(Trigger Warning: Eating disorders, body dysmorphia, self image/harm)
In your dreams?
You’re either the worst or best parts of yourself. Rare is there a point between.
In mine, it was his face I saw. One so like my own. He had the same snarls, the same slump of his back. The guttural drawl at the end of his words. He could hurl insults so thorned that you couldn’t help but bleed. Were it not for the fact he walked on two legs and spoke? You could have confused him for any junkyard stray.
Every time we talked, it was at this table. It wasn’t an elegant thing. A solid slab of wood with legs akimbo. A trapped beast in a clapboard house in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but he and I and this horrid, lonely place. You could run into the horizon and still get nowhere. Your muscles turn to sludge on your bones as your tendons give. You could turn on your heel, and still be no farther from the house. There he’d be, smoking on the porch. A scowl on his face, a tatty bathrobe wrapped about him. I’d drag my feet back to the porch a step at a time. By the time I’d reach the house, he’d work up the nerve to talk.
“You know,” he’d say, the cigarette rolling from one side to the other, “It’s not so bad. It’s not,”
I’d tell him to shut the fuck up if I had the nerve anymore. But mostly, I just wanna sit.
We walk back into the house, back to this table. We sit, and he talks as I struggle to breathe.
He ashes to the floor freely. His sigh sounds like a wolf resigning itself to the fact it’s aging. Then he looks up at me, and says “All this bullshit, and for what? What’s so hard about it?”
I don’t answer him. Not at first at least. For a long time, I wasn’t sure I even had the courage to form the words.
It’s part of the reason I’ve insomnia. I couldn’t outrun my dreams, but my body could be too exhausted to make them happen. Too tired to visit him, and that place.
We all deal with self confidence in different ways.
Today, I’d like to talk about how I reached the point I’m at now, and how I got here.
“Self Improvement Is Masturbation. Self Destruction?”
It’s 2006.
The thing I desire most isn’t love. It isn’t fame, or financial security.
I just want to look in the mirror and not hate myself.
At three-hundred and fifty pounds and scarred with acne, it wasn’t stuffing my face that was the issue. I barely had the willpower to put food in my stomach anymore. I was a few years off from the madness of drugs. No, what was killing me more than my overall health was glass. Reflective surfaces. The street lights that gleamed off chrome bumpers and made me see myself. I even took the mirror out of my bathroom. I was too young, dumb and uninformed to recognize this for what it was.
I was disassociating in a big way.
Pulling myself from awareness was easier than living another moment inside of a body that was either the community pin cushion or nothing. It was better than being target practice for barbs I pretended to ignore. To be nothing more than a sack of meat, consuming space. The way in which people either totally ignored me or were sure to make me aware my very presence was an inconvenience is something that, even now, I can’t forget. I was told to “suck it up”, “be a man”, to “hit back”. The fact of the matter is, doing nothing-being nothing-was easier than simply existing.
It was easier than thinking. For thinking brought with it the profound question of what the fuck was so wrong with me that I couldn’t be seen as human. To be denied even that? To be denied base humanity-not even common decency? The only other alternative was death. I was young. I was too afraid to die.
Call it self preservation. Call it numbness, call it whatever you want. The fact remains that I wanted to utterly leave my flesh. I was tired of this body, this life I didn’t ask for. I was tired of being haunted by the guy that looked back at me in the mirror. Not because I looked at him and heard all the things that were said to me at school. No, not that.
It’s because he didn’t look like me.
His features weren’t hard and defined like they are now. There was a pall of darkness over his face that brought a terrifying realization. Because the longer I stared, the more I noticed the shards of light. Slivers that brought with them a familiarity that shook me to my core. Whenever that happened, I’d quiet my mind. Occupy it with endless video games, movies and books.
A pen and paper. I was writing, always fucking writing then.
There was one such night that brought Brad Pitt to my screen. He and Edward Norton had just beat the shit out of each other in front of a bar. They were on a bus, and Pitt nodded to an underwear ad.
If you’ve ever watched Fight Club, you know the line that came next.
