Sharing Our Innermost Thoughts

THE REFLECTION

It was staring back at me I swear . It was looking right into my eye. So similar , yet so different. My eyes swelled up and I could see a pool of red teardrops. I stood there , wanting to run away , wanting to see something different but all I saw was delusion , it was still staring right at me and trying to tell me something , trying to tell me that this is the person I am and this is the person I will remain.
But was it possible to break free ? Break free from myself.

You always have a choice. This ‘you’ tends to be stubborn and scared sometimes. Sometimes this ‘you’ chooses to stay in a shell for so long , that the shell becomes the comfort zone for the unforgettable. This ‘you’ wants to stay inside for as long as someone breaks the shell , or the ‘you’ breaks it herself. And the choice to rebuild it or break it forever also lies with the ‘you’.

I’ll tell you a story about a girl
She was beautiful ( no wait , my fault. She is beautiful ) , She has dreams and aspirations , She loves to go out , She loves to make friends , She loves to sing songs on the top her voice in cars (even though she knows she is a terrible singer) , She loves the stage , She loves a million things and She really , no genuinely , no actually wants to be super happy but then something dawned upon her and the happiness vanished in a jiffy. No. Not that it was visibly lost but something wasn’t right , something didn’t feel right when she woke up every morning and went back to bed every night. Something didn’t feel right when she looked at herself in the mirror every fifteen minutes , something didn’t feel right when her favourite donut became her worst enemy , something did not feel right when all that surrounded her mind was the pathetic, set standards of bikini bodies.

Trust me , it’s terrible to be in something like this. Ahhhh , I wanna get out of this , that pizza is staring at me and trying to tell me something , yuck , 35 for an Oreo cookie , 75 for a slice of bread , 285 for a slice of pizza, 350 for a plate of pasta , Let’s just still know about eggs , wheat,vegetables , apples , oranges , stopppppppp. That’s it .
It doesn’t matter , I mean I hope it didn’t.
Oh just in case you were wondering , the above digits used weren’t the prices on a menu card , they were actually prices and digits that can cost some people their existence.
One fine day you’re just walking by a beautiful shopping store and you see your reflection in the store windows and you just don’t like it as much as you used to and you just decide to be different , trust me it’s okay to have those thoughts but as my father always tells me everything in excess is bad , do not , I repeat myself do not let that reflection become an addiction because firstly your reflection is your only competition and secondly I mean it when I say addiction.

Suddenly your life isn’t anymore about all the flowers and the cakes and the teddy bears. It just takes a huge turn of events and just becomes about digits and scales and smudged mascara days.
And that my friend is a terrible feeling.
And this feeling ; this terrible feeling I am talking about will still not occur to you until one day . Until that one day arrives ,you will have magnificent days feeling accomplished and better with the passing days of reduced digits and smaller sizes. but then that one day comes , it definitely comes along and then all of a sudden your world just feels like a crashing mountain because of a complete turn of feelings of hating , abhoring and not being close enough to be able to understand that wicked eyed monster standing and looking at you with her shirt up analysing every flaw and every scar and every mark.
Every mark on that god forsaken belly seems like a mixed emotion of accomplishment and disgust .

Oh my god , ‘what a drastic change’ , ‘did you see her , how did she even manage to?‘ , ‘you’re literally skinnier than you have ever been ‘ , ‘oh what a beautiful , young lady you’ve turned into ‘ , ‘you’re so lucky that you fit into that ‘ , ‘Wait, is she on something?’

Hahaha , I can’t even begin to explain what goes on inside the pea sized walnut with the never ending emotions and feelings and thoughts.

Sometimes running away seems like the only option , sometimes throwing the half subway away , sometimes you just spit it out and cry ,sometimes you make excuses of being so satisfied with an apple a day ( that’s when you realise an apple a day doesn’t keep the doctor away)sometimes you just lie to them and sometimes , No you just lie to yourself all the time.

Of course this will be sufficient for at least 6 hours. I hate ice cream , I hate Italian , I hate social outings ! Period. Take a break my friend , take a break.

