I've been giving a lot of thought to eating disorders recently. After watching Kate Thornton's Anorexic: My Secret Past, I've been spending a lot of my time contemplating eating disorders and what it would mean to other people.
She talks a lot about how her anorexia affected other people and that's probably the one area of anorexia that I can't understand. Even though I watch all the eating disorder documentaries that I can find and each and every one of them talk about how much the illness affects family and friends, I still can't get it into my head.
There is something so odd about the concept of other people wanting to care about what I'm eating, if I'm eating, how much I weigh. I can't believe it. Some part of my brain just refuses to compute that. It's a most bizarre concept.
I don't understand it when people worry. I don't completely understand that they do worry. I think they are being stupid. But then again, I don't completely believe that they are worried. After all, I'm so fat, why would they worry about my weight?
But on some level, I must know that it is a bad thing and that it will worry people, because why would I try to hide it so much? On some level I still have some grasp of what is "normal" and what is "abnormal". But my grip on that reality is slipping fast.
I can't remember what it's like to eat 3 meals a day, every day and not flinch at the thought of it. I can't remember what it's like to go out to dinner with friends and not try to count the calories in every meal. I can't remember what it's like to order what I want to eat, instead of carefully scanning the menu and choosing something that's possibly low calorie but not so low as to alarm my foodie friends. I can't remember what it feels like to live a day without feeling disgusting and fat.
I used to pride myself on my grip on absolute space. The place that was dimensionless and has no concept of time and contains at every single point, the absolute unbiased truth. My my absolute space is changing. I've got my own version of it now. I've created my own reality and my own truth. And it no longer matters what would normally exist in absolute space. That precious truth that I used to treasure and hold onto for dear life now doesn't hold any value for me. How did I get this way?
I understand what you're getting at here. I have difficulty understanding why people worry about me and my own eating habits. I realise it's because they care about me and they love me yet like you said, it doesn't quite compute.
ReplyDeletePerhaps if you looked at it from another perceptive it might make more sense. What would you do/feel if you saw your best friend slowly wasting away to nothing? What if they struggled with food and spent ages agonising over the menu at the restaurant trying to pick out the lowest calorie meal. Surely you'd want to help them, surely you' be very worried, at the very least anyway.
Sometimes I try to do this so that I can gain a little perspective and try to understand a little more. I'm not sure if it will for you but it's always worth a try.
Anyway, I hope you're doing well,
xx