MONO NO AWARE

*trigger warning for discussion of disordered eating behaviors*

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click here to read original piece... excerpts in italics

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During my minor in writing gateway course, I made my first attempt at confronting my feelings about how my weight loss in high school, something I’d been so proud of, came as a result of disordered eating behaviors.

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Except there was no way that I had an eating disorder now, or even had one back then. I’d never once heard about a guy dealing with one. My sister’s friend? Yes. My friend’s sister? Yes. Me, or any other guy my age? Never.

 

Sitting in my desk chair, alone in my room, I tried to confront the realization that describing to someone how exactly I lost forty pounds throughout my junior year of high school would likely make them think of an eating disorder, not getting in shape.

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Throughout the semester in my gateway course, I struggled with how to fully come to terms with that realization, and also how to portray my journey to readers. How could I reconcile how something that had made my life so much better – helped my self-esteem, my confidence, and (seemingly) my health – was also something wrong. And moreover, even today...

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If I knew that if I could go back to the moment where I first decided to start going to the gym, or where first I decided to skip breakfast… I wouldn't have changed a thing.”

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I was still proud of what I’d done. Proud of how far I’d come. And I didn’t know what was wrong with me, because I was proud of something horrible.

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I wouldn’t go back and change anything, even if I could, is because what was unhealthy for my body was anything but for my self-confidence and perception. After losing weight, I went to school feeling good about how I looked.

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As I was writing two years ago, I wanted so desperately to be able to put a nice bow on everything, to declare a lesson learned and leave the whole thing in the past. But I couldn’t. Every concluding line felt cliche or disingenuous – because I hadn’t yet reached a point where I could conclude anything. That journey was still ongoing. I left it unfinished.

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Honestly, I’m still a mess whenever it comes to body image. I don’t have things figured out.

 

I don’t have a solution, and I doubt there truly is one. But I still struggled to put all of my thoughts into words because of the hope that someone like me, junior year of high school, might read them. Not even listen, because I know I probably wouldn’t have.​

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Rereading that essay now, I didn’t cringe as much as I usually do when looking back at old writing. My choice, to leave everything unsettled as opposed to forcing a resolution into place, was the right one. I’m proud of my past self for grappling with his feelings, naming them in coherent words on a page – even if there wasn’t a nice bow to wrap everything up at the end. I knew then that the only thing I could prescribe myself was time, and a commitment to a different outlook on my own body. 

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And here I am, two years later. I’ve been taking my prescription for 731 days, and what do I have to show for it? Progress, for sure. I’m eating three meals a day instead of two and a big snack. The thought of going on vacation without access to a gym doesn’t make me panic. Feeling hungry before bed is cause for a midnight snack, not for celebration. Sometimes a sense of panic flares up if I catch myself at an unflattering angle in the mirror, or if a photo manages to catch a moment where I couldn’t possibly look any more unappealing. But now those flares of anxiety about how I look – or urges to fall back on old habits to fix some perceived flaw – don’t consume me once they start. Time has helped me identify them in the moment, and quiet their whisperings before they increase in volume. Usually, my reasonable side will negotiate a truce with the part of me that anxiously fidgets when I pick up a cookie. “No,” I have to tell myself, “one cookie isn’t going to do anything to you.” And it takes much less effort than it used to for me to listen to myself, and for that worry to crumble. 

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When I was writing my original piece, I thought those worries and thoughts would be something I’d have to deal with for the rest of my life. Now I’m not so sure that burden is in my future. Not because there’s some point when I’ll never have them, but because the weight of their burden on my mind might get lighter and lighter, to the point where I can just simply brush it aside. In the meantime, I'll keep taking my prescription – a prescription of time passing.