My Secret Life (3 page)

My return to the gym was not so horrific as I had envisaged. I worked through whatever humiliation I had created in my head and endeavoured to make use of what I saw as a terrible excuse for a human body. Being a smoker didn’t help. I found myself gasping for breath after a few minutes. The trouble wasn’t continuing on whilst panting and wheezing; it was hiding the evident exhaustion of my lungs from everyone else. It didn’t matter about how much pain I was in, that was a mere inconvenience. What mattered was that no one knew it. I struggled but could hear that old voice in my head saying, ‘Stop now and you know you won’t start again.’ It was never a voice of encouragement, not the kind that tells you you’re doing really well. It was one of utter disgust. I was terrified to let her down. If I did, she’d never let me forget it.

I didn’t care about this nonsense of ‘warming up’ and doing stretches. Nor did I have any time for lifting weights or doing any form of resistance training. No, my concern was moving as fast as possible for as long as my body would allow. The more I moved, the harder I’d sweat and as each droplet rolled off, I imagined someone peeling away my skin, slice by thin slice. If enough could be peeled away, I would eventually be perfect. This was making me a better person. It was making us a better person. My breathing grew heavier and heavier and with every wheeze I suppressed, my lungs seemed to scrape against an invisible grater and tore away bit by bit. The girl jogging beside me seemed to do so effortlessly. She was a local girl whom I’d seen around town on more than one occasion. She was petite and slender and had a relaxed expression on her face, as if the gym was her home. She appeared to own both the room and more importantly, her own body. My body, on the other hand, was not my own. I would take one stride and it seemed the whole room thundered with the sound of my foot crashing down on the surface beneath it. It was as if I had no control over it or what it did.

How could I have let myself get to this point? Was I not the very definition of discipline?
Not looking like that
, I heard that voice whisper. I would just have to put up with it. Amidst the occasional whispers, the pounding noise of my feet and the squeaking of my inner thighs as they rubbed off each other, I jogged and eventually sprinted until my knees began to buckle. I would not stop until that girl had gone. In my head, we were in a competition and she would just have to quit first. Eventually she did. She relinquished her workout, effortlessly dabbed her forehead with a neat towel and glided out of the room as if nothing had transpired.
The audacity
, I thought to myself. And in that moment, for no apparent reason other than the contorted justifications that lay somewhere in the abyss of my mind, I wished that girl every bad fortune. The next time I would see her, surely she would be as grossly overweight as I and would never again quit a competition as she had just done.

We’re not that weak
. It echoed around my head again and again. Not long after this, I finally went home with my body aching and muscles beating. It was glorious. For every ounce of pain or discomfort, I felt liberated and there was a sense of validation like never before. I could do this and I could do it well. Naturally, gym attendance increased after this episode. In a very short period of time, I had become a regular. And unlike most regulars, my attendance had escalated from three or four times weekly to daily. Every morning, I cycled to the gym before the sun even had time to wake up. It would only take 15 minutes or so but it was the best part of my day. I felt more at ease in those early morning hours than at any other time throughout my day. It was comforting to be so alone and I experienced a strange sense of authority knowing that as the world slept – or my very little world at least – I was awake, alert and active. Often I would prolong the journey ever so slightly by stopping at the end of my road, just as you came into the town. There was a quiet brilliance about the town when it was empty. The ground still seemed warm from the people who had previously bustled their way around it and buzzed in muted excitement for the coming day. More importantly though, on those dark mornings the town was mine and mine alone. It felt as though it lay at my mercy and was a part of my internal kingdom. I controlled everything on those morning cycles.

My workouts would cease shortly before school began. They were relatively rigorous and generally finished with a swim. But it still felt insufficient. It wasn’t long before I would begin returning to the gym after school in the evenings. In many ways, it didn’t matter how much exercise I did, even if it was too much. Very rarely would a person say to you – or at least never was it said to me – that you are doing too much. More often than not, it went unnoticed in my case and on the rare occasion it was mentioned, I was congratulated on my hard work. And I cruised on this novelty for as long as possible.