I paused the movie then. I stared at the screen as something began to click in the back of my head. I couldn’t put a phrase to it, but I knew it made sense in the worst kind of way. My mouth started to go dry. I got up and went to the bathroom, and grabbed a paper cup off the counter.
The mirror sat propped against my tub, a dirty shirt over it. I choked down water, and felt myself drawn to give it another glance.
I didn’t want to.
But I did all the same.
Vanity, oh vanity. All is striving after vapors. I’d learned that bible verse when I was six, and it had stuck with me forever. But even the resurgence of it to the forefront of my mind couldn’t stay my hand from pulling the shirt away. There stood the man, his arms crossed over his chest. His face wrapped in shadows, a cigarette perched at the corner of his mouth.
I knew he wasn’t real. I knew, logically speaking, this was my brain trying to cope with trauma. Failed synapses sparked from a film I identified with. Logic fell silent as I sat down on the cold tile, legs crossed as I gave him the longest stare in months. A sliver of light caught him, and a bright green eye regarded me.
“Alright,” I said, pubescent voice breaking. “Alright, what do I have to do? I’m fucking tired of hurting. I’m sick of it man,”
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have to.
Because like Ed and Brad, I already knew what it was going to take.
When you think you have nothing? When you feel like you’ve truly, sincerely hit bottom? When the walls close in on your own mind?
There isn’t one of us alive that wouldn’t make whatever sacrifices we have just to survive.
No matter how bad it hurts.
Space Monkey
I tell people I shaved my head because I was too poor to get it cut.
That’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. If I shaved my head, I didn’t have to consider it. It was another detail about my appearance that didn’t consume my thoughts. When your dome gleams, you don’t worry about gray hairs. Those curls you can’t get out, so effeminate and unbecoming in masculine culture. It’s gone. So are those worries.
I wore black because half my closet was already black. What’s more, I wore no-name stuff because it was cheap. Clothes didn’t matter. This skin, this body of mine? It was a vestigial organ for what I wanted to become.
Which was fine with me. My concern at the time was the totality of managing hunger pain.
My folks were happy when I bought the weights. They were happy when I’d disappear for thirty minutes at a time to grunt and sweat. They didn’t bat an eye when I’d say “I’m going for a walk,” and disappear into the verdant embrace of the woods. The only time they spoke up or said anything was when I refused to eat.
“I already did,” I’d tell them. “I grabbed something earlier,” I’d say.
Thank god for puberty. They just assumed I’d inhaled food after school. One that worked for a long, long while. Then one day during hour two of irons, dad poked his head in the door.
He wasn’t smiling. Pops always smiled when he saw me.
“Boy?” he said, “You’re riding with me,”
I wiped the sweat from my brow, and dropped the dumb bell. “Yeah,” I said, “Let me just finish my set,”
I figured it would work. I knew better than to tell my Pops no. I grabbed the dumb bell again, and was midways through a curl when dad spoke again.
“Put the goddamn weights down and get your pants on. Now,”
Well, okay.
The rites of puberty and Chuck P’s gospel said my response should have been “fuck you”. I should have asserted myself. But the problem was, I had a great relationship with my dad. Even in the becoming of someone I could look at in the mirror, that didn’t change. So I did as my pops said.
We were halfway through an acoustic Led Zeppelin set and a few marlboros when we pulled over. It was in front of this big field we’d always loved. A space he and I had shared a lot of burgers and laughs at. To this day, I still drive out there sometimes. It’s a place of good memories for me. A happy, zen zone just like Norton had channeled into.
Pops killed the engine, and rolled down the window. He reached over and popped the glove compartment over. Orange and yellow met my eyes. My mouth started salivating before he reached in and pulled the pack out.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a Reese cup. The peanut butter and chocolate hit my nose, and I was ready to ask if I could have one when dad put the whole pack in my lap.
“Eat it,” he said, eyes firm on the field before us.
I knew better than to say no.
Pops loved me. Everything he did was with that at the forefront.
