To Clarify...

"Aquarius Horoscope (Jan. 21-Feb. 18): You will soon begin to cultivate new friends and feel a sense of community. Not now, but later. A redirection is occurring within and your sense of unease is telling you change is coming. Don't maintain the regular ways of being if they are too difficult. Bodywork is needed Monthly. Should someone oppose you, tell the truth in neutral tones. Step back." - http://www.januaryhoroscopes.com/september-horoscope.html

Just so you know what my horoscope is... Heh.

Earlier I was talking about feeling partially recovered, that things have changed, my body view, much as my world view, has altered. My perception has altered. My habits and actions have changed, some for the better, some not so much.

I want you to understand that food has always been my best friend and my arch nemesis. It has always been there, when I was alone, when I was surrounded by people, when I felt abandoned, hopeless, alone, even happy or ecstatic. Food has always held the 'answers', even if they were all lies. Food was what brought my family together. My father and I would have competitions to see who could down their Sunday pancakes down the fastest. He and I both consumed like it was the only thing keeping us alive. I watched him, when I was young, go on the Atkins diet, and it worked. He lost weight. Then, he returned to his old eating habits. He went back to Atkins, and that time he had health problems relating to it. I was a little afraid of diets, but they also appealed to me. Diet pills, too, piqued my interest. The magic of it - eat this, not that, and you will be thin/beautiful/smart/popular/stylish/amazing... The list went on. Food was this great thing to me. I was addicted to sugar (still am, if we're being honest...), became a pro at eating astronomical amounts of "food", aka: crap. Early on, I was stashing food in my room, in my pockets, in my locker at school. I would sneak cookies into classes when we weren't allowed food or drink. My pockets were constantly filled with crumbs. I ate all the time, because I was hungry, starved for something I couldn't put my finger on and just assumed was my insurmountable appetite.

I took dance classes, went to competitions, won awards and honors, for fifteen years. I was usually the biggest girl in my class, or one of the biggest, but I never really 'noticed' or understood this was unusual. I was told every now and then to watch what I ate, but it was never pushed on me to be thin, that it was a necessity for a professional dancer. I was just pudgy, had baby fat. I didn't know the difference. I was happy at dance, and I was happy, I thought, when I was eating. I saw the other girls, how thin they were, and I thought they were just naturally that way. It didn't click for me until I got into my teens that there was something else going on.

No one ever directly said anything to me about my weight, when I was dancing. It's merely been my own memories and perceptions that has painted the picture of how ridiculous I must have looked, lumbering around  in my tutu, on pointe, when I was obviously not the fawned, obsessive figure of someone 'in control'.

After all, I had other problems. I was annihilating my arms, shredding them with my nails, on a daily basis, from age twelve on. I didn't have a clue this wasn't really normal behavior until I hit high school and took drastic measures, by hiding under sweatshirts and hoodies in ninety degree weather, to hide the shame of my lack of self-control and how obviously fucked up I was. So began my sick little obsession with self-destructive behaviors. It was so innocent, those early years. I was just curious. Why was everyone else so thin, so pretty, what the hell was anorexia anyway?

I remember once thinking I'd never force myself to throw up, because it was simply wrong to force your body to reject something that was supposed to be good for it. I remember thinking I'd never try to starve myself, even if I did think those people who did were holy, pure, and obviously enlightened. My thoughts were always skewed on the subjects that eventually became my living hell, but I didn't see the relationship.

Then something began to grow within me, this little voice, it had been there for years, but now it turned on my obsession with food with a vengeance. I was fat. I was disgusting. I was a laughingstock. How anyone could love me, hell, how they could even like me, or look at me, was beyond my understanding. I had been this blob for years, and hadn't realized just how ridiculous I was. I started taking diet pills. I started drinking caffeine to curb the appetite. I started drinking. I started popping pills, it didn't matter what they were, how many, I took them all, and watched the world turn into a dizzy improv. I started hanging out with the kids I'd been secretly admiring for years, with their drugs and obvious disdain for authority. I loved it, loved them. They helped me forget who I was, what I was. Fat. Fat to both...

Shit happened. I got into trouble, imagine that. I moved across the country. To Los Angeles. The worst possible place for a person who hates herself to 'try a life'. I got worse. Much, much worse. I thought and thought about these disorders, about my mental state, about how I was a disappointment, and the depression, the monsters inside my head, consumed me. Then I tried it. It worked. I liked it. It was simple. Eat, throw up, eat, throw up, eat, throw up. Ritualistic. Simple. Practical. If it goes in, it can come out. It should come out. Why hadn't I thought of this before? I looked back at my life, my dancing career, and was mortified. Old pictures of me in costume, competitions, videos of performances, in all of them I felt like the elephant in the room. Family vacations, pictures in which I should have been pretty and coifed, elegant, cool... I was a sham, a mismatched slob baring my pudge like some twisted badge of horror.

How had I managed that? Hadn't I known shame? Had I not felt their eyes on me, their sneers of contempt? How could I have missed it? I had tried so hard to kill the stupid, naive little girl that had gotten herself so hurt in the first place, I'd built so many walls to protect myself, and the only thing I'd managed to do was blind myself, conveniently, from the blinding truth.

Fat.

That year in LA was not a good one. When I returned to the east coast, I was a different person, and to this day I think the only way anyone knows is because I have talked about parts of it, how it shaped me. I don't tell them about the bulimia, the rage, the puking in the shower after work. I don't tell them about going from McDonald's to Burger King to the grocery store within thirty minutes, and then binging in my car, ten thousand calories gone bye-bye. I don't tell them. They don't need to know.