Do you have a love-hate relationship with yourself? I do, and I suspect many of you do too. Self-love should be a basic thing we learned as kids. But that wasn’t the case for me.
I am anorexic. On many days, I fight against my feelings so that I can eat adequately. Recently, I’ve won. In a span of 8 months, I have managed to gain 5 kilos.
But I hate it. I wish I was thin. But wait, I’m thin.
I hate myself for being a pig. But wait, I’m not a pig.
The data on my Health App does not lie: my BMI is normal now.
Eight months ago, I was malnourished.
So, I guess what I’m going through is body dysmorphia. And it is here to stay.
Here’s how body dysmorphia feels like, from the inside looking out:
I look at a full-length mirror, and I don’t see me, normal weight (yay) me.
I see a fat person. I can’t explain it. I have stopped trying to explain it, I just accept it as my delusion. I have always felt fat since 14. (I’m 42 now.) I’m size small ever, but I feel XXXL, ever.
The body dysmorphia is the real reason why I can’t rely on intuitive eating. Most people eat what they feel like, but I can’t. If you ask me to eat what I feel like eating, I’ll probably low-ball it. I’ve tracked it, graphed it, and my performance sucks.
You see, I don’t feel hunger like normal people. Hunger gives me a high. It feels euphoric, when I’m on it, I can’t stop.
I don’t have the same normal associations people have with food either. I see something good to eat, I desire it, but I revile it. I love-hate it. The same way I love-hate my body, the same way I love-hate me.
Many, many times, self-love means hitting the breaks on the hunger high and putting some food in my body. Often, I do it in clinical fashion. Some of you may have the same outlook when you are forcing yourself to stick to a calorie count. You don’t feel like dieting, you want to make it another cheat day today, but you force yourself to diet.
I always say forcing myself to eat is like dieting, but in reverse. Most people need restrict their calorie count while I need to work to meet my calorie quota.
Another way of seeing it is this: I serve myself food like pills. Food to an anorexic is antidepressants to someone who’s depressed. It’s lithium to someone bipolar. It’s rehab for a drug addict.
We don’t want it. Hot damn, we hate it.
It’s good for us, but we reject it.
Initially, I committed to better myself because I want to be a good role model to my kids. They know about my mental health struggle—I tell them everything because they deserve the truth.
I’m not doing this out of self-love yet. I am still in the self-acceptance and self-forgiving stage.
I psych myself to say, “I am worthy. I am worth something. I mean something to someone. I have done good, I’m good. I am worth putting food inside the body.”
I call it “the” body, because it is (sometimes) still disgusting. I’m not going to hide it. At 45 kilos and 153 cm, I feel like a giant, obese person.
Self-love, self-care needs to be a conscious choice. I’m getting there, I’m trying every day like everybody else who has a mental health issue.
I have to accept me: I’m broken this way, and something’s wrong with my brain (experts pinpoint the parietal lobe or hypothalamus). I’m accepting that short of brain surgery, it’s not going to go away.
You can rehabilitate me, but that part of me will always remain weak, vulnerable, and prone to relapse. If I do not take care of myself and if I don’t have the emotional support, I will relapse. The sooner I accept this truth and not bullshit my way around, the better.
It’s easier to dilly-dally around, it’s easier to do fake self-love. You know what I mean: shopping, collecting, bingeing one way or the other. We’ve all been there. We’ve all faked self-care when it’s actually self-sabotage.
No matter how much therapy or life-coaching I have, I won’t get better unless I learn to self-love. But it’s complicated for me. For a long time, I couldn’t distinguish between love and hate. It might sound moronic, but that’s my truth.
I don’t quite understand why I try to fit into situations that demand me not to be me. I don’t know why I force myself on people who really don’t want me, the real me. I wonder why I try so hard.
Maybe because when I was younger, I had to hit the marks to win my father’s love, my mother’s love. And then love became something about going against yourself to please someone else. I lost my center. I’ve never had a center. There’s a giant gaping hole where love is supposed to be. I didn’t know what love meant, so I didn’t fully understand how to dole it to out to someone else.
It was only when I became a mom (twice) that I learned what it means to genuinely care about somebody. So, you can say I discovered what love really meant the other way around. Nope, I did not love myself first. (I love-hate, which is not love, but hate masquerading as love in a mixed-up confused way.) I loved my kids first.
I don’t want to hurt them. And it’s simple, really, how to distinguish love from hate. My love for my children is pure. It starts with empathy.
Because I am parent, I have to face my childhood demons. I’ve heard my dad’s words coming out of your mouth and I don’t want it, I’ll never want to use those hurtful words with my kids. It’s not happening. Something’s got to change. I’ve made a conscious decision that the cycle of emotional dysfunction ends with me.
Anorexia is a form of self-hurt. I’m into self-love now. A friend of mine said seeing me do this is like seeing me break out of my chains. I am grateful for friends like her. I am loved, I am worthy of love, I will press on. I don’t feel like it, but I will press on. I’m willing to ask for help, and I will let people help me. I can’t do this all by myself. But I will have to do most of it myself. Thank you for reading and staying with me through my journey so far.
The featured image on this blog was AI-generated by me using free tools, namely ChatGPT, Canva, and Leonardo AI. I use these images to support my written content creatively and cost-effectively.
