She's So Heavy, Part 5

I’m living by myself again now, actually settled into the emotional fabric of this space. I’m eating better. I’m doing yoga. I’m gaining weight. 122 lbs and counting. And feeling fat when my size 3 jeans are hard to zip. And trying to quiet my inner anorexic by alternately smacking her and loving her. Though perhaps that’s more abusive than useful.

I think I will never be entirely comfortable in my body. Given its changes, its defiance, its stubborn life of its own, I’m not sure I’ll ever trust it enough to get comfortable in here. Maybe that’s why I’m so clumsy, covered in careless bruises and scars.

This, then, is what I’m left with. A body in thrall to my reptilian cortex, determined to be heard. Pitted against a super-ego that long ago defended the ramparts by battening down the hatches, nailing two-by-fours over the windows and doors, and refusing to even peek outside the ivory tower. This is what I hate most. Not the fact of being thinner or fatter than some arbitrary “right” weight. It’s the instability, the uneasiness in my body. The fear of buying new pants.

Lack of control. Which is why when I live with other people, I get depressed and lose weight. If there is no corner of the world that is mine alone, I freak the fuck out. Low-level, under the radar of my willfully ignorant super-ego, but a quiet twitchy freak out that doesn’t ever go away.

There are two obvious ways of dealing with this. Give in to entropy. Or tighten up that asshole and try to control everything. A nice shot up the middle, however, is to pick my battles. Trying to control everything will put me in the loony bin. But some things I can control. Like how my blankets get folded, where the scissors live, lists of things to get done.

Hence the running. I don’t want to gain weight. I don’t want to spin the wheel and see where it lands. I don’t know where that will be and can’t envision what I will look like when it stops. That does matter. I want some say in how my body looks. This is something I want to control. We’ll see if entropy wins.

...Part 1
...Part 2
...Part 3
...Part 4