Looking back, I consider this time as the calm before the storm. The evanescent life before then had been a time of planting seeds and while I trotted along, oblivious to the rapidly developing new mentality, roots had long since started to grow and stretch across the earth beneath me. The potential for such a disease to manifest had always been there and it was now coming to fruition, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

It was around this point in my life that I started dating again. After a two-year relationship at far too young an age, I had enjoyed my single freedom as much as I could and lived my teenage life as one is expected; care-free and with little or no commitments. Though I reminisce on that first love with tremendous nostalgia and probably rose-tinted glasses, I was glad to be without a boyfriend at such a young age. But along with a changing mentality and growing insecurities, I had begun to crave constant reassurance. This emotional sanctuary was to be found in a local boy with whom before this point I had little or no connection. The son of someone I admired greatly, he appeared to have both the intellectual and emotional stimulation I coveted. The problem with young romances I have found is that they tend either to be incredibly nurturing or else terribly upsetting. There is no middle ground here and being as young as we are, people of my own age are near incapable of being able to judge a romance at the onset. Even still, I am only learning and doing so very slowly. This particular romance, as it would turn out, would be of the latter and would do more damage to my sensitive state than I could have ever imagined. It was impossible for me to know this at the time, however, and like all teenage girls I tactlessly launched my fragile feelings and all the weight they carried in at the deep end.

It must appear now that I take myself rather seriously. To a large extent I do. But the importance of this romance is not measured in how I felt for the other party; it is rather measured in the effect it would have on my mental condition and how it acted almost as the catalyst to my bulimic behaviours.

In the beginning, however, I was smitten. We were in many ways an unlikely match and as is natural for most after the passing of time, it’s difficult to recall what caused the initial attraction. But it was there nonetheless. Friends and indeed family could not understand it but were nevertheless encouraging to anything that would promote my own happiness. It did this for a very brief period of time before turning sour.

I cannot blame this boy for what later happened; much of why the romance darkened was down to my own dependency. I needed the reassurance of him, an emotional home for my feelings to bed down in. I think I would have taken this in any way he gave it. Over time, as is natural, he decided to move on. My confidence deteriorated while his flourished. And yet as the dynamic shifted and solidified, my dependency only proved to grow needier and my insecurities consumed me. With each measure of my worth I gave to him, I took it away from myself. Eventually, I imagine, there was nothing left and I – the person I’d known before this – was gone. Something or someone had to fill the void, the emptiness. Thank God she was there, I once thought to myself. Thank God for her readiness, for her willingness.

***

I am a teenager. My boyfriend and I have been together for almost two years. I’m certain that I will never love anyone as much as I love him. I look at older couples a great deal and always note how they don’t behave as we do. They don’t laugh enough, or play or act in a silly way with one another. Apparently they take themselves far too seriously for that kind of nonsense. Or perhaps they just hide it all better. We feel no need to hide though. In fact, we hide nothing. I have never been this open before. I feel no need to keep any secrets anymore. I doubt if I’ll ever have to keep another secret again.

Sometimes I wonder why on earth he wants to be with me. But the reassurance he provides is all too overwhelming and the thought is fleeting and never lasts very long. Now, more than ever, I think back on that day it all really kick-started. He knew how much I cared about him. Yet, being unsure of his own feelings, went abroad with family after telling me it was over. It had felt so final and I’d never been that upset before. Despite the temporary heartache, it didn’t take long before I was seeing someone else. That someone was, in theory, everything a girl of my age should have wanted. I tried to put him to the back of my mind. It wasn’t long however before he heard of these new developments. After receiving a rather frantic mail from him entitled ‘Please’, how could I not resume thinking of him? I’m not sure I’ll ever forget the day he flew home; sitting together and talking about silly things that only we could talk about. He had come home for me and me alone. I had a clear choice and the question was all but answered before he’d even asked it.

People make this stuff out to be so complicated. Yet here I am still riding this perfect wave with the person I most want to be with. I’m not sure how anyone could think love is so difficult. This is love and it couldn’t be easier.