If you go long enough without sugar, getting that first taste is a high you don’t forget. It’s fucking intoxicating. So pungent and incredibly strong you audibly moan. I tried not to, but it came all the same. Dad laughed, but it was short lived. I finished the candy as he stubbed his cigarette out, and turned to me. His facial expressions always gave what was on his mind away. But this time, it was solid stone.
“How much have you lost?”
If he had slapped the shit out of me then, I don’t think I could have been more confused. My mind kept clicking and whirring, trying to form words over the ache of my back. The throb of my biceps. The click of my knees every time they moved.
“Boy? How much weight have you lost?” said pops.
I shook my head, and stared at him. “Dad, what is this?”
“Jack, god damn it. You’re half the boy you were at the start of the month. How much?”
“Pops, I don’t-”
“Don’t you play games, boy. I’ve seen the change in you. When was the last time you ate regular?” he said.
The stone face was gone. In its place was the pained eyes of a man desperately trying to make sense of what was in front of him.
I didn’t have any answers for him.
He let out a sigh, and looked out over the field. I heard the top of his box of marlboros open. The flick of a lighter. There was the sizzle of a cigarette. Both hands gripped the steering wheel as he tried to bring the conversation back.
“Your mum is worried sick. You know that, right?”
“Oh yeah?” I said with a chuckle, “Why doesn’t she tell me that herself? Why doesn’t anyone, pops?”
I watched as the grip tightened on the steering wheel. There came a massive plume of smoke as the car rocked, and dad turned to look at me.
“Son, ‘cause pain isn’t something you can put into words sometimes. You didn’t. You chose to act instead. And I’m asking you right now, what weight is on your heart so damn heavy it made you hurt yourself this bad?”
That shut everything else off. The physical agony I was in couldn’t even compare. It turned off everything-except the face of that man in the mirror. Marching forward, right to the front of my brain. That pall of darkness, it’s starting to peel back. I can see his face, aspects of it at least.
It’s enough to make me cry. Not big, hard dramatic sobs. But the quiet kind. Those slow leaks that male culture dictates are okay. Thug tears, I’d heard them called. I ball my fists up atop my legs, my jaw gritting so hard my teeth scream in agony.
“I just-I’m fucking sick of it man,” I said, voice breaking. I’d tried for months to throw some bass into it. I didn’t now. It broke into the alto of the choir boy I’d been once upon a time.
When was the last time I went to choir?
“Sick of what, boy?” says my dad. His voice, there’s not a hint of emotion to it. His eyes though-they tell me everything. Just as they always had.
My hands splayed open with a tremble. I wave them over my chest, my legs, my stomach. My jaw wavers a few times before I say anything at all.
“I just-this man, fucking this okay? I’m sick of being in all this,”
Pops doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he revs the engine, and we pull away from that refuge. We’re down the highway, back to civilization in minutes. Powerlines pass in a blink. We come to a light, and only then does he speak.
“Jack? Son? I want you to know something. What you’re feeling right now-it’s temporary. All pain is, and we all salve it in our ways. But the way you’re doing it, it’s gonna kill who you are right now and definitely keep you from being who you want to be. So I’m asking you-not for me, not for your mother, but you-don’t let that boy die. I love him a lot.”
I don’t say anything. Not at first. Then I choke out an “Okay pops,” and stare out the window as we drive home.
When we came in, my mom hugged me. Pops ordered two pizzas, and I damn near put one away all on my own. I ate so much for the first time in months that my stomach actually hurt.
I decided to let my hair grow out after that.
I decided food was wonderful again.
In a span of two months and a week, I’d lost almost two-hundred pounds. I had been working out five hours a day (it was summer break from school) and eating roughly 600-800 calories a day. No sugar, no carbs. I’d blacked out on my bench a few times. The only constant was water, sweat and ignoring the gnawing of my stomach.
A week before school started, my dad took me to our family practitioner. It was just for a check up. When I stood on the weight scale, the doc looked at my chart and then me. He double checked the scale to make sure something wasn’t up. Then he looked at my dad, his eyes wide as he spoke in a way that wasn’t professional at all.
But was totally appropriate.
