screaming, crying, perfect storms

I’ve spent a long time trying to take up as little space as possible. I starved my adult body to be the size of a child’s and that still felt like I was taking up too much space. The numbers were never small enough; I was consuming too many calories, my weight was too high, my portions were too big: nothing was ever small enough. But in that desire to be tiny I’ve found an interesting dialectic. I hate feeling emotionally small.

I’m in a weird situation right now that is constantly making me go against my values. I’m currently the cognitive dissonance queen but for the most part I can put that out of my mind. However, on the days when reality hits me, I feel so small emotionally. I feel like a child and I hate it.

There’s a lot to unpack there but when I first realized the dialectic or even irony, I was taken aback. A girl who lives her life trying to be tiny hates feeling small?? Granted, feeling small physically and feeling small emotionally are very different.

Through this unusual circumstance that has made me feel emotionally small, I have realized that “emotionally small” to me means feeling oblivious, feeling forgotten, feeling naive, and feeling left out. It feels like there’s an inside joke or a secret everyone else knows but I’m the one who doesn’t. It feels disgusting.

When I feel that way I want to run. I don’t care where I just feel like it is physically impossible to exist as myself anymore because clearly there is something wrong with me. When this feeling occurs, the core of my soul literally shakes as if it’s trying to escape this vessel of a body it is trapped in. It feels like an embarrassment to be who I am and I have to get away.

I think that comes from how I felt as a child. I was big growing up. I was never a skinny kid or even a normal size. Kids in school joked about me needing to “eat a carrot” and family members said getting braces could be a great time to diet and lose weight. Though I wasn’t acting on disordered behaviors then, those words had such an impact on me. Maybe that’s obvious as I can vividly remember them 13+ years later but I was insecure even at 8 years old. I was ashamed of myself and who I was. The feeling of wanting to escape my being was present then too. Then add the emotional trauma.

There’s not a ton I can do to fix this feeling, honestly. I could remove myself from the weird situation I’m in but truth be told, it’s not that easy to do right now (in my opinion, since my parents and therapist will read this and think it’s super easy to make better choices).

I don’t think dialectics are bad. I don’t think cognitive dissonance is bad. I think they’re huge tools to learn from. All we can do is learn. I’m never going to be perfect but the more I learn about myself, the more I can stop trying to run from her.