The Mathematician
I am a mathematician. I eat by numbers, consume with a vigilance that renders me wavering. I constantly wonder, is that meal, are the edible digits, worth the anguish– the sinking guilt, the proliferating apprehension of fat rolls and tight Forever 21 tops and becoming irreversibly revolting? With Spring Break imminent, my body dysmorphia has already arrived to the party in Miami, rearing its irrevocably ugly head that’s intrusive and unsettling in every moment, every dream, every shirt and every pair of jeans. I live by my phone’s calculator app, ferociously punching numbers and analyzing the final result. When that dies, I fill notebook margins with scribbles of extensive addition that constitute as a day’s worth of food. My equations are habitual and customary. Campbell’s Sirloin Burger-style soup is 120 calories for ½ a cup, 240 in its entirety. ¾ a cup of Honey Nut Cheerios is 110 calories. 24 Gluten Free pretzels are 120 calories, plus the extra 140 of JIF’s I like to include. I’m obsessive and make an effort to count each tiny pretzel as I eat.
I haven’t lived on the edge in a while, haven’t allowed myself to relinquish arbitrary size and beauty goals bestowed upon me that convey implied prerequisites for womanhood. Maybe it’s because I fear building a body I despise more than I already do, or maybe it’s because deep down, in a sick-twisted way, I secretly enjoy being a mathematician, focusing on the numbers, upholding control of my life and perpetuating the happiness I sometimes feel with hunger pangs.
This mindset is damaging, beyond unhealthy and mentally warped. And it’s all mine.
There’s a tragic irony behind my role as mathematician. I actually hate math for someone who is heavily fixated on numbers. My abysmal SAT math score and grades prove this life-long, ongoing aversion. Yet, I fulfill this position, and have done so since God only knows when.
My size in comparison to my elementary classmates was unmissable. I always was the largest student in the room, and I couldn’t conceal my body no matter how hard my seven-year-old-self tried. One day, I peeked at my doctor’s notes, and finally learned the term that explained my largeness: overweight. This encompassing word described why I could never fit in Abercrombie when all my petite friends could, or why the boy at the swim club asked what I had for breakfast that day, and I gullibly and naively responded thinking he actually cared. Why each shopping trip was a dreadful, unnerving experience, and why I didn’t want to wake up some days.
The term, “overweight” defined my developing identity before I even had a chance to explore it for myself. I identified as fat girl, and nothing more. She was funny, kind to a fault, caring, smart and a peacemaker hidden by layers of on-the-surface chub: which everyone constructed their first judgments on. Associating “fattness” with worthlessness, ugliness and repugnance, she labeled herself as such, and unequivocally misused the word. She ate through clothes, and had to buy the size up each year. She was the size large or extra large, depending on the brand and day. She was embarrassed, and the source of her own demise that killed the little confidence she even had; a confidence that was diminutive and tangible like fragmented rocks and pebbles on the side of road, meant to be kicked and forgotten. That’s how I felt. I was served overwhelming self-hatred on its own plate together with real food. It was a difficult, disgusting meal to swallow, but one I felt compelled and forced to consume.
I was 13 when I first tried purging. The scale read a number I didn’t like, three-digits that validated and reinforced the shitty definition I used to describe myself, as well as my ugly thoughts. My vision blurred, and my face burned with continued embarassment. I leaned over my cold-bathroom toilet seat, waiting in trepidation for something, anything to come out. I wanted to excavate the teary-eyed, depressed, self-loathing fat girl, crush her with my growing fist, and flush her away in a swirling black hole where she could never find me. That toilet remained clean and uncontaminated, while my fingers were covered in slobber: the vestiges of a pathetic, futile endeavor. In self-defeat, I vowed to never return to that moment. Somehow, I followed this promise.
A year later, I decided to lose weight the “healthy way.” Enough was enough, and both spark and motivation clicked. I would embark on a journey towards health, not a diet but a venture mirroring its similar restrictions. I wrote myself a cheesy letter of encouragement, an inspirational ode to the girl I wanted to be. Skinny. Radiant. Hot. Appealing. Beautiful. A size 4. I used word art to write, “You can do it,” at the top of the page, and added an image of a Hollister bikini model to really feel passionate about undergoing the transformation.
I soon realized I was exceptionally talented at weight-loss. I existed solely for when the number on the scale would trickle down; it was a high that established a cheery mood for the week. To sustain that high, I thus became the mathematician who eats by numbers, an even more fit-fanatic, strident version of today’s edition. I set a limit of 600 calories, give or take. I ate 80 calorie yogurts, 70 calorie hard-boiled eggs, bread, soup and cheese sticks for their familiar, low numbers that provided safety. That’s all that ever filled the manifesting abyss yearning for substantial nourishment. I ignored its pleas and thrived on emptiness, a void that brought satisfaction in knowing my sick self-discipline prevailed. This satisfaction, however, was fleeting, and soon replaced with critics telling me I would never amount to anything if I wasn’t any smaller. I needed to shrink. I needed a shrink. I needed to decrease my number to become what I perceived as true beauty.
The chase for this satisfaction also left its set of ramifications. My hair was thin. I lost my period, and I saw bones. I constantly felt light-headed and dizzy. I could barely lift anything. I declined social invitations so I wouldn’t succumb to cravings. I was a recluse. I was weak, and always freezing in a school with broken air conditioning. Nonetheless, this chase was my go-to companion and together, we searched for tiny numbers that seemingly became more impossible to attain.
I can’t remember life before I became a mathematician. I imagine uncensored and unhindered consumption of Edy’s Loaded Cookie Dough, strawberries and chips; I envision food without routine and confinements, a healthy lifestyle balance with no knowledge, due largely to blissful ignorance, of the self-hatred harbored post meal. What I do know is, at some point, the distinction between food and fear blurred, merging into an omnipotent force that molded my numbers-obsessed lifestyle. This force won’t ever leave; it lingers between spaces at social outings and dinner dates, and fills my own: a special place I didn’t allow for occupation. It lives comfortably, making my space and spaces her residence.
I now sit at tables with an increased ability to take risks in eating and living, but equally struggle with anxieties after eating “dirty” junk food. I’ve learned to relish each meal, and enjoy the positive sensations that emerge when that meal is life-changing. But when I take two steps forward, shedding a part of the mathematician role I’ve clothed for so long, I frequently retreat there. I reflect and focus on the progress though, because it offers freedom, a liberation from my musings of self-deprecation. From time to time, I do abandon numbers, I escape from their tyranny, and enter a world of normalcy– of self love, of relaxation, and of unapologetic living. Too often, that escape is brief, and I return to my reality. I hold hands with the companion once more, one I’ve known my entire life, with my grasp loosened from his rough, cracked palm.