Come a Little Closer

Hey you, yes you. I see you. Come here, lean in closer.. nope a little closer. There you go. I have a secret to tell you…

I have body dysmorphia.

I hate sounding like a fucking victim. If you know me, I am anything but a victim. I can’t stand my body.

I’ve yet to meet a girl who’s 100% satisfied with the way she looks. It’d be fine if I were just one of those girls who complains about it and then writes it off.

“Ugh, I’m SO fat,” while taking a swig from a beer bottle and scarfing down cookies.

But I’m not that girl.

Everyday my body haunts me; I let my body control my life. I see the beer and cookies and instantly want to go into fetal position. My figure has this strange, mystical power over my soul.

Body dysmorphia is a mental disorder. It can mean different things to different people, and I could supply you with the textbook definition, but it means more to me than just being unhappy with the way I look.

It’s about feeling like a stranger in my own body. I don’t see in me what other people see when they look at me. 

Sometimes, I look down at my toes, hoping a bird’s-eye view will give me a better sense of how I fit into my clothes, how big I am in relation to other people, how much space I take up on your average crowded train. That doesn’t help my cause.

Sitting in the library as I write this stupid paper, I’ve put off for literally weeks, I’m taking turns staring at the laptop screen and looking down at my legs. Those fucking legs. Thinking about the way I look hardly leaves room to think about anything else.

Despite spending nearly every minute of my day ruminating on what I used to look like, or what I want to look like, I have no idea what the hell I actually look like.

I know in the back of my mind I’m not fat. I’m healthy, sure I have a few extra pounds on where I shouldn’t but nobody would ever look at me coming down the street and say “she’s fat!”. 

The mirror is my worst enemy. Sometimes I’ll stand in front of it and scrutinize every little ounce of fat on my body. My reflection in the morning determines whether I’ll get to go out that night. Other times, I’ll go weeks without even looking in a mirror because I’m too ashamed of what I see.

There’s no winning. It’s either a staring contest with myself, or it’s an aversion to facing myself altogether.

When I look in a mirror, I don’t see a whole body. I see only parts — specifically, all the far-from-perfect parts. And those parts aren’t just parts. They’re defects. They’re everything that’s wrong about me, and they minimize everything that’s right about me. My contagious, bubbly personality, my ambition? None of that matters.

My body is flawed, so I am flawed. My entire self-worth revolves around what I look like. I know how sad that is.

Sometimes, I stay cooped up in my apartment an entire weekend, punishing myself for not looking the way I want to look. In fact, this very weekend, I’ve convinced myself I can’t “afford” to go out and gain any more weight.

I’ve lost a ton of people in my life from blowing off plans one too many times. They think I’m self-absorbed — and they aren’t wrong — but I’m also deathly afraid and wildly insecure. This stupid sickness has me strung by the heels and hanging upside down.

I turn down social invitations because I’m afraid of the food, the alcohol, the judge-y, up-and-down looks I imagine coming from everyone in the room.

Anxiety paralyzes me into sitting in my room by myself for days.

I know my friends and family will always love me. But living with body dysmorphia keeps me from letting people in. God forbid someone I like spends one day too long with me and realizes how fucked up I am about food, my body, the way I feel about myself.

One time, my ex called asking me to dinner. I said no. I’d finished my allotted calories for the day by 6 pm, leaving me with two options: I could go to dinner and make up some excuse not to eat, like having the stomach flu, or I could just stay home. Staying home was just easier.

Going to dinner and actually eating dinner wasn’t an option. He didn’t understand, and he never would, even though he was the one who made this demon return.

I hate this world I’ve created for myself. I want to break free. Frustration over it consumes me. Time spent dwelling over my self-imposed problems is time wasted. There are so many more important things happening in the world outside my body.

That Time You Broke Me

It was one of those cold rainy nights we sometimes get in September, the ones that are perfect for cuddling, you know the type of night I’m talking about. M and I were tucked away under the bedsheets. I was in heaven.

What M was about to say wouldn’t only forever change the way I felt about being in bed with him but It would forever change the way I feel about myself.

“Hmmm, interesting” he said, caressing the backs of my calves with his big, strong hands. “What do you mean?” I said, wide-eyed as a little girl on Christmas, bracing myself for his hand to make its way up to my lady parts.

“This.” He slapped my thighs, then gripped them so hard I screamed. “You could definitely tighten these up a bit.”

My body went from generating heat to growing completely cold. I was flushed.

“I think they’re fine,” I said, sinking deeper and deeper into the covers.

“You’re so close,” he continued. The man wouldn’t stop incriminating himself. “You’re nearly there. You just need to spend more time in the gym… let me help you transform your body.”

In an attempt to not succumb to my vulnerability — and instead fight back with wit — I grabbed at the thin layer of flesh on his thigh, hoping to make a look-you-have-fat-too!-point. But the truth was, he hardly had any fat on his leg, so I just looked stupid.

Hearing put-downs from the man who was supposed to love wasn’t exactly how I envisioned that particular night going. Had I missed something? Why did I need to be “transformed?” 

Dating M was great when it was good. But when it was bad, it was awful! As with anything in life, there are pros and cons to dating a guy who spends day and night in the gym. Good sex in the bedroom, beautiful man candy on your arm and having a boyfriend who’s skilled in manual labor are just some of the pros. He’d assemble pieces of furniture for me, so I’d overlook his general douchebaggery.

