Content Warning: Eating disorders, body image
I’ve gone through phases of being obsessed with you and avoiding you at all costs. Right now, I’m on the cusp of going from avoidance to obsession. Either way, you have facilitated addictions and battles within me.
The words sound so strange coming out of my mouth, being typed by me. I don’t strike people as the “type” to struggle with body image or disordered eating. I think that makes it worse almost, I don’t look like someone who struggles with it, at least, not with restricting food. Am I allowed to feel this way? I don’t look like my best friend who was hours away from death because of how you manipulated her into starving herself. I don’t look like someone who should attract attention about eating disorders.
You took hold of me when I was a mere 12 or 13 year old. It’s awful that you target anyone, but girls (and guys) who are barely teenagers? We were so young, knew so little, and now had years, decades maybe, of fighting to do with you. It’s been a long seven years, but for the most part, I think I’ve won the fights. I wish I could tell 12 year old me that I was beautiful, just because I was still seven inches taller than everyone else didn’t make me too big. Just because I was more developed than other girls did not mean that I needed to shrink.
But, you told me otherwise. Girls talked about their weights even in sixth grade, because you screamed numbers at them that had assigned worth. I was too young and naïve to realize that because I was so much taller than everyone else, it was normal and healthy for me to weigh more than them. Thus, our nearly decade long relationship began.
I’ve gone up and down. I have spent the last two years refusing to go the doctors just because I don’t want any other person except for me to see my weight. You not only created a disease within me because of weight and food, but I have neglected to get treated for another illness until now, all because you intimated me so much that I avoided the doctor’s office. Despite that avoidance for the past couple of years, I have worked hard to start loving my body. I wore a bathing suit in public last summer for the first time since you came into my life so many years ago. I recently bought, and actually wore, an off the shoulder top. I wore it with nearly no obsessions about how visible my collarbones were. I won. You lost.
The flu brought you back into my life two weeks ago. I couldn’t avoid you at the doctor’s office this time. I lost a double digits amount of weight in under two weeks. You tried coercing me to pay more attention to you, “double digits!” you screamed at me. Shouldn’t I be thrilled? Part of me was, but the other part of me was scared at the immediacy with which I wanted to stop eating to continue that trend. My stomach growled for two days, I felt proud. My hip bones were more prominent, I felt successful.
No longer do I feel proud. No longer do I give you the power. No longer will I believe that I am completely unworthy of a guy liking me because of what you say to me. You are not allowed to dictate how I feel anymore. I know that it will be a life-long fight, but rest assured, you can stop trying so hard to win me over because I am over you. I have depended on you but I don’t need you anymore. Good bye, Scale. It’s been a horrible seven years and I will not miss our relationship.
Sincerely,
A girl who has won