What’s the point of going to that lunch , I’ll just have to look at their faces , What’s the point of ordering this mouth watering piece of red velvet , all I am going to do is whine about it for the next 3 days. You know what I ate a full donut 2 weeks back. ‘Umm , I ate like 3 in a go 3 hours ago’
Statements like that seem alien.

Okay enough is enough , today I really, really feel like eating fries. Let’s go to McDonald’s. ‘oh my god, are you going to eat fries , how did that happen , how can you do that , I’m so proud of you ‘
Are they just treating me differently or am I actually nothing like a normal teenager indulging on cakes and fries and burgers.

Did you hear about the new waffle place , heard it has the best waffles around. ‘I don’t eat waffles’ ,
Did you try on the new pizza at that place. ‘I don’t eat pizza’
Did you , okay never mind.

That has too much sugar , that has too much cream , that has too much chilli , that’s fried , that’s cheese , that’s not wheat , that’s not baked. Those are all haunting me like ghosts in my dreams. Please don’t put extra sugar , please don’t fry it , please don’t give me 2 , please don’t do this , please don’t do that. Ahhhhh. I just woke up from a bad dream.
It haunts you and encircles you like scary looking white ghosts.

I am craving for an extra sweet classic glazed donut but my demons are pulling me back , I want my angels back. They have been taken away , they are lost , I want them back.

I want to be able to go out with my father and eat that god damn pizza, I want to be able to indulge on those Nutella waffles to satisfy my late night hunger pangs with my best friend , I want to be able to go out and drink that hot chocolate without thinking twice.

But it consumes you , it consumes you from head to toe , from your brain to your veins. The rods to break through are too god damn well built. They took quiet some time to be this strong. So they sure as hell would take so much more time to be broken.
As a matter of fact , these rods are another level of stubborn. Look for the instrument to break them , look around , look right and look left.
You know just as everything has a solution you might just find a brilliant weapon one fine day, to break these shackles you’ve been living under , and you start hitting hard , piercing hard enough to break the rods but wait , how is this weapon not strong enough?
How does staying hungry feel powerful yet again? How am I still worshipping skeletons?
I will not deny the two successful weeks of the sometimes proper humanly survival ethics of eating but I will also not deny the relapses , the over thinking , the crying to bed and all this just because you’re trying hard enough.
You know it’s not easy as it sounds. Recovery? Everyone can recover from anything in a few easy steps. Take a tablet dude , It is not going to make you fat , Just eat it dude , stop being a drama queen ! Oh yes I had just been waiting for your validation and approval for me to eat that slice of cake for my whole life but you know what only if it were that easy. But again honestly I do not excpect you to understand this, because you will not. Because recovery is not easy my friend. It isn’t. I will tell myself for minutes , hours and days straight that I am doing this for myself and to get better but every bite I take and every sip I drink feels like a bittersweet medicine going down my throat. You do not think about it until the aftertaste feels like a blend of why’s , what’s and if’s. Not until you have haunting images of a bigger belly or increasing scales.
And if , if those jeans feel slightly tighter , I cannot put the feeling into words. I just cannot.
I started writing this exactly five months back when I found myself in the hardest phase of my eating disorder which most people would refer to as not an eating disorder but today as I am on a pretty successful path to recovery I found myself browsing through coping and recovery articles yet again. Saying that I do not feel disgusted from time to time with a delusional image of myself in the mirror will be factually wrong considering my body image is the only constant thing in my mind all the time. Yes, I face feelings of disgust , feeling of anxiety and feelings of over thinking all the time. Yes , there are times when I do not want to recover and I question as to why I am trying this hard because I just do not want to recover. There are times when I go a day without eating and feel accomplished about it. And I will continue to have these feelings time to time , maybe it takes more time to build up a wall than it takes to break it but this particular wall requires some patience to break completely. It will not come crashing down in a mini second and I do not excpect that out of myself. At the same time , I know other people and people who worry and care about me will want to apply any method to break it down in the fastest way possible but trust me I am the only one who can do it.
And maybe sometimes I give up on my trying and my efforts but at the back of my head I am trying and I will continue to. Not for anyone else but for myself.