Puppet

 I've been wanting to get back to writing, but much like everything else inspiration to do so feels like a chore. I keep waiting for this big idea to come up and hit me just like when I was 17, but of course it won't. There's a lot of grown up stuff here clawing it's way and wrestling with inspiration, motivation. 

I know I shouldn't see it as a battle and actually make room for each of the feelings, thoughts, ideas and responsibilities. But unfortunately I am still at a state that they are bickering with each other. But I think I'll get there. 

I think I'll get to the place where there's this big house and even though stuff in my head may not have their separate room, within the house there's little things in the decoration and in the feel of it, that is just each and everyone of them. The thoughts, the ideas, the feelings, the responsabilities. It looks and smells like them, because it's their space and their home. 

So, to get back to writting I was suggested to do some prompts and I thought before I was ready but maybe not. But now I think I am. And it's finally time to stop waiting for the everything feel right, for the stars to align, the sun hit your face for the perfect picture... I need to stop wanting for things to be perfect to start doing things I enjoy and things that are pleasurable. 

I just grabbed the first prompt I saw and it talked about body image and the relationship you have with you're body. 

And the prompt was:

Think about the time that you experienced a shift in your relationship with your ody. What caused this shift? Did it last?

I think this one went right in the feels. 

Lately in therapy I have been focusing a lot in my eating disorder. On how the eating disorder is nothing but a symptom about the way I feel towards my body and how I see myself. I have mistreated it a lot. I have constatly looked at myself in mirror and blacked out glasses enough times to judge me as "big". As "ugly". I have always physically put myself down and that always translated to my intelligence. I always felt like this person who was just avarage at everything that they did. And that as much I would like to think of myself as smart, intelligent, hardworking and caring, none of that would amount to anything. Long story short, that meant my self estem was rubish. 

I have mistreated my body for SO long. It all goes back to when I was 15-17 and I was bullimic, I'd drink tea, sometimes I'd starve. I'd binge and purge. I thought I had gotten better when I found out I had a thyroid issue and lost a lot of weight. But I still could not see myself as small, just big. My waist straight and not curvy. My back still too large and unlike the other girls. Every clothes I tried on, even being skinny felt wrong.

And so I found another way to mistreat my body, coupled with starvatin, because I was past the bing and purge phase, I was abusing stuff, namedly alcohol and sex. I was using it as a coping mechanism. Much like people cut themselves so they don't kill themselves. Yet again harming my body. In a way that looking back, as a lesbian, and forcing myself to be in these straight relationships was just unforgivable in some aspects. 

So going in and out of abusive relationships, that I was treated as less then, I gained weight, a LOT, I lost weight, and gained again and lost and gained until - I was at my limit. 107 kg was just too much. I couldn't even bare to look at myself. That was the result of an extremely abusive straight relationship, mentally, physically and sexually. I was deep down in a depression so bad I was wishing I was just dead and did not exist. I believed myself a waste of space. The guy was extremelly homophobic on top of that, even though at the time, since the beginning of the relaitonship I had disclosed I was Bi. 

After I broke up and moved back home, I was in a terrible state, dangerously overweight and with high blood pressure, depressed and experimenting a tremenduous case of body dysmorphia. That had been there with me for the longest time, I just had never given much thought to it. 

Now in a safe place I started therapy, I realized cycles had to be broken and I finally came to terms with something that was very evident. I am a lesbian. It felt both rejoycing and sad to say it out loud and disclose to the closest people to me. Because, it felt to me like I knew it all along and still... I let myself be abused over and over again, raped out of my body, in straight relationships. 

After this realization, and coming to terms with who I've always been, it felt freeing, and I felt like myself. I would look at myself in the mirror and star to recognize me. I saw a glimmer in my eyes and I thought it was just hapinnes, but turns out it was a glimmer of recognition. No longer seeing myself in the mirror was about ackowladging if I  was "hot or not", "skinny or not", "good looking or not". It was about, am I seeing me, or am I seeing someone else I don't know? And yes I was finally seing me.

