post one, day one

terrible blog title, isn't it?  does anyone else remember that book?  i want to say it was by beverly cleary, and it was called blubber, but because i always second-guess myself (often with good reason), here's where i pause to look it up.  and...

7 seconds later:  it was judy blume

i'm not sure if that's the actual quote, but i swear i remember people bullying this fat girl, and they wouldn't let her drink from the fountain unless she said, "my name is blubber, and i am a big fat whale."  it got to the point she would just go to the fountain and say it without being prompted.

(now i'm thirsty.)

i don't know about a lot of things, but i know about being the fat girl.

oh, i'm not the biggest fat girl, i'm the one that most people say, "you're not fat!" and i disagree, because i know they just want to not talk about it, i know they're just trying to make me feel better, even when i don't need to feel better, even when i'm just saying it because it's true.  because according to the scale and numbers and studies, i could be anywhere from perfectly normal in some foreign country, to chunky, to morbidly obese.  ok, morbidly obese was thirty pounds ago (lost about sixty, gained about thirty back, lost fifteen, gained five back, i like math and all but this shit's fucking depressing...wait, was that thirty or forty or twenty?).  my thick wobbly arms, that won't fit in shirts that fit my waist, prove to me that i'm fat.  my thighs scare small children and attract carnivores.

*sigh*

i try really hard not to focus on the numbers, because i get real anal real quick.  anorexia was beaten with a stick and then deep-fried for a midnight snack, but in my world, that bitch could come back as zombie anorexia any day now.

zombie anorexia.  now see, THAT would have been a cool blog title.  fuck.

my ex-husband once told me that if i got saggy elbows, he would divorce me.

how's that mindfuck for ya?

all of this crankiness is probably due to the fact that 1) i've been eating nothing but fast food and packaged snacks for DAYYYYYYS.  i've not cooked all week - i was on vacation!  the closest thing to cooking i did, aside from heating up a frozen pizza (and not eating ALL of it, yay me - just kidding, it's not that bad), was zapping several cups of chai.  with soy milk and real sugar (fuck artificial sweeteners in the morning); 2) i can't remember the last time i had sex.  ok, it might have been thursday, but the point is, it wasn't within the last two hours, so it's been too long; and 3) in the back of my mind, nobody really wants to be with me because i'm a fat hog.

oh nevermind the fact that i don't actually want to be with anyone, the issue here is that someone should want to be with me, and just deal with the fact that i don't necessarily want anything but their adoration from afar.  and maybe vacations to faraway places (my fingers keep wanting to type "palaces", so, those too).  

this blog really is going to center around my fat ass.

i don't know how long this can last, really, and i'm not sure exactly what i'm doing with it.  i know there are a lot of weight loss diary-style (dairy-style?  cheese?  HELLO WISCONSIN!!!) blogs out there, and maybe i can do something like that without being anal, but, it's embarrassing to say that i'm embarrassed TO say what my number is.

weight, not sex.

no, i'm not telling you that, either.  last time i counted, i forgot someone, and hilarious as it was, it made me feel like a slut.

oh, if i had ever actually opened up to one of those shrinks....

all right, so here we are, what will the Fat Anorexic Zombie say next?

this:  almost every day now, i look in the mirror and what i see is beautiful.

i love myself.  i am super-curvy, i am strong, i am pretty, and if i would bother actually seducing anyone, they would once again be drooling at my command.  

two things:  seducing ANYONE, even the easy ones, is a lot of work.  i'm not saying that the end results aren't satisfactory (they usually are), just that the game takes so much time and concentration, and nobody worth my efforts has come along in a really long time.  (wow, in writing, that sounds SO conceited.)

there was a second thing...oh yeah.  ego.  self-esteem.  one of those is severely damaged, and the other is severely inflated, always at least one or the other and sometimes both at the same time.

i'm a basket case, and i'm fat.

i'm a beautiful basket case, and i'm fat.

i'm beautiful, and i'm beautiful.

i'm fucked in the head.

i'm beautifully fucked in the beautiful head.

yeah, we're done now...

sort of.


whales are beautiful, lovely, amazing creatures, who rarely actually eat people, or even nibble on their enormous thighs.  at least that's what i choose to believe, and i could probably dig up at least three very expensive government studies to back up my belief.

like i said, i don't do numbers.  ok, i didn't do numbers for a very long time, then i found the scale, and before the battery died, i must have weighed myself three hundred times.

my name is anorexic zombie, and i am a beautiful whale.


