madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8/12/02 Close your eyes. (Okay - obviously you can�t close your eyes and read at the same time...) Work with me here, okay? Now, I want you to use your imagination. Picture yourself 12 pounds thinner, and then answer these questions. How would your clothes feel? How would your stomach look in your favorite jeans? How would you move differently? What size would you pick out at the clothing store? What would you feel like walking up stairs with 12 pounds less of you to haul around? Can you imagine it? Can you imagine what your face would reflect back to you in the mirror? Okay. Now imagine that a magical fairy drops down out of the sky and gives you a gift. It�s a flower-petal wrapped like a present and tied with a piece of piece of silkweed. The fairy explains that you�ve been given a gift. If you simply consume the contents of the present, for one week, you can live in your body - minus 12 pounds! You�re ecstatic at the prospect! You quickly untie the silk, open the flower petal, and pop the purple berry in your mouth. It bursts open on your tongue...sweet and sour and delicious. You swallow. Then *POOF* the fairy is gone. You suddenly feel lighter. You look down and you�ve lost 12 pounds - just as the fairy promised. Your clothes are loose. Your stomach is smaller. The angles in your cheekbones and collarbones push their way towards the surface of your skin. You jump up and dance - feeling the burden of that weight gently lifted from your body! The next week is wonderful. You spend time with family and friends and co-workers who do nothing but compliment you on your weight loss. You�re happy. You try on that old shirt in the back of your closet that you�ve been dying to wear - and it suddenly fits! You relish the ways you can move more easily - without the hindrance of your belly rubbing on your thighs. You sit into your favorite chair and realize the arm rests no longer dig into your hips! You run to the bedroom and pull out the measuring tape. You�ve lost 4 inches in your hips and 2 in your waist! WOW! But, like all good things, they must come to an end. A week later, you are re-visited by the fairy who asks you how you enjoyed your experience. You explain how happy and light you felt. You tell her about how all the compliments made you feel so good and confident. You describe the way your brastraps didn�t fall down off your round shoulders, and about how the shirt you bought a year ago finally fit. You speak of the freedom you felt. You hope that she has changed her mind, and will not return the 12 pounds - especially after all the good things that you said about your experience. But the fairy laughs and says, �I hoped you learned something here.� and with a wave of her magic wand, she returns the 12 pounds to your body. You can feel as it deposits to your stomach, your hips, your thighs. Your face swells and all the bones in your cheeks and collar become hidden again. Your clothes tighten and your shoes get snug. You bloat. You shuffle instead of spring. You sigh instead of laugh. You walk away - utterly disappointed. You feel like you�re lugging dead-weight again. You return to your daily life where nobody compliments you. You stuff the sacred, smaller shirt back into the depths of your closet...knowing - just by looking - you cannot wear it again. You sit in the office chair, and the familiar pinch of the armrests reminds you who you are. You are who you are - undeniably the same. So this explains my sorrow, my anger, my depression. I was clinging onto those pounds lost like a trophy earned from weeks of deprivation and suffering and pain. No - I haven�t gained all twelve pounds back., just eight of them. But trust me, its enough to make a difference that I can feel and see. I feel like it was a cruel joke to live in the body of 255lb woman for awhile....only to be thrust back into this tired sack of 262 pound flesh. Its so ironic, how those pounds returned effortlessly. How, do you say, in two weeks can a person gain 8 pounds? This - I�d like to know. Perhaps while starving in the hospital for 10 days without food or water, my body decided that when I did eat again it would hold onto every calorie. I think this is also known as �starvation mode�...literally. I don�t think I�d ever been without food or water for 10 days before. Hell, my body was probably completely freaked out. Maybe some of it was water weight from dehydration. I�m sure some of it was muscle....because I am still a total weakling, a shadow of my former, powerful self. Plus I - stupidly - thought that I could eat more calories and my body would utilize them in the healing process. I GUESS NOT!! Ug. All these bad feelings - that�s why I haven�t updated sooner. I knew if I wrote in my journal, all this negative junk would come out of me. This year is becoming a total sham. There have been times in the past year, that I�ve felt thankful just to have maintained my weight loss. But today, I just can�t be thankful. Today I taste anger...the way blood taste coppery when you bite your tongue. There�s nothing left to do but spit. Now I know what being smaller feels like, and I must say it was sweet and good and wonderful. I want that �lightness� again. I�m totally weary of dragging my sorry self around waiting for a fucking miracle to happen. I know what to do!! I did it for an entire year!! I should be almost 3/4 of the way to my goal by now dammit!! I should NOT BE sitting around at this stagnant half-way point....wishing I could get my shit together, dreaming about picking a size or two smaller off the rack. I just cannot - no I WILL NOT - accept this �maintenance� as my way of life. This whole stalling-out for 8 months thing is ridiculous. I�m tired of the excuses I make for myself. I�m exhausted of self-promises that I fall short of day after day. I�m through with this feeling uncomfortable in my own skin thing. Its got to stop and I�ve got to move forward and I MUST do the work its going to take to get there. Maybe this was the �learning� the fairy was talking about? That�s some kind of lesson!! - Well fuck her and her stupid gift. Part of me wishes I would�ve never lost that weight in the first place. Then I wouldn�t have been clutching to it like a man in the desert clutches a glassful of water. No - then I would�ve come out of the hospital just thankful to be alive - and that�s all. Instead of this stupid - counting your eggs before their hatched - game. 2:37 p.m. - 8/12/02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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