It always takes me back to when I was in straight relationships and after sex or after waking up, or after those quiet times that  I was laying next to them with my thought and I would look at my hand, for minutes... and the seemed completely foreign. I did not know who's hand it was. I just felt like of course it was my hand because I was using it, but I had no idea was the person inside who was operation on it. I felt like I was a shell, or just a carcass and there was some tiny person taking over and taking control and doing all the things that had to be done for me. 

(Listen to this while reading the text)

That was why I looked at my body and completely despised it. Because that was what I had reduced myself to. Just the shell, the exoskeleton that need to be shed. Skin, bones, veins, blood, cells and nerve endings. Just an object. Even in the days I would look at myself in the mirror it would be as if I was looking at some girl and I found her extremely attractive, perfect make up and features, but I could never make the connection as her being me. 

And a few months back, June 2020, I was feeling like I belonged in my body. That my arm was my arm, that my hand was my hand! And it was all beautiful. I had started to love the skin and body I lived in. But that did not last for long, the rush of self descovery soon dwindled, because it's not just about realizing who you are. The trauma is still there. The lingering tendrils of abuse and hurt are there. And so, always, in the back of my mind, my eating desorder was there, bubbling. The binging waiting for an stressful event to happen, so it could rear it's ugly head. 

So I accepted that I'd have to talk about it in therapy. I was starting to feel terrible with my own body again. Because now, I was struggling with figuring out what my style was, who I was truly and the things I liked and dislike. And much like a the trend that has been going on during quarentine came the gender identity crisis. This one day I had to finally dress up and go out. And I had just cut my hair, I cut it all off, a buzz cut really. And I loved it, it felt like me and I felt beautiful. But when I went to wear my clothes, my feminine clothes, I was suddenly suffocating; I did not fit, I looked terrible and when I looked at myself in the mirror all I could see was someone ugly and big and terrible. 

That day was numbing. Suddenly I felt like I did not know who I was anymore AGAIN. And why bother trying to figure things out if it was just gonna lead me back here. And on top of it all, what if everything I was thinking, the thought I was having, meant that was wanting to be a men. That I fel like a men. So I was just so blocked, I could not let myself go there. And also, I am in a lesbian relationship with a cis woman, and I thought how is that gonna go if I decide to become a man. I didn't want to ever let go of that because for the first time I'm in a heathy, healing, supportive relationship. Where I'm able to grow immensely. I was not ready to go there and give that up. 

Finally, before my major freak out I told her that maybe I did not see myself as a woman, but it was hard for me to express myself when all I had was this repertoire of binary defining words. I also told her that I did not see myself as a men either, but that I liked "man stuff". And finally I was able to express myself and allow myself to go there. And she helped me figure out, with researched she had done (how can anyone instantly not fall in love with this woman). And she proposed things to me and asked me if I identified or felt comfortable with things. Helped me navigate things and express my feelings. When finally we went there and achieved what it was I was looking for. Non-binary. I did not identify with being feminine, but did feel a strong pulls toward being a woman, but didn't exactly feel like one. And I did identify with masculinity, but also did not feel a pull towards being a man or didn't feel like one. And that answer appeased me. 

We spent the whole night on a video call talking about it. And talking about pronouns and what I thought I was comfortable with. And from then on she has been nothing but supportive and respectful. 

For the first time I went shopping for clothes, clothes that mainstream cis people would deem masculine clothes and felt like myself again. Did not feel big, or ugly. Did not feel inadequate. Or like I did not fit and suffocated. I loved going out, seeing things I like and trying them on. Worried if I liked the style or not. And not worrying if it was I'll fitted or not. If this fat pad was showing, if my thighs looked terrible and if my belly was too big. For the first time I felt like I was being myself not just in the way that I felt alone with myself , but now I could express to others the me that has always been there.

Without pretense. Just me, taking control over my own mind.