Thin

Just watched the documentary Thin on HBO. My husband sees these women as different from me, but he wasn't around during the bulimic years, during the insanely excessive exercise, the abuse of laxatives, diuretics, thyroid pills. Sometimes I think that an eating disorder of such extremes burns itself out over time. If you live long enough. I quit throwing up, for the most part, in 1987. I still remember the horror of the relentless weight gain thereafter. Twenty years later, it's still a temptation. I listened to two hours of misery and hope and anger and sadness and childishness and all I can feel is hopeless. I just don't know if it ever goes away. It transmutes. It is better, I guess, to struggle with weight and eating today than with bulimia of 20 years ago.

But I am really, really sick of it. I am just sick of having this shit in my head, of always thinking about it in one form or another, whether good or bad. It's always there on some level of consciousness. Always. What a waste. Eat this, don't eat that, what will the scale say, what does that mean for today, how do I feel about that, what will happen if I let go, can I start over ever, will I start again tomorrow if I give it up today, am I really an addict, is this all in my head. Most days I am grateful for freedom from the kind of insanity that afflicted me in my younger years, the kinds of things I saw in these women today, in Thin. I really am grateful most of the time, but right this minute I am angry and resentful and just flat pissed that it is still something I have to deal with every single fucking day of my life.