Who is that person who kind of looks like me?
As I stare at the image in the photograph, a strange thing starts to happen. I begin to expand. I begin to feel the dimensions of my body, bare my own weight. It feels puffed like a overblown balloon about to burst. Or a surgical glove. Pop! Air into fingers. So much pressure swelling outward. I don’t like it.
I study the photograph. Where’s my sharp chin line? My skinny neck? The dent between my collar bones? How can this be? That’s not what I see in the mirror.
The swelling into myself continues. Oompa or is it umpha? Please Mr. Wonka, please, oh please ask your little friends to roll me to the juicer. I can’t stand this anymore. It feels awful.
Do I really look like that? It looks like I haven’t lost an ounce, must less 72 pounds. Oh sheez… people are asking me all these stupid questions about my weight loss so this is obviously smaller than it was before? Oh gosh, what did I look like before?
That sexy lace trimmed shirt looks… matron-ish on me. I felt like how the model looked when I put it on. What was I thinking?
It took several days to feel like me again. When I feel like me, I look like me, the me only I can see. The image is not toothpick thin, so it is not too far removed from reality.
I don’t understand how this happens. It is more than an optical illusion because I can feel it. I don’t “live” inside my entire body.
I signed up for five sessions of cognitive behavior therapy to help me stop bingeing. The objective has been met, yet therapy has resumed and shall continue as I’ve got to learn how to deal with some things that I never really learned how to deal with before.
The questions make me feel exposed. It is not a secret anymore. Someday, the symptom of excess weight will be all gone, then the world will see what I see in the mirror. I cannot imagine my inner self skrinking as my body shrinks so I am thinking the image thing will merge with reality when my actual physical dimensions reflect with how I see myself in the mirror. I don’t know yet. Guess we will find out.
Thanks for reading.
Barnbees 