I love me because I'm not mine to love

From about 6 years old to the age of 15, I was the "fat kid" at school and this affected me in a number of ways.

Firstly, I internalised my size to such a degree that my brain still distorts what I see when I look in the mirror. Now I always see a fat woman staring back at me, no matter what my weight.

Secondly, I closely associate mood with food. This means that I am a "bad person" if I over indulge, yet denying myself food makes me feel "good." I must admit that I find it odd, in particular, that this view of food still manifests itself in my head, since I dearly love cooking for other people. Infact I often use food as a means of showing my affection, love or friendship for other people. It's as if, in my head, good people deserve to eat nice food. So why can't I apply this to me?

Today I weigh 138lbs. My lowest weight since reaching adulthood has been 130lbs, my heaviest 210lbs. I know I have some degree of self-discipline and I know that, most of the time, I can control my obsession with food but I also know that I have a tendency to binge (particularly if I am feeling low) and that the only reason I do not "purge" after binging is that I prefer to punish myself through days of self-loathing rather than feeling bad about the binge but "putting it right" directly afterwards.

So, what happens when your body is no longer yours to punish or reward?

The process of internal enslavement has had a, somewhat, unexpected affect on my view of things. Many of the thought processes I have held onto for years have been broken down and, in some cases at least, been re-built by Tanos. Suprisingly one of the most recent "casualties" to this breaking down process has been this cycle of associating being good or bad with food.

I don't deny that I do still feel good about mysef when I eat healthily and stick to my diet. I still feel bad about myself (and suddenly 10 lbs heavier) if I am tempted to break it. The difference at the moment is that I, suddenly, can see all these associations, where they come from and, most importantly, the fact that they are wholly out of date and inaccurate.

The changes, or rather the focus, came about through the problems I was having, sometimes, being naked infront of Tanos. The image I held of myself as a fat person often depended on whether I thought I was being good or bad that day. This meant that some days I was quite happy to be naked, yet on others I absolutely loathed it.

Eventually Tanos took some time and picked this apart. I don't think it was a particularly difficult thing to do, since I was well aware of the difference between what I saw when I looked at my body and what he obviously saw when he looked at it. In many ways I made it easy to highlight the problems I was having since I jumped at the opportunity to explain why I was finding it so difficult to be naked around him sometimes.

The obvious solution would be for Tanos to have me eat healthily all the time, the danger, however, was how healthy my idea of eating healthy actually was. Identifying this problem made finding a solution much easier. In this case the solution was for me to present as much information as I could to Tanos. This information included BMI scores, what my ideal (healthy) weight range to height was. How many calories I needed to maintain my weight and what would be a healthy amount to loose on a weeky basis.

Now, Tanos weighs me twice a week. Although I genuinely believe he does this more as a deterrant for me loosing more than 2 pounds per week, it has given me that extra push to avoid binging. I also write down everything I eat in order to calculate how many calories I eat per day. I know not everyone would like to have to do this but, to me, it is no chore. I like working things out and living such an ordered life. I go to the gym 2 or 3 times per week (no more) but I always did love the gym. So far I have lost 8 pounds in 4 weeks, but the weight really doesn't matter. What has become more important is that I feel good about me. Good enough not to want a hole to swallow me whenever Tanos wants me naked.

Enslavement has enabled me to become healthier psychologically. It would seem that it is able to enhance my physical health too. I believe that it took my loosing possession of my body for me to be able to love it and, in a way, that fits with what I have come to understand about myself. I have come to love and respect Tanos's posessions as much as I love and respect him, would it be so suprising, then , that if I am able to internalise that my body is one of those posessions then I will learn to love and respect it too?

lili (January 2000)