when things are not quite what they seem

I came across a clip from the 7/30 episode of 106 & Park on YBF.com where they were addressing body image.  They asked viewers to vote on which of the three women of varying body types (including the wee host) standing there was most likely to have suffered from an emotional eating disorder.  Turned out it was the woman no one had voted for: the wee host.  She went on to tell her story and wrapped it up by saying she never believed she could be anorexic because she always thought it was a “white person’s” disease.

In the late 90’s, I was freshly sprung from an emotionally/verbally abusive relationship.  I moved from a rural area to a flashy urban area and planned on enjoying the single life and all that went with it.  I moved into a 3-bedroom apartment with my best friend from undergrad; our third roommate was his ex.  Who just happened to be certifiably mentally…wrong.  A schizophrenic bi-polar computer geek who refused to take his meds.  Things quickly went downhill, I shall spare you the gory details; suffice to say that he began to lock himself away in his room when I came home because he knew I was almost certainly going to break him in half if I saw him.  He’d communicate through vicious little notes instead which only made things worse.  So I started spending most of my free time outside of the apartment, coming home only to sleep.  I’d always grab fast food for breakfast and lunch during the workday, but after work, not so much.  Maybe some crackers and cheese and a much needed cocktail while I was fooling around online deep in the wee hours of the night.

The last straw with the evil geek finally came when he installed a keystroke tracking program on the computer that both my best friend and I used and hacked into my AOhell account.  Which wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t changed my profile and spent the day sending out naked pics of himself and chatting up other local gay guys and inviting total strangers over to our apartment for sex.  As soon as I logged on, I was bombarded with IMs from guys with screen names like ‘HotHungBear69′ asking why I hadn’t answered the door when they came over?  I called my friend who was still at work and told him through clenched teeth that if he didn’t rid our space of this atrocity than I would and it wouldn’t be pretty.  He entirely agreed and that night I waited, pacing in my room like a caged wild feline.  I told him that if I heard one single solitary untoward peep that sounded like he was in physical danger, I was crossing that line with no trouble at all, otherwise I’d stay out of it and let him handle it.  The greater part of me almost wanted 3d roomie to do something stupid just so I could vent my anger, but he was apparently smarter than that and within a couple of weeks, he had vacated the premises as agreed.

But the damage had already been done.  At some point, I noticed that I was shrinking.  I was delighted because I’d put on a lot of weight being unhappy in the aforementioned relationship and I was quite pleased to see it coming off.  I wasn’t doing anything but not eating and being stressed out of my mind.  I was eating one meal daily; lunch during the week (fast food) and brunch on Sundays after my church gig.  Lots of water during the day and cocktails at the bar at night.  If I was going out on a dinner date, I’d eat nothing during the day and pick at the food whilst turning up the charm so my dates wouldn’t notice…and neither did I, really.  I was too busy being fabulous.  Looking fabulous.  I lost at least 8 inches off my waistline in a month simply by putting food down.  I thought it was awesome.  Even my smallest jeans were too big.  My cinnamon rolls (what I called my waist fat) were gonne, daddy, gone!  In my mind, I had never looked so good.

I was obsessed.  The office where I worked had a medical scale and I had gotten to the point where I could manipulate my weight to the pound when I so chose.   Which I did.  A lot.  If I wanted to weigh 5 lbs less for some weekend debauchery, I could pull it off in 3 days.  I’m a 5′6 ex-jock with a frame to match and a propensity to build muscle very quickly when I’m working out.  My muscle was wasting away but I didn’t see it that way, I just saw that I was getting smaller than I’d ever been and loved it.  My mother even noticed that my butt was shrinking and that should have tipped me off right there.  But it didn’t.  My doctor even asked me “are you blue?” because she just couldn’t figure it out at my annual physical and I certainly wasn’t ‘fessing up.

What saved me was meeting the man I eventually married.  I tried to eat like a normal person on our first date and spent the night in his bathroom in utter and abject agony because my digestive system just couldn’t handle a real meal.  We were long distance and he really got a clue when I was at least 2 sizes smaller between visits, a span of 2 months.  He enlisted the help of my roommates to ensure that I was eating properly or at least at all.  I still refused to admit that I had a problem, but grudgingly went along with what I felt was forced feeding.

I never said the word out loud in reference to myself for quite some time.

Hi.  I’m Terioso.  And I was an anorexic.  And if I’m not careful, I could be again.

~ by missterioso on August 2, 2009.