(numbers have been replaced with "x")
There’s something wrong with me. I am for lack of better words, the opposite of myself. I am an internal battle between logic and sentiment, of rationale and emotion…an emotion that all too often wins, overcoming my entire sense of self except for a painful and powerful understanding that I am imperfect. I look in the mirror one day and see the product of my work, the countless hours spent at the gym watching each calorie burn with ravenous anticipation, each bead of sweat a drop in the bucket of my success. But the next, something, someone, completely different. And I hate it. Overcome with intense disappointment in myself, I see the physical representation of my own failure to work hard enough. These other girls eat chocolate pastries, comforted by the diet cokes they sip alongside…Don’t think twice. Me? I beat myself up over a piece of bread at dinner, that’ll be another XX minutes and XX seconds on the elliptical please. Compensation becomes my sole concentration, my obsession for perfection, my LIFE.
What is real? I am no longer “opposite”, but the many facets of the word “flawed.” I am illustrated by every medium of wrong. I am the master of turning every possible reflective surface into a mirror, of finger tweaking my pudge, of Facebook stalking myself. And sometimes it scares me when amongst the many, I look at a picture and see an almost alien collection of awkward angles of skin and bone tented by a Jordan Jersey...Run to the mirror…nope, no worries. Still not perfect, nor so overcome by my desire to be so that I’ve overshot it. If I were, I would see it consistently…in pictures, in mirrors, shit, just looking down…forget toes; I want to see my ankles. I want the truth. Damnit Shakespeare, my eyes doth deceive me, and that’s what numbers are for. Numbers don’t lie. Except of course, that scale is always too light, calorie counting often amounts to guesswork, and I suck at math. 20 days, XX,XXX calories, oh yeah, and that XX miler, oh shoot that X miler on top…XX pounds PLUS to the fat fairy. Except, apparently she and the great pumpkin chill with Tupac on the weekends laughing at me over the beer I won’t touch.
I don’t understand. How can I try SO hard for SO long and not see results? My mind is set upon itself. It’s my fault. Clearly I’m not working hard enough. Because baby, that six pack don’t come without a price. That extra apple you ate after lunch? Another XX if you can handle XXX pasos a second. Oh but stay on…you had corn on your salad. Doesn’t practice make perfect? Does an average of XX hours a day and X miles walking do the trick? Hour after hour, class after class, repetition, and stretching, and lifting and WHOAH! Why me? If I were a real athlete, I would be fit right? Harder? Better? Faster? Stronger? What is that “er?” where does it stop? What is the “est?” That suffix for which I work so hard to obtain. Is it about time? distance? What keeps me from that perfect form, that confidence, that glow? Why can't I love me for me? Fuck that, why can’t I love me knowing that other people, that you, do?
If I hit XXX, will I believe it? If I run a marathon, will I believe it? If I fit into a size X, will I believe it? Will it even matter? Or will I always pick another imperfection, another mark, another flaw that screams "YOU DON'T WORK HARD ENOUGH!" It's a disease, I tell myself, purely mental. But that…that would make me crazy. How is it that so many people know, but yet don't know at all? Do they know that behind that never-faltering smile, that chipper demeanor, that pinnacle of optimism and animation lies a candidate for antidepressants? Why can't I let anyone into this head of mine, to protect them? To protect me? Or to protect my obsession?
Three years ago, I looked at girls just like me and said, how stupid. Of all the things to care about in this struggling world, this world of pain of hunger of thirst, why suffer for something so superficial? Why fight so hard for your own vanity? Why ruin yourself, your body, your relationships, your life for something based on something so…shallow? Why put yourself through hell to enter that of 2/3rds of the world. Are you trying to ridicule, or mimic those “starving kids in China?” Are you trying to insult the suffering of the world by rejecting your own fortune?
To myself of the past and to those of you who think that now…I torture myself every day wrestling with that very idea, wrestling with my own identity as a “humanitarian” and as someone who simultaneously ridicules the very laws of nutrition. I want nothing more than normality. But what does that mean anyway? I want nothing more than to let my life be run by my desires and dreams for the world rather than debilitating fear that by not letting it be run on a treadmill I am condemning myself to failure.
To that invisible force that tells me I am nothing to neither deserve nor be deserved…fuck you. Someday I will release myself. Someday I will understand that I am more than my body. Someday I will sit on the gym floor and cry for joy, not because I finally see my abs, but because I know that I am healthy in both body AND mind. Someday I will cross the finish line and stop feeling the need to go beyond. Someday I will love me for me and believe that you do too. Someday, I will stop being the opposite of myself, and just be happy…happy…to be me.