How About Them Apples? (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
applespice) wrote2010-11-09 11:29 pm
applespice) wrote2010-11-09 11:29 pm
Entry tags:
LJ Idol - Week 2 - Deconstruction
The body I inhabit is not always mine.
Sometimes it is solid, strong, and lean - all of the things that I have worked so hard for it to be. When I walk I feel the muscles move under my skin like steel under silk. When I stand I find myself in photo-ready poses, one hip jutting out and my face turned subconsciously toward the light. I am confident and proud, and talk candidly about my workout routines and how carefully I design my diet. Out in the world my body is beautiful, healthy, and most of all - mine.
In the mirror, my body does not belong to me. I am trapped behind the glass, a grotesque parody of myself. Where before there were muscles and lean lines, now there are pouches and gobbets and shelves of fat, disfiguring the image of perfection that I have conjured in my moments away from my reflection. In the mirror, the hours in the gym disappear. All I can see are the ways that I've cheated - the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup I had at lunch, or that time I took the elevator instead of the stairs.
Skinny. Skinny. Skinnyskinnyskinnyskinnyskinnyskinnyskinnyskinny...
I suck in my stomach. I turn to one side, then the other, then the first again. Tears come to my eyes. I blame myself, God, the universe, my parents. What did I do to deserve this?? I've worked so hard.
The body is no longer a body at all. It's an animal, a monster, a shapeless and inhuman blob of failure and disappointment. It certainly isn't me.
For the next week and a half, I eat perfectly. No slip-ups. I work harder than ever at the gym. Everything starts to come back into alignment. I avoid punishing myself - I know better than to think that works; I've tried it before. Instead I focus on healthy goal-setting. Health is happiness, right?
Inevitably, though, I stumble. I eat a packet of chips instead of carrot sticks. I quit a workout early. Then again I am faced with the self that is not me and the body that is not mine.
Sometimes I feel as though these islands of self-hatred and frustration are inescapable. My stomach will never be flat enough. I will never be skinny enough. I'm not sure if I even know what "skinny" means anymore, if it's a mantra or a curse, a descriptor or an obsession or a lifestyle. Maybe it's just a social construct, totally meaningless on its own. Maybe one day I won't care anymore.
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