consume.

I'm not really sure where to start with this one, or if it's worth starting at all, but somehow I think immortalising my thoughts here and taking them away from my bedtime rambling will help. So, I am coming up to the 10 year anniversary of my initial gruelling weight loss "adventure" and have gone from a position of being fat to thin to super thin to being terrified of food to being low and back to fat again - I promised myself way back then I would never look this way again so it's quite upsetting when you fail yourself and have no one else to pin the blame on for once. I scrawled through a photo album of mirror selfies this morning, dated at various months across the last 10 years, confused as to how someone could put their own body through such a rollercoaster and also saddened since I could pinpoint various events to match the time frames as to why I looked how I did at that point

This year though, 2022, has been off the scales (pun) shit for me physically and thus mentally, or maybe mentally and thus physically, or maybe it's one of those really annoying circles you can't quite fall off. Over the space of 12 months I have managed to put on nearly 15kg (~2.5st) all the while telling myself each morning "you will never go beyond this weight" which gets tiring after you realise you're lying to yourself for the 200th time. You consume food and with that regret, you throw out clothes that make you feel even worse before you cancel plans because you then have nothing to wear, and you try to fill that hollow mind with another full belly before repeating. It doesn't matter what day of the week it is nor what time of day it hits but I will give up and order some food, not just that this is both unhealthy and expensive, but the sheer volume you order no one requires. At first I would make light of it, laugh it off, oh just another takeaway, I'm a big fan of them, what could go wrong? But this is now 4, to 5, to 6 of them every single week for a whole year. I've even begun to hide them from myself, I tell people I'm eating a healthy tea when they ask, not that I even needed to lie to them, but from the pure shame of being honest and that is quite a stark reminder you have a problem.

I woke up this morning as I have pretty much every morning this year: by rolling out of bed, walking to the bathroom, and closing my eyes past the mirror on the way to the shower as if ashamed at the shell my own mind now sits in. I stood under the boiling hot water using my inner monologue as a secondary character to tell myself off and to promise change, to clean up, drink some water, go food shopping, not weigh myself every day but I know this won't be the last pep talk of the year - Hell probably not even the week. I think we all believe we're our own worst enemies but really I actually am, there's no one I scorn or deride as much as I do myself and if you know me a little bit you will know I dish this out often. I will spend weeks complaining about my weight, my shape, how my pants no longer fit, how skint I am, whilst fuelling this fire buying food that adds to both these problems in one foul swoop. This obsession, addiction, possibly even a form of self-harm is getting a little silly and in the past when I've blipped I have always found a way out of it but this time I feel like I'm stood on the seabed holding a bag of rocks I can't seem to let go of. It is so strange to remember how I was in the past, a ghost of my current self, writing a blog post 10 years ago about my body with this line seeming so alien to the version of me today:

"I’ve been eating now for 2 weeks and I can honestly say I am absolutely terrified of food and gaining weight."

Whoever that James was is completely dead now, and I'm thankful of that in most ways, but sometimes I wish he was back and in control as at least that side of the torture spectrum made me a little more comfortable in the mirror. The funny thing is that surprisingly this isn't even anything to do with social media peer pressure, the wide-eyed tantalisation of fitness pages and models and those happy in their own skin, it doesn't bother me at all, I am happy they have got their shit together physically, truly. However I would like to get my own portion of self-confidence back, to start dating again, to start being seen in public more, to be frankly less mean to myself but when does that really start? Have I run out of new triggers to prompt change? Is this just how people in their 30's accept being comfortable in their own skin? I hope not but I've been telling myself that for a year now already and I'm still staring into the void.

See you in another 12 months for hopefully none of the same.