tw: eating problems
On Monday Lucy brings to work leftovers from the weekend and ingests the food as she absorbs the plot of the novel she’s currently reading. She’s unsure of what fulfills her the most. On Tuesday, her mouth fills with words as she catches up with her long-distance best friend, she savors the spicy details and leaves the best bite for last. On Wednesday lunch is chalk dust and expletives from everytime she falls from the boulders. On Thursday she feeds herself of music and dance moves, finding satiety in her new salsa class. Friday she splurges on chocolate cookies and romantic comedies, therapy makes her heart sink into her stomach so sweetness is the only thing her body can intake.
In the past year she learned that her body can do incredible things: hike 35 km in a row, lift its own weight and more, dance through 4 hours of reggaeton class. She discovered it can stretch and hold and bend and sustain. She also learned it can shiver and shake through whole nights and whole days because of anxiety and still go on. Most importantly, she learned that her body is just a body.
After her last break up, she stopped being pretty or sexy or graceful. She ceased looking at the mirror and seeing her value through her ex’s gaze, or through the gaze of any other person that would compliment her body to value her individuality.
Instead, she got into physical movement, learned how her hamstring feels when she stretches her leg with the heel grounded on the floor, observed her quadricep shake during a pistol squat, remembered to breath during a middle split- IN, up, and then OUT, bring your core down to the floor, blow the dust away from the parquet.
Every night, before going to sleep, Lucy lays in her bed and sees her body through an endoscopy. Belly up, she breathes in deeply and lets a thin white tube go inside her mouth. In her mind she projects the screened visions from the camera attached on top of the endoscope. Then, she inspects each tooth with care, looking for salad residuals and leftover words; she usually finds one or two “no” stuck between her molars. Then, the tube goes down her throat, examining the swallowed confession still stuck in her esophagus. It further transcends to her stomach. The journey is tight, Lucy feels her esophageal walls embracing this curious tool. She observes her muscles contract and release as this new gaze makes its way down into her stomach, dives deep into her intestines. Depending on the day, the endoscope finds chalk or chocolate or nothing or everything soon-to-expire in the fridge. Lucy is trying out this thing of intuitive eating, but she still doesn’t know how she feels about it. She also learned she can go whole days without ingesting anything but caffeine. The endoscope digs deeper, finds its way through the curves of her entrails, persists through the left and right and left again and the tickling of her intestinal villi. Sometimes she forgets how soft she can be. When the endoscope reaches her rectum, Lucy exhales. The machine swiftly exits her body, she can fall asleep now.
She likes this ritual, this intimate inspection of her own body. After a whole day of being subject to others’ gaze, this small medical practice lets her take control of what her body looks like. Organs and muscles and tissues. Just a body.
Lucy became aware of how her body looked in second grade, when she got nominated the skinniest girl of the class. Measuring her wrist with the one of her bestfriend, she discovered her sharp edges meant she was more desirable than the other children in pink ribbons and ponytails. She carefully sewed this title onto her identity as her body grew, stretching the label to fit her widened mass and elongated bones. When puberty came some stitches came off, they were worn out yarn that over the years got thinner and thinner until it broke. So Lucy bought a thicker thread and double stitched her label on her skin. She used to walk into rooms and size up the crowd, imagining the thighs and bellies and breasts under the oversized sweaters and cargo pants. Tensing her muscles until she could confirm she was the thinnest in the room.
It was comforting to know what her position was in social situations, she felt cozy clothed in such a prized label and
But for how much she tried to sew and resew and embroider this label directly on her skin, it wouldn’t hold on. Her skin thickened and scarred and bruised. Most often, her skin did so while stretching to contain her expansion, the new shapes her body took.
It was an imperceptible transformation if checked daily, which Lucy did in front of her full length mirror for too many nights.
.
.
.
The doctors said she had to stop.
.
.
.
On her first day of university, she had given up on checking who was the thinnest in the room.
With pain and fear and struggle, Lucy realized she had to learn how to navigate social life by herself. No labels and thread to keep her together, or cover her scars. Just her bare skin and her new shoes.
Lucy got rid of her full size mirror. She put it in the car and drove to a nearby park, trying to multiply the stars through the reflection of its 43×13 inches surface. She left it there, held up by a tree trunk, mirroring the sky and its alterations. She then proceeded to declutter her phone, her apartment, her mind. Instagram, meal plans, a skirt from tenth grade, her childhood best friend. That voice stuck inside her left ear, the whisper behind her neck. She started taking singing lessons, her whole body resonating through the power of Nina Simone’s music. She also tried out sex, explored the physical pleasure that arises from intimate connections. Not that she liked it that much at the beginning, her lovers were clumsy university students that struggled to find what they wanted to study, can’t imagine finding the clitoris. But what she cared about weren’t orgasms actually. She was curious to know what her body felt like when other people were touching it. Caring for it. Even loving it. With her first salary as a waitress she bought herself a sex toy, figured that if somebody could whisper “I love you” while having sex then maybe she could also say it to herself while masturbating. Her experiment failed rather fast. She felt a lot of pressure and a sense of discomfort in laying naked with a pink vibrator shaking in her left hand.
She concluded she maybe didn’t have to love her body. Lucy determined she didn’t need an altar nor lace lingerie nor coconut lotion. She had a body that was just epidermis and organs and bones and water and blood. What she needed was to have a more or less balanced diet and move regularly. No love, no sexiness, no beauty involved.
Too late in her life, Lucy realized that her body is just a body.
And that’s okay.