE of the lunatic that's sharing real estate up there.
What I'm getting at is...there's a part of me (the bigger part of me, unfortunately) that really does think I'm freakish looking, and that much in the way of illusion and deception must occur before I venture out in public. I hide my tiny head by puffing up my hair...I hide my freakish fat deposits by wearing certain types of clothing or undergarments. If I let people see me WITHOUT completing all my deceitful trickery, then I will be allowing people to witness a FREAK SHOW!
This HAS to be a mild form of BDD, no? I mean, I cannot TRULY be as fucked up as I think I am...I mean, I'm aware of how shallow, silly, unproductive, and self-centered this is. I DO know that, and I don't pretend that I'm any kind of victim. I know I have a good life, good friends, good family, and all the things that really matter in life. But man...I am dogged by this exaggerated sense of my own vileness. I'm trying to cut the shit...REALLY, I am.
Or, in my case, '95. In any event, it's Father's Day, 2010...a perfect summer evening, low 70s with a light breeze, and I'm sitting on the porch with my coffee after a busy, awesome weekend with my family. Kickass, right?
You'd think that after a certain number of years...decades...you'd start to accept who you are, what you look like, and focus on the stuff that really matters (for example, everything I just mentioned, above). HOWEVER...some of us have some nasty old habits that simply don't wanna go away. And here's the regrettable situation in which I currently find myself: JEALOUS of the 25-year-old version of myself that was adept at starvation and an expert in "purging."
You read that correctly. I didn't type that by mistake. Seriously fucked up, innit?
And yet, there's this little piece of me - no, that's a lie...it's a bigger piece than I even want to admit to myself - that genuinely thinks, "wouldn't it be nice if I could have that kind of will power again, and be THAT skinny again?"
Really. I hate admitting it, but I'm going to. And I'm going to do it here, because then I have to own up to how genuinely fucked up it is that I think this way.
Now, anyone with a half an ounce of sanity knows that "will power" is really not the phrase for this. It's really not will power that propels a person to avoid family functions for fear of food (check out my alliterative skills, btw)...or, if forced to join in the fun, to eat the most tasteless and boring items available when surrounded by delicious stuff. It's not "strength" that drives a person to secretly barf 8 times a day in order to negate the fact that food was consumed. So I'm well aware that my old habits are nothing to admire or look back upon wistfully. If I'm being honest, those were some shit times.
Nonetheless, the price you pay for stopping that level of insanity is a normal body. And today is one of those days - I hate to admit there are many these days - when that simply won't do. If I'm not skinny anymore, and if my cheeks aren't sunken, then I'm an average size. Somewhere along the way, this became unacceptable.
But WHY????
I see people all around me, every single day, who are just beautiful. Some of them are smaller than I am, some of them are bigger. Some of them are pretty much just like me. I judge none of them the way I judge myself. I don't view them with the hatred and loathing I apply to myself. I don't think they're disgusting, I don't think they should stop eating for 6 months, I don't calculate the number of pounds they should immediately drop in order to be "acceptable."
No, I save ALL that good shit for myself. Every day. All day.
Dudes, here's one thing I DO want to quit. I don't know when it'll happen, or if it will. Maybe it's a lofty enough goal to try to decrease the amount of time I spend thinking these thoughts about myself. I've never NOT done it, and now that I'm getting a little older and my body is changing in the normal ways that bodies do over time, these thoughts are getting louder again. Shit. Not cool. This is one thing I will be happy to quit, if only I can.