“Ron? What the hell happened to your boy?”
I think back to that trip in the doctor’s office a lot. Especially now, with my fear of mirrors gone. With my entire outlook on both myself, and my self confidence, grossly different than it was then. Because what I did to achieve who and what I wanted to be?
Pops had been right.
I’d almost died fit as hell and starving to death.
Listening To the Pixies In The Dreamscape
He ashes his cigarette to the floor, and looks at me.
“I mean, it’s not as bad as you think,” he says, “People aren’t lying to you. They’re not being nice because they have to be,”
I didn’t have a name for him then. Or this place, this table. I don’t know why he chose to speak to me in my dreams. But I knew enough to know he wouldn’t lie to me. This man I could be, who seemed to exist only in the corners of my mind and mirrors.
I finally decided to speak.
“Then why all this? Why did you put me through all this? Why did we have to do this?”
The man smirks, a crooked smile I’d seen once or twice on my father’s face. He takes a drag, then jabs towards me with the cigarette. Smoke plumes out his nose as he speaks in a voice that sounds far more like me than I’d ever admit.
“Because you’re a stubborn asshole that can’t accept a compliment. Because learning to accept people like you is scarier than being numb. All this?” he says, gesturing over his body. One corded with muscle, rolls of excess skin that he’d hid under black shirts for months.
“All this was you. Thank fuck it’s over,”
I swallow the insult that curls from the back of my throat. Instead, I asked him the one thing that seemed right.
“Well, fuck. What do we do now?”
He laughs, a raspy chuckle that I’d come to claim in the next few years. He shakes his head, and leans back in his chair as he stares at me.
“We actually start learning. We heal. You want this? All this? Then you’ve got to stop thinking you’re alone. Got it?”
“Okay,”
“And what’s more-” he says, stamping his cigarette out on the table, “-You’re gonna fucking learn that you’re more than a few dumb comments. The universe, it’s a big fucking place. And you’ve all the potential to seize everything you want,”
I nod, then meet his eyes. “I don’t think I could have-”
“Shut the fuck up,” says the man, his brow knitting in fury. “Yes the hell you could have. Get your head out of your ass before you go full ouroboros. Who the fuck said you couldn’t?”
I don’t answer him. Not because I can’t, but because I knew precisely who had thought that and was ashamed.
A moment later, I woke. I climbed out of bed, and made my way to the bathroom. The dingy mirror, propped in the same place as usual, greeted me. I lifted it by the edges, and turned towards the sink. The face I saw in the mirror, the one that had felt like a taunt for so long?
It was my own.
I hung the mirror back up.
I finally smiled.
It was a long time before I could learn to take a compliment. I would go on to abuse my body even more than I had. Even now, there’s a nervous tension that comes with being seen and known. It’s completely irrational, I know. That doesn’t change the fact it’s there. Yet as torturous as it can be sometimes mentally-it ended up being my salvation. To want to be seen and heard, to be known?
That’s normal. That’s universal to absolutely all of us. It’s not merely a desire, but a human right. It’s when we feel that right being stripped away that the slow death begins. Maybe it starts in your head or your heart. Maybe it starts with weights, with comparing yourself to others you see. In the end, it’s a painful way to die. You become the walking tragedy we all try so very hard to avoid.
I almost killed myself that summer just so I could feel like I belonged. It wouldn’t be the last time either.
To be where I am now-willing to step in front of a camera? Comfortable enough in my own skin to even film my body? That’s the direct result of boundless love being poured my way. Of acceptance, of being made to feel human.
I haven’t disassociated in literal years.
That’s largely in part to all of you.
No matter how different we are, no matter what walks of life you come from, the main point I want you all to take away from this article is the following:
You matter. Even if you don’t think you do.
You’re loved, even if you don’t believe it yourself.
The world is big and beautiful, even with all that’s going on right now. There’s enough space for you, for me, and for everyone. There’s enough care, friendship and love (platonic and otherwise) for all of us to look in our mirrors and smile.
You don’t have to utterly destroy yourself to find a place to belong.
-J