by the time i was twelve, i'd read too many diet and/or nutrition books for my own mental health, and had put myself on at least two diets.  i specifically remember sitting in the bathtub with a book geared toward overweight teens.  it suggested that the next time i start eating fast-food fries, i imagine them melting into disgusting goopy yellow fat depositing itself on my thighs.

i bawled.

i was twelve and i was bawling because i weighed more than a book told me i should.

i was twelve and my father had just told me that i used to be the prettiest girl around, but now i'd gained weight and i had competition.  (both REALLY fucked up things to say, to anyone, ever.)

i was twelve and could spout facts about calories that would make adults' heads spin.

i was twelve and knew how many times i had to walk around the block/run up and down the stairs/breathe (yes, i'm serious) to burn off an apple.

i was twelve and had read about blubber when i was ten or eleven, and knew because that book about not bullying people and about accepting them told me so, that even if people were not bullying me and even if i was accepted by my peers, unless i was thin i would never really be seen as anything but the fat girl.

i was twelve and learned how to be anorexic from a book about a ballerina who stopped eating.  i watched that movie with tracy gold and learned from her too.  i wrote my own fucking little charts and counted everything and exercised constantly and lived on lettuce when i could get away with it, and ruined my metabolism, and ruined any love i had for just being a kid, and i was simply miserable.  ticking away my life in a weight diary, a food diary, a real diary which never really mentioned the small fact that i was starving myself.

to this day i hate eating in front of people.  going out to eat, believe it or not, can still be something that i really have to work my way up to.  there's a good reason i always suggest coffee for a first date.  food issues are fucking insane.  i'm usually able to tell myself, look, everybody eats, everybody looks weird doing it, nobody's going to think you're a hog for just being hungry - but sometimes i'm not.  sometimes zombie-an rears her ugly zombie head and howls, and i end up crouching in a corner of my skull hoping i can wait out the inner anorexia apocalypse before i pass out, famished.

i still deny that i binge.

i know that i do, but i catch myself denying that, to myself.  hello?  i might pretend like there's a bunch of us in here, but we're really all me, so...why are we lying to myself again?

bulimia was effective, but sporadic and, thankfully, always short-lived.  it turns out, i hate puking more than i hate being fat.  at least, i did at fourteen, and fifteen, and twenty, and i'm not willing to check again to see if i still feel the same way.

i'm beautiful.

right?

i got so skinny, after i kicked that ex out, the one who threatened divorce on grounds of fat elbows.  skinny for me, that is.  i am curvy, there's no denying it, when i'm skin and bones i still wear a ten (i discovered this during one of my counting/exercising crazes).  ok, i wasn't skin and bones.  i was mostly healthy, even if i felt dizzy all the time and spent endless hours thinking longingly of doritos...the first time, the size ten time, that was after my first divorce.  that husband didn't bother threatening me, he just showed me how unattractive he thought i was.

whole different therapy session.

i'm not sure how long i can do this, because i'm not sure how healthy it is to dwell on my weight/size/sagginess/mass.  i obsess about few things, but when i do, i do it with fervor and devotion.

this is the thing:  i'm still technically wearing the same size i was almost four years ago, when i was at my thinnest post-second-divorce.  everything's just...not the same.  

so we can't start with real numbers, because somewhere in my imagination i like to think that no one can see the snug sleeves, the bursting buttons, the spillover that happens around the waist area of my work slacks after a real food/alcohol bender, and the number will blow their mind, and no one will want to be my friend anymore, they'll want to hang out with the competition, whoever that is, and i will be stuck reading nothing that ever helps and eating peanut butter from the jar with a spoon, or worse, my finger.

(i haven't done that in ages.  at least a month.)

bottom line is this.  i do want to lose some weight.  i do want to feel more healthy.  i want to go back to my fruit-and-veggie-heavy way of eating.  i want to not like the taste of fast food anymore (after this week, pretty much there).  i want to fit better in my clothes, i want the seat belt to stop creeping up my neck because my tits are enormous and it keeps sliding over them, i want to feel comfortable in a normal bathroom stall, not the extra-big handicap stall.  (ok, seriously, it's not like i actually feel comfortable there, don't even get me started on public bathrooms, i routinely have very stressful dreams about public bathrooms, but you know what i mean, don't you?)

i want to feel good because i feel good.  that.  

i want to ignore EVERY excuse, not just most of them.

i want to dance around my kitchen with a stalk of celery acting as an ever-shrinking microphone.

i just started craving watermelon.

that's a good sign...right?