We all have our dark and twisty moments. Moments where we doubt ourselves, doubt each other, question what we're doing with our lives. I recently went to my dark and twisty place... very dark and twisty. We're talking creepy Putty Caves dark and twisty. The place where the government had to seal it off because people kept dying, dark and twisty. There were several triggers for it, school, beauty and sense of self, friends, boys, family, work...teeny tiny crisis of faith.
I have had a rather complicated relationship with food most of my adult and pre-adult life. I have dabbled in various diets, work out routines, a youthful indiscretion with disordered eating. I love food, I do, but it seems to me that the ambiguous "they" seems to tell me that's bad. I shouldn't love food the way I do. I eat a cookie and I feel guilt for hours after. I want to eat pizza or pasta and there's the voice inside my head that worries what people will say about the heifer eating the carb heavy extravaganza. I just want to eat my bread in peace. Can't you just let me, oh creepy voice in my head? It's gotten to the point where I have started to equate my happiness and prospects in life to a slice of pizza or a delicious fudge brownie or ice cream. If I eat that ice cream, I'll gain 300 pounds and the I'll die alone and no one will know until the fire department is called in because of the smell. (Putty Caves).
In my rational, feminist, go me, thought process, I know this is ridiculous. I do. I know that eating that cookie or that plate of pasta isn't going to damn me to a lonely unfulfilled life of doilies and cats. I know this...but I still can't seem to shut up the voice in my head. I sometimes wonder if it's something in my head and no matter what my previous experiences, are I would still feel this way or if it had never even been an issue, if I would still have such a complicated relationship with food.
I had originally planned a fantastic, scathing, diatribe about the social construct of beauty. I even started writing it several times. It was going to raise a righteous indignation in the masses and start a grass roots movement to change how the media portrays beauty and the double standard of physical attrativeness between men and women. (Anyone seen Hitch?) Obviously, that didn't happen.
Last night I mentioned my dark and twisty moment to a roommate and she didn't know I had gone to my personal Putty Caves. In her defense, since school has started I tend to hybernate in my room, so not too much changed in my general behavior. It really was a mental shift. The comment was made that she didn't know that I wasn't a subdued person in general. That made me sad, I know that wasn't her intended purpose, but it made me sad, nevertheless. Somewhere along the line I've slipped into survival mode. I've diverted all excess energy to keeping the main functions of life moving forward. School, work, eating, bathing...breathing some days. It's sad that I don't have the energy to get all agitated and passionate about the topics I love. If I don't think about it too much I can almost pretend that everything is alright and the scary thing is, most of the time I believe it. We all have our personal Putty Caves. Our dark and twisty places.
