Thoughts For a Tuesday

     When I was sick, I fruitlessly tried to pinpoint what began my illness.  I tried to catch the cause with my bony fingers and put my wasted print upon it.  And now that I'm recovering, I find myself thinking back to how it happened, how I didn't notice what was happening or else didn't care until it was too late.  I suppose I never really wanted to get well.  Rather, I had to.  It was not like I woke one morning with the resolve to eat and put on weight.  Granted, yes, there were many nights when I cried myself to sleep because the pain in my chest or abdomen was just too much to tolerate, or came home from work to face another lonely and restless afternoon staring down the toilet bowl, and said to myself, "I can't do this anymore.  I need help.  I'm out of control."  But the distinction which needs to be made here is that, although I was tired of the disordered behaviors and the pain and anxiety and insomnia and guilt and lack of energy and depression that came along with them, I never wanted to give up the badge of honor that came with the disease.  In other words, I never wanted to gain weight.  I was tired of being "sick girl," of the ceaseless sins suffered in silence.  But I was never tired of being thin.
     Maybe my body just finally rebelled and said, "to hell with you, I'm fucking eating."  This theory may have weight considering I have always been a bit rebellious by nature and hate to be told no.  Maybe I just got hungry.  Maybe I just got tired.  Maybe my body became so deprived, it clinged to any ounce of food I fed it in the hopes of survival.  Maybe the very real and haunting prospect of losing my job and everything I spent my life building was the final kick that started my engine into gear.  Funny thing is, the prospect of losing my life didn't make a dent in my diseased skull.  Maybe I copped out right on the brink of being institionalized because I feared losing my freedom more than I did gaining weight.  Maybe I just got bored.  Maybe I just didn't care anymore about being so goddamn impressive.  Maybe I realized no one gave a shit anymore except me, and when there's no one left to goggle with wonder at your disappearing act, I guess it feels as though you've already disappeared, so what's the point?  Or maybe when I started working out less and eating more I realized...it felt good...and I...ahem...liked it.
     Even now, it feels good to come home from the gym and not feel a crazed anxiety to start piling food into my mouth.  To know that if I'm hungry, I can eat dinner.  That I don't have to fear.  I think over the past couple of months during my initial stages of recovery my body has been making up for lost time and so many months of denial.  I equate my recovery state to that of a starved runt wrestling her way through the mounds of her siblings' plump frames to get to her mother's teat, fearing there won't be enough milk to feed her, there will never be enough milk to feed her.  It is almost as though when I began eating, I feared the food was somehow going to be taken away.  That any opportunity I had to eat, in which I was allowed to eat, had to be relished and taken advantage of because I never knew when that moment would cease to exist, when the food would disappear and I wouldn't be allowed it anymore.  The crazed anxiety for starvation became a crazed anxiety to eat away the fear of emptiness.   
     It's been a few months now, and I'm starting to learn that I don't have to starve nor do I have to binge.  I don't have to fear food, it's presence nor its absence.  I hate using phrases like "my goal is...", "my plan is...." because it implies the possibility of failure.  It implies the possibility of not reaching your goal or following your plan.  So I'll say my committment to my health and happiness is to begin exercising again a half hour four or five days a week.  That I will begin eating healthier and "normal."  I will have a breakfast, lunch, and dinner and snacks in between if I want or need to.  And hopefully, I'll end up balancing out and losing a few pounds in the process!  I can't think of this as a plan to lose weight...it becomes fraught with too much self-loathing and competition.  Too much guilt and a sense of defeat.  But I'm realizing that I don't have to eat everything in sight or drive myself crazy thinking about food because it will still be there if I need it, if I want it.
     I wonder if it's bad that I'm hungry but the thought of getting up and cooking and eating seems too tedious of a task to undergo.  I wonder if it's bad that I secretly hope I will lose weight by committing myself to a "healthy lifestyle of exercise and nutritious eating."  I wonder if it's bad that I put off making that appointment with the nutritionist like I was going to because I "want to try doing this on my own."  I wonder if it's bad that I figure in my head the number of days until the next holiday and how long I should go "sticking to plan" before straying.  I wonder if its bad that I go to the gym and stand in front of the full length mirror in a desolate corner of the women's locker room, the same mirror I used to have to sit down in front of just to tie my shoes because it was too much effort to stand and tie them, and examine my protruding belly, jab my thighs with probing fingers.  I wonder if its bad that I cringe when I feel my thighs rub together as I jog on the treadmill and that I say to myself, "I'll just go until there's a space there again.  I mean, it's not healthy that my thighs touch."  I wonder if it's bad that I assess whether my jaw line or chest bones are evident.  I wonder if it's bad that I'm sitting here writing this right now because it means I'm thinking about it.  I wonder if it's bad that my thoughts of a Tuesday are my thoughts everyday.