Monday, 30 August 2010

• A Battle Against My Mirror

  "It's in that split second when a starving girl makes the decision to give into her animal instincts.
  When all the accomplishments she's made disappear forever as if they'd never existed in the first place.
  No matter how emaciated or how grotesque, she'll always be miserable because not a day goes by that
  she doesn't fight a violent battle of whether to be deprived of food, or deprived of beauty..."

  My mirror. It hung on the back of my door for three years, sucking me into it. It was a funhouse mirror; looked normal enough until you tested its limits, stepping closer, stepping back, watching the image distort and torment. It was very important to see my reflection in that one pair of jeans, that one pair of underwear to see if they cut into my hips, when I thought I'd lost weight, when I thought I'd gained weight, to see the oval between my thighs standing straight or bending down, to count the ribs standing straight or while stretching my arms.

  I'd turn away from the mirror, lie down on my bed and check to make sure every bone was still there, check for the space between my stomach and my underwear, between my hip bones, sit up to count the vertebrae on my spine, and tug on the little transparent hairs growing thicker and faster over my body every day. To lie on my side hurt my hips and lying on my stomach hurt my ribs. Cold, pale, dry, flaking skin . . . it amounted to nothing. Not when my arms still had that fold when they bent, not when I still had that half inch roll on my lower abdomen that I could never tone because I was too malnourished to build muscle. Not that it mattered that my body was just made for those proportions. Nope. Starve until you're perfect, or starve until you're dead.

  I'd eat. Took a note from my friend Marya and learned to love baby carrots with mustard. I'd eat 2-3 tablespoons of A1 sauce as a meal, and maybe, just sometimes, have a cup of 25 calorie, fat free, diet hot chocolate as dessert. I never blacked out; I was too smart for that. While most anorexics feared peanut butter, some weeks I'd eat tablespoons of it a day and nothing more to boost my protein levels, and that would be all I ate that week. Sometimes I'd fast; use laxies to clear out my system and equally love and dread the fact that my system was so clear I could drink a frappuccino and get the sh*ts. That was all it took. There were days I felt so weak I'd eat a cup of plain brown rice before school . . . but I was so empty that it made my stomach protrude; I once thought the grating sensation of throwing up cereal or corn chips was bad, but brown rice was insane. It's like beating the sh*t out of your ribs and esophagus on the way up, but the relief when it spilled out was more than worth it. To watch the scale go down, who cares about the toilet water getting splashed back in my face? You deserve it. And I know you love it.

  I was very jealous. I was obsessed. I was sick. I was angry, because I never saw anything wrong with my body, yet I knew that everyone thinner than me was living the good life while I was trapped in a fat suit. You do know that no matter what you do, you will always be that fat suit, right? Are you all aware of the fact that once you're the fat girl, you will only ever be seen as the fat girl no matter how many bones are sticking out? Just checking. Because that's how it works. That skinny girl in the mirror has given you the "gift" of new eyes. That skinny girl knows that being loved, having worth, is ALL about what you look like. Sure, your personality matters, but no one will care to find the personality of a fat a$$. The rest of who you are, what you're about, is considered invalid until you are attractive.

  My mirror. I believe it held the negative energy that trapped me in my disease, or it at least held part of it. To stand there every day, criticize every single flaw, and run to the scale after I puked, after I peed, after I sh*t, after I exercised, with clothes, without clothes, to the point that one day I just stopped counting how many times I'd stepped on the damn thing. I never would have thought I'd get as skinny as I did. Surpassed the jeans I'd "never get into", that looked great on my skinniest friend, then lost seven sizes past that. I wrote those sizes on my mirror in lipstick; crossed them out when I passed them. From a tight size 11 to 9, 7, 5, 3, 1, 0, 00, skipped over kids sizes 14/16 since they're bigger anyway, then to a kids size 12, 10, and finally 8. It was a cluttered mirror, laced with vanity, envy, gluttony, pride, and all those beautiful things that every little girl dreams about. I began to wonder WHY.

  The mirror watched me when I stopped eating, completely. It watched me smoke a few bowls, then reach for the bottle of Jack and chug it while my organs pinched up bile, screaming back at me. It watched me stop looking, and tried to entice me back into it. To put a mirror at the bottom of a swimming pool will, in fact, not drown a blonde simply on a basis of hair color, but it will drown an anorexic on any given day. I gave back in for a little while. I wouldn't be here now if I didn't. I lost myself in that mirror, if only to go after that skinny, perfect, narcissistic, critiquing b*tch and kick her a$$ for tempting me with her lies and promises. For acting like it would all be ok when I was beautiful. As of today, I am beautiful. I may be pudgy, but . . .oh, wait a minute, why SHOULD I elaborate on that? I may be pudgy but who gives a sh*t? Why should that matter? Who says I don't have the choice to stop letting it matter? Oh, that's right. I decided to make it MY choice, and I chose to believe that the PERSON I am is worth more than a bit of muffin top. Hate me for it. I could really give a f*!k less, because the truth is, the only people that rag on me feel like sh*t about WHO they are, and a diet isn't going to fix that one, darling.

  So one day, once upon a time, in a fairy tale land that was my room, I got p*ssed and threw a candle at the mirror. The flame died out before it hit; the floor became a mess of hot wax and shards staring back at me, making each piece of me more beautiful than I ever would have imagined I could be. I felt empty and broken, knowing my best friend had just been taken from me. Curled up on the floor and cried while shards dug into my skin, running my fingers over the sharp pieces and wishing for a second that I could just put them all back together. But I did something else instead, something I didn't even know I could do . . .

  I got up. I willed my clattering knees to walk to the closet, and got a broom and dust pan. I swept the pieces away, and gave them a final "f*!k you" as I dumped them into the trash. For weeks after, I welcomed the shards I'd missed cutting into the soft flesh of my feet, knowing that for the rest of my life my soul would feel the shards of the aftermath. It's a beautiful pain, to miss so greatly what destroyed you, but to live for the fact that those shards are nothing compared to the disease that impaled your heart, and to finally realize after so much time that you are worth enough to let that wound heal.

  I am not perfect. There are still some days when I find my head in the toilet, cursing myself for what I've done. There are still days I kneel on the bathroom sink to look in that mirror and see how "fat" I've gotten. But more often, there are days that I think of my beautiful curves and feel sadness and guilt over how I ever tried to deprive myself of that beauty and worth. I'm on the outside looking in, pouring my heart out to those who've yet to escape while fighting to not fall back down the rabbit hole myself. We ALL can take a lesson from this; the standards that are given to us, that tell us how to have worth and destroy our ability to think for ourselves, to see true beauty in its flawed, yet somehow perfect form.

  That mirror you look into accounts for nothing. Your soul itself is the mirror that matters, and how your thoughts reflect back at the motives that rule your life. Your body will age, wrinkle, contort, and become ugly with time. It's inevitable. Outer beauty can't last forever. Society can make up all the standards they want, but it's the soul and the mind that will surpass the limits of time and mortality.

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