But the cons were some of the biggest points of contention in our relationship. He had this insatiable affinity for the gym — both for feeling his best, but also for looking his best — while I was never too crazy about it after I quit swimming. He was obsessed with maintaining his “perfect” body.

He’d often send me “inspirational” photos, like ones of fitness model and whom I would never look like because frankly I enjoy pizza and popcorn way too much. 

He once told me I was the laziest, flabbiest, most undetermined human on the planet, and I’d nod in acquiescence, like a bobblehead doll incapable of independent thinking. Except I wasn’t, I’ve run marathons, I’m a former swimmer but he had me so diluted that I thought so low of myself. 

I’ve never been uber confident about my body like any girl who’s ever existed, I have insecurities. One day in the life of Tiara could mean feeling fantabulous in a tight white dress, but another day could mean a refusal to leave my apartment because the pair of jeans I’m wearing make me feel too fat to be seen by the world. I’ve always had body dysmorphia but M made this escalate. I once was able to look at pictures of myself and not tear myself apart but when I look at it now, I see the six-pack I don’t have. I see a nonexistent thigh gap. And I don’t see the sculpted-to-a-T arms I worship on Women’s Health magazine covers. I see tree-trunk thighs.

At the time we were dating, I didn’t take his remarks to be demeaning. I took them as constructive criticism. I wanted them to uplift me, make me want to strive to be better, not just when it came to looks, but also when it came to other facets of life. I figured that maybe, if I had a gym regimen to stick to, I wouldn’t be haphazard in things of great significance, like starting work projects and balancing my friendships.

Bettering myself meant going to the gym. And so I went, creating a sort of obsession of my own out of it. I wasn’t going to feel good or look good for myself; I was going to look good for him. 

In order to build muscle, though, I needed to lose fat. So in conjunction with working out, I started eating less and less, that is never a good rollercoaster for anyone to get on. 

My arms got skinnier, my tree-trunk thighs got smaller, and I lost 40 pounds.

M’s unwillingness to take me as I was — the jiggly butt, thick-thighed, trim-but-not-toned me — broke me.

There’s something about a man telling you you aren’t good enough that sticks with you long after the man is gone (as if there weren’t enough pressure on women, from women, to look a certain way). Being with him roused something in me, something I wish had stayed sound asleep: my insecurities. It confirmed that those trivial imperfections on my body weren’t trivial at all. They were worth changing. He made me feel like I wasn’t good enough, and that I’d never be good enough. I still don’t feel like I’m good enough.

For a long time after M and I broke up I felt different I felt separate from my body and it turned me into sort of a recluse. I struggle with trusting men, and I struggle with accepting I can’t fight the natural development of my figure. I’m still trying to get back on track.

These days, I “take care” of myself (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean) as best I can. I eat healthily. I run on the regular and I’ve move forward from my verbally destructive relationship with each passing day, as much as I still carry around my personal piece of hell.

But I also try to remember that no one is “perfect”: not even my chiseled, Ken doll ex, because what he possessed in body confidence, he severely lacked in character.

Everyone one of us are on a diet.

I have a pet peeve and when people look at me and say they are NOT on a diet, I actually find this most often with people who are on fad diets such as: Paleo, South Beach and Atkins; guess what we are all on a diet!! Yes you, and you, and even you and even the entire cast of Pretty Little Liars are on a diet.
 

How can I be so sure about this? Well a “diet” isn’t something you go on and go off of, like a prescription. A diet is what you eat, day in and day out, whether you planned to eat that way or not. So when people ask me what kind of “diet” I am on, or what diet helped me lose weight, I always tell them I eat food, real food.

Starting early on in my life I started to fad diet-- once I started lose the weight I wanted, I was "off the diet," and back to eating whatever I wanted. But about a year ago I realized that it's not about being "on a diet," rather, it's more important to "have a healthy diet," consisting of nutritious foods from all the food groups.

I know some people are lactose intolerant and can’t consume dairy but you can get those nutrients from other places. Also like my boyfriend’s dad there are some people out there who are celiacs and have a severe allergy to gluten but even these people can get nutrients from other places. I do not agree with cutting out entire food groups I think this makes the difference from making a healthy lifestyle change to harming your body.

Men'sHealth makes a great list of lifestyle changes to lose weight, and keep it off forever: 

1. Drink coffee or tea - it may lower the risk of adult-on-set diabetes according to an American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

2. Take out sweetened drinks - (did you know the average person drinks more than 400 calories a day & gets around 10 teaspoons of added sugar every day from soft drinks?) 

3. Think about the last meal you ate - scientists found that people who thought about their last meal before snacking ate 30 percent fewer calories

4. More protein - jumpstart your metabolism, squash your appetite, and eat less at later meals!

5. Put your fork down while you chew - eating slowly can boost levels of two hormones that make you feel fuller, Greek researchers found.

Honestly, don’t deprive yourself. I always found I yo-yo’ed back to my original weight when I deprived my body of food I enjoy. We only live once and if we consume that which we enjoy in moderation we will have no problems having it affect our weight, but it must be consumed in moderation. 

The other day I really wanted cake I split a piece with my boyfriend. Did it satisfy my craving? Totally. Do I crave it today? No. Do I always give into my cravings? Of course not, but there are the times when I know I have been really good and having a small piece of cake isn't going to set me off on a wild spiral, but 100% saying to myself NO I can never have that ever again tends to set me up for failure. Enjoy that piece of cake, just not every day.