I Am Beautiful

There was still vomit on my glasses. I had thought it was just tears as I was picking them back up, but I could smell it. Disgusted and disappointed, again, I wiped the glasses off on my shirt, turned off the light and left the bathroom.

It’s getting bad again. Same story, same wasted money, same damage to my body. Same excuse – “This is the last time, I swear.”

I want it to be the last time. I want to stop.

It feels like it controls me. It is a compulsion I have to fight; lately, I am on a losing streak. I just don’t know what to do. I reach out for help, but the rope never comes.

I am not blaming anyone, not even myself. I am sick, I need treatment. I have admitted that I need help. Help is hard to find.

In the meantime my days are consumed by this illness. I spent hours trying to leave the house today. Hours. I changed my outfit, tried fixing my dirty hair, changed my outfit again. I put on lipstick and wiped it off with disgust. “Who do I think I am trying to be?”

I shame myself. I make myself feel awful. I hate myself. I get to the point where I need to avoid looking in the mirrors at all until I calm down. I can’t even tell if the reflection looking back at me is real anymore.

I exaggerate my perceived flaws until I am forced to hide myself. I stay home. I avoid going in public; if I can’t I wear a hat, sunglasses, a sweatshirt maybe, anything to try to hide myself. At work I will avoid looking at the mirror in the restroom, and especially the one in the back of the restaurant – the one that seems to actually morph your face like a fun house mirror. My mind can do that on its own.

I didn’t want to binge today. I didn’t want to waste the money that I pulled out of my savings jar. I exited out of the delivery app three times before placing the order. I was glad when I saw an unfamiliar name for the delivery driver, yet I  could still feel my face beet red with shame as I answered the door for the third time this week.

I feel hot and shaky with embarrassment even writing about this. I know I carry more shame about this than I do about the alcohol abuse. There are many reasons for that, even from the media and my environment normalizing alcohol abuse to growing up believing that being fat and eating certain foods is bad.

It is difficult to write about because I don’t want to be seen as fat, I certainly don’t want people thinking  about me doing these behaviors that I carry a lot of shame around.

But – I also know this is something I struggle deeply with, that I will be able to work through a lot of it through writing. I also know that I am not alone in carrying shame around disordered eating or my body, for whatever reasons, and it isn’t talked about enough.

This isn’t for attention, although the borderline in me does like the validation, because I hate being seen. Especially this way, especially in this state that I currently am in. When I am in this state I hate to even be seen walking my dog. It can take me a sickening amount of time to get myself dressed and out the door just to take my dog to the restroom.

While logically I am aware that barely anyone is even noticing me as I walk my dog down the street, I can also become stuck in this state of mind where I feel as though I have spotlight on me and everyone I pass is pointing, staring, and talking about me.

I know that isn’t actually happening; I am aware that people don’t see me or care what I look like or what I am wearing. Yet my brain still freaks out. My brain will now allow me to just walk out of the house in whatever sweatpants and sweatshirt with my hair looking however to even just walk to my car and back.

I feel like I am losing my freaking mind some days with this. It literally takes me hours to find something to wear for the  day, and then even though I already hate what my body look like, I binge that night.

Then, because I hate how awful I feel from binging that I finally give in and purge as much as I can. I feel so much shame and embarrassment that I close the bathroom door so my dog can’t see me.

The eating disorders and body dysmorphia take so much from me. It has been destroying me for years and I am exhausted. I have been avoiding writing about this because of all the shame, but also because I don’t like doing hard things. I got used to avoiding anything hard recently and I want that to change.

I am trying to become a better person, which means treating myself better too. I don’t want to be at the mercy of this illness anymore. I want to take my life back. It feels impossible; I know it’s not though.

I want to learn to stop hating myself, to learn to love myself. I want to stop saying that I look like a trash bag when I am having a bad hair day. I want to stop talking poorly about myself, whether it is out loud or in my head. I want to be nicer to myself.

I have been trying. I wrote affirmations on my bathroom mirror. I glared at them as I brushed my teeth for the second time tonight.

I read the affirmations I have written, angry at them, at myself.

I certainly didn’t feel very fucking beautiful bent over the toilet tonight, but you’re just supposed to keep saying it until you believe it, right?

“I am beautiful”

How do I learn to believe it, even get myself to say it, when I keep having days like today, nights like tonight? How do I learn how to get better when it seems no one is throwing me a rope to pull me in?