Kira Jade (kirajade) wrote in lostyou, @ 2003-06-03 22:43:00

[03 Jun 2003|10:38pm]
i know this is a community for writing about those who you've lost in many different ways. and you can lose anyone. but i'm going to make it a different twist.

you can even lose yourself.

i sure did,
so kira jade, where are you?

i lost myself in the summer of grade eight. i was a happy happy kid. i like to eat ice cream, and think about boys. then it happened:
"yo, kira, you're really packin' on the pounds"

i cried to my friends. and it soon became a group diet, an effort among friends to slim down together.

after dinner that night, i got the nerve to stick my finger up and churn out the contents of my stomach.

i began obsessing with other people thinking the same way this one person thought about me. i can't be fat, can't be fat, can't be fat.

the obsession carried on. i'd pin up pictures of models in magazines to my kitchen cupboards.

i quickly dwindled from 120 pounds at 5'1 to 94 pounds.

my boyfriend at the time could connect his thumb and index finger around both my wrists at the same time.

i cried when the doctor told me i've lost 20% of my heart and brain. your body will plunder anything for protein. this was perfectionism going too far.

i remember a letter i wrote to myself in grade 9. i found it yesterday, taped to an underside of my clothing drawer. it reads,
" i am a perfectionist. fundamentally, i just care very deeply, period. i am passionate, by nature. intense. experience has shown that when i'm set firmly in place on any certain path or direction, i am powerful. my perfectionism is a vice and a virtue, leading me to either death or glorious accomplishment."

i was always hungry and i only ate to ease the pangs. i didn't want to gain weight, but i wanted to gain weight.

slowly i was killing myself. the 94 dropped down to 89. at 5'1.

and in that same letter, it read,
"the act of eating food is very numbing. the act of throwing up is very nuumbing. you can't really know that until you experience it. you get into this stupor. when your body takes in food, particularly a large amount of food, your body's blood and energy focuses on the ardous task of digesting. the less blood flowing to the brain, the less conscious you are. kira, you're losing it all. i feel strung out. it's brain-chemically addicting. do not operate heavy machinery.
the challenge is never really surmounted. the scale can't get low enough. success equals zero weight and zero weight equals death. it's simple, really: if i consume nothing, i consume nothing harmful. if i do nothing, i do nothing wrong. if i communicate nothing, i say nothing wrong. if i exchange or connect with nobody, i wrong nobody. if someone doesn't consume, act, or speak, they are dead. therefore if i'm dead, i'm perfect..."

now, about three years later, i'm 5'3 and back to 125 pounds. yet, in all that starving, i lost myself. i lost the happiness.

and i miss myself, quite frankly.

looking back on my faults and misdeeds, i see they almost wholly fall into categories of omission: failing to complete something or show up somewhere, et cetera. looking back on times i've hurt others, it's always been caused by departure or absence. withdrawing from activity and communication lessens any chance of error or harm. instead of pursuing perfection through constructive means, i slowly implode into a black hole of avoidance and my creativity, vitality and my mental and physical health are sucked into that downward spiraling vortex. i became safe in my isolation, perfect in my forced and controlled lack of imperfection.

but in the end, i lost myself.

the general improvement and relaxation is all coming from basically just getting back in touch with myself, accepting things, not resisting or artificially forcing anything into place, purging the bullshit ideas i've been fed and the little network of 'shoulds' and 'supposed-tos' i had set up. my body and my mind and life and other people all seem to untangle and sort themselves out just beautifully without interference. and i'm starting to learn to listen to that intuition again and follow these things

and it's gonna take a while before i bring her back.


thank you, i needed to get that off my chest. i'll post about a "real" person i lost later.

i'm sorry amber if this wasn't the type of post you had in mind. great community, nonetheless

pictureyellow 2003-06-04 00:36 (link)

god i love you. you are so much like me it's scary, only you write better. i too went through the wonderful world of eating disorders. it sucked the life out of me, and left lasting effects. i now have hypoglycemia, i'm guessing it's from not eating for a long time (and drugs didn't help). i also have IBS, so i can't digest all the time. i wish i never did it, i have a fucked up metabolism at times as well. things are getting better, but i don't think i will ever be 100%. feel free to post whatever you want about losing things. i was thinking of making it a more broad topic anyway, maybe more people would join if they read posts like yours. thankyou. you can do no wrong...hehe. (Reply to this) (Thread)

makalaster 2003-06-04 22:23 (link)

you can lose yourself. and i hope you find your old happy self again, it looks like you're on the right track. i obsessed over food but i had the whole binge-purge thing going for awhile. i eventually realized that it would cause tons of medical issues in the future, and i'm fat but i'm HAPPY damnit and my pudge is my character and i'd rather be pudge than sad and stressing over my weight every day. it's hard to recognize you need to get better. i definitely understand this part of what you said: withdrawing from activity and communication lessens any chance of error or harm. instead of pursuing perfection through constructive means, i slowly implode into a black hole of avoidance and my creativity, vitality and my mental and physical health are sucked into that downward spiraling vortex. i became safe in my isolation, perfect in my forced and controlled lack of imperfection. man. i'm still trying to get out of a black hole. (Reply to this) (Thread)