CLXXX. Conservative Cleavage -

My mind goes one way and then the other. Eat more, you have less than a month until your next weigh-in. No, eat less. If you gain, fine, but eating this much isn’t sustainable. What if they make you eat even more? It’s hellish and uncomfortable.

People who undergo the uncomfortable come out with amazing results. They’re always happier for it. Do it. If you’re not uneasy, you’re not doing something right. Recovery is supposed to be difficult.

I don’t want a nutritionist. I don’t want a “plan,” or just another way for my autonomy to be taken away from me.
Your autonomy isn’t being taken away from you. You’re letting it slip from you. It’s all you.

Let me eat this entire bar, all 300 calories worth, every single day, so I can get out of this hell and start working out while fueling myself this time around. But you’re going to be flabby and dissatisfied with your body. Who knows how long it will take to reclaim your body?

But at least I’ll be able to do what I want and on my own terms. At least I’ll have endorphins kicking in.

Do you want to keep incessantly walking around in circles on the sly around your house or do you want to explore hiking trails, climb and clamber over hills, and see the scenery change? Or use a treadmill that isn’t completely parallel to the ground?

I looked in the mirror while at the mall and I saw a glimpse of Reshmi shining through. For a fleeting few seconds, I saw her. But then I suddenly saw her disappear into that offensive jawline, and pesky vectors formed by skin on either side of her eyes when her face wasn’t in a resting state. Just then I remembered having viewed a beauty blogger’s video journal entry about her pregnancy with twin girls. She said she was gaining a good amount of weight, which was medically advised. The one good thing, she said, was that her face was filling out and any indication of fine lines forming during her late twenties had evaporated. Her face was smooth, her skin flawless, and then there was the quintessential glow.

Should I pretend I’m pregnant then? Should I incentivize my weight gain for another’s life if mine isn’t valid enough or if I cannot succeed in bridging the mind-body disconnect?

I think I should. It seems to be working- just barely. I slept in until 7:20 today and I feel rejuvenated aside from the massive bloat and constipation.
But then I see him working out for hours and I transform into a monstrosity of a person. I feel as though I’m dying inside - lazy, weak, handicapped. I am so devalued by sleeping in, by eating, by remaining sedentary and consciously undoing the widely held belief that 10,000 steps a day is necessary and worth it. I want to move. I don’t want to gain. But I do want to gain. My mind’s cleavage is at odds with the innate bilateral hemispherical one.

It’s just so uncomfortable to gain while everyone else, it seems, is losing. Join a support group and you’ll see how many need to gain. But I don’t want my life to be consumed by this eating disorder. I don’t want to be around them. I do not want to talk to them, but I want to.

A little advice: Eat what you grew up eating. You’ll want to eat more. I just want to see you healthy and happy.

I want to eat what she’s making, but I don’t. The smell and the taste is omnipresent in my mind’s eye but the smell is also pungent, plunging into the threadbare fabric of my first collegiate sweatshirt that promised so much: Harvard, Ivy-bound. Been there. Done that. Now what? The taste is marred by the after-taste.

Why are you trying to reach point B and dwell on point A without the in-between, the present, the here and now? I want to be mindful. But I want motility. And I want to stand or sit in time and be one with time. I don’t want to race against the clock anymore. I don’t want to fight my body. It’s tiring me out.

And yes, I want to talk to those victims, those who are recovered. They already went through the in-between phase; the phase I want to bypass, the body of murky water I want to cross without floating, but instead soaring, flying above, as an if out-of-body experience, and then landing lightly unto the ground beneath my feet. There I’ll walk.

I’ll never be the same coming out of this experience, but that is not a bad thing. I’ll be better than before - improved. But it takes time. And I have “now” in my possession.