***

I loved him as much as any teenager could love someone. The love was youthful by definition and my perceptions on it have changed greatly over the years. Still, it was a happy time and marked one brief interval in my young life with a most glossy polish. This new romance, however, could not have been more different to what I had known before. Throughout the affair, I committed ardently to bettering and ultimately perfecting myself. If I could do just that, then perhaps I would not feel as I had come to since it had all started. Perhaps some of that confidence could be regained and that self-worth be dug up. But it didn’t work.

I began exercising at night, long after the house had drifted off to sleep and I could be alone. It was in these hours that that familiar voice was at its loudest. I didn’t just hear what she had to say, I felt it. I felt it in my skin, in my bones, in every strand of hair and eventually I would feel it so hard that my stomach would wrench itself up and hurt with each thought. Maybe I thought if I moved fast enough, I wouldn’t hear or feel all those thoughts. Maybe if I made myself hurt in some other way, I wouldn’t feel those pangs as my stomach curdled in disgust. So that’s what I did, moved as quickly as possible until a muscle would ache, until my sides would feel like they were tearing and until I had caused just enough physical pain to mask any other. Oftentimes, the best thing to do would be to take some painkillers beforehand. It would mean I could prolong my exercise for a greater period of time. For every moment spent doing overtime, I enjoyed just a little extra allotment away from the reality of the nothingness I had become. It was one of the best forms of escape in those quiet hours and required only me, and whoever now dwelled inside me.

It almost goes without saying now that by this stage, my eating habits had changed profoundly. Most people seem to maintain the mentality of ‘Well, I can just burn off whatever I eat through exercise.’ I, however, contended in the back of my head that if I ate too much it would surely have wasted all that time spent exercising. I began to eat much less. Generally it went unnoticed because the change wasn’t initially all that severe. Eating became like a race against time. I would eat very small amounts and would time it around exercising. In this way, I could never give the food enough time to latch on to my insides. It was like I suddenly became aware of an invisible glue that lined my stomach. Anything I ate could stick to it almost immediately. The only way to stop this from happening would be to exercise before the glue had time to set or shortly thereafter. This process was fast which meant I had to be faster; I had to be one step ahead of my own body at all times. It was exhausting to say the least.

I watched any and every television programme I could that surrounded the issue of weight-loss. Mostly I just found that the programmes half spurned me, but half aggravated me at the same time.
Of course they can stay that skinny
, I told myself.
They have their own personal trainers and dieticians
. I started to develop a most curious relationship with the images I was seeing. The women portrayed on television and in advertisements represented everything I wanted to be; determined, disciplined and utterly perfect. I also, however, cursed their names and told myself that if these women were in my position, they surely could not look as they do.
They’re not strong enough to go it alone
, I thought. But we were. If I could somehow get my head and my body in sync with one another, together we could do it with absolute perfection. Suddenly being flawless didn’t seem so impossible.

It seems almost inconceivable now but I began searching the internet again and again with words and phrases such as ‘skinny women’, ‘thinspo’ (thin inspiration) and even ‘emaciation’. I didn’t want to be that skinny, though it would have been preferable to my size at the time. No, initially I just wanted to draw a contrast. I felt that I was one extreme and that by looking at women who lived at the other end of the spectrum, I could motivate myself enough to find a happy medium between the two. I was captivated by these images. Oftentimes, I would glare in horror at some of the extremities depicted but I could not look away; I could never stop myself looking that extra bit closer. Their bodies, unlike mine, could be studied like a painting. While my own felt like one massive surface of skin and filling, theirs were concave with protrusions scattered here and there. Their bones rose and fell from shadow to shadow, with porcelain skin draped over like silk. They were jagged creatures and were composed of sharp-edges and spindly bends, reminding me of a delicate spider. If you had a gentle enough touch, you could have played their ribcages like a piano. Tummies were always flat but evolved very abruptly into hips. With each image, a new twist and turn of the creatures could be found until I finally had a mental image of every possibly pose such a body could display. It was art. I would slip into a trance and would temporarily leave my own body looking at them. She who now lived in my head guided me gently from picture to picture and like a sponge, I soaked it all in with ease and what felt like nourishment. It was as easy as breathing.