perfectionist

[helenic]

Even though the weather was perfect today, I've been unaccountably moody; buffeted by insecurities. I woke feeling slim for the first time since February, and after the initial pleasure of it found myself meandering through a halfsleeping internal dialectic while Iain was at lectures. Trying to work out exactly how I feel about food and myself and whether or not this whole thing is a good idea. I've lost the pounds I put on last term and over easter but whenever I restrict my eating there always comes a nagging feeling of guilt, constantly trying to redress the balance between healthy and thin. I worry if I skip a meal, but often feel bloated and disgusting if I do eat. After thinking about it earlier I ate both lunch and dinner today almost as if to prove a point, and have lost all the satisfaction I had on waking. I'm not fat, but I have far too much of it. I can feel the flesh on me, pressing against my clothes, and I hate it.

Probably the most sensible thing I've done since I got back to Cambridge was a really intensive workout at the gym last night, and I'm beginning to realise I enjoy exercise more than being hungry, which is positive, I think. Even so, I spent half an hour in the mirror this morning deciding exactly where and how I wanted to be smaller. It's all so vain of me. And as Iain said when I broached the subject, why does it matter so much to me? I didn't have an answer for him then and I don't now, but I'm starting pilates tomorrow if I can find someone to go with me. I don't think I can ever be entirely indifferent about my shape; it's all either acute pleasure or real self-loathing, and nothing inbetween. It frustrates me that this is something I can't be rational about; that thinking about it today has done nothing but make me even more insecure. Hopefully when I start term proper again food will be reduced to a purely functional level, something required to keep me going but to be fitted into the smallest time possible inbetween lectures and supervisions and essays. It's much simpler that way.

I have a new lecturer for Zeno's paradoxes. He is portly with more beard than hair, and strides around the room telling us off if we don't argue with him, provoking us into doing maths, of all things (I know you did Classics to avoid numbers but come on, it's not hard) to prove that Achilles can, in fact, catch the tortoise. It's all about potential and actual infinities. I don't really understand, but I love him already.

Comments

[strangechild.livejournal.com]

Saying that something is "infinitely divisible" does not commit you to saying there is already an infinite number of divisions in existence, just that, in principle, there is no limit to the number of divisions you can make. The paradoxes supposedly arise because the infinities are taken to be already there, in existence. Ask him about Thompsons Lamp, if he hasn't already mentioned it. That seems to be a paradox that arises because of an actual infinite.

There are also different sizes of infinity, which is funny. Having said that, I like numbers, but I don't like transfinite arithmetic.

Things I can't be rational about frustrate me too. I'd like to embrace the irrationality as part of what makes me human, but then I look for justification and find none. If you find any answers, do share.

xxx

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thankyou! I've done a bit of background reading and am beginning to get my head round it. It's not that I can't grasp the logic - it's the concepts themselves that confuse me, even though you aren't meant to comprehend them in order to be able to use them, if you see what I mean. That's the problem I have with maths and physics as a whole: I can't just accept a mathematical fact, I keep on thinking, but why? when it's all abstract anyway, and end up wondering just what is number anyway until a fuse blows in my brain and I have to go and sit down.

No, I think I'm definitely better off with comparative literature. xxx

[nicolasix.livejournal.com]

i want to say something. but i wont.

(i like the sound of "actual infinities" although it makes my head spin.)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

if the reason for keeping quiet is fear of offending me, please don't let it affect you. I'm curious as to why you mentioned it if you weren't going to elaborate. (I'm sorry if this seemed naive or something compared to your own experience. I know I'm touching on an issue out of my depth.)

Infinity perplexes me. It frustrates me that I can't comprehend it. Our lecturer gave us an example of an impossible, actualised infinity: "a stack of infinitely many plates; the bottom one is black, the second is white, the third is black and so on, alternating all the way up. The problem is, what colour do you see when you look down on the stack from above?"

I'm always confused when I try to comprehend the things we cannot conceive. It's dizzying.

[nicolasix.livejournal.com]

i guess i wanted to acknowledge that i felt something about your post, but when i began to type i realised there is no real coherent way of expressing things exactly the way i wanted to.
you did get close to my personal experience, which, compared to a lot of peoples', is trivial. in a short time i went from being obsessed with starving and being thin and losing a lot of weight to compulsively over eating and putting on a lot of weight. at the moment my body has returned almost to the way it was when all the problems started (there's too much of me), and there are all sorts of things going through my head that i dont really understand which your post triggered again. i dont even write these things out in my own journal (paper or pixel) because they are so confused and mostly defy words and that why i couldnt find a way to comment that made any sense. having said that, if i had the time and space i would probably write about this all night, til sunrise, which may be another reason for not letting myself start. the guilt, the balance, the failure: its all too much to comprehend. and im supposed to be thinking of my finals now, something actually important and sensible.

i wont use your journal as personal therapy, im sorry. i just thought i should maybe explain myself!

studying infinity seems to me to be like studying the inside of a blackhole: nervous-breakdown-inducing. i study myself instead and break down over that because im going through my teenage years too late. i only wish i was something close to infinite.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

It is a very difficult thing to write about. Even though I have very little experience with EDs, I was saying to Alex (http://livejournal.com/~verte) yesterday that I don't think I have any female friends who haven't at some point in their lives gone through periods of starvation or binging or both. It's such a widespread phenomenon the lines really do get blurred, and while I don't want to give the impression my situation's worse than it is when I know there are people reading it who really are suffering, I certainly don't think anyone's experience is "trivial". I suppose one of the main problems with online journalling is sensitive issues like these when you really do have to pick your words carefully.

If you wrap infinity up in words it becomes easier to deal with. Emotions and those pits of insecurity you skirt round are the same way. Like talking about a bad breakup: you can tell people what happened without letting yourself re-experience it, without falling into that blackness. As far as eating and thinness goes, not thinking about it is probably the most sensible thing to do. As soon as you try and find the words to rationalise it, the whole issue blows out of proportion.

Infinities by division are quite a good metaphor for people, actually. You can go deeper and deeper into them and never reach an actual answer or anything that's concrete, only endless complex spirals of the subconscious. Are you back from Egypt yet? It sounded mesmerising.xx

[nicolasix.livejournal.com]

yes, i am back. and it was amazing and incredibly hard to comprehend most of the time. everything there is so ancient my mind cant even imagine a world 3000 years ago. also, the things i saw were so familiar to me anyway thanks to photographs and general popular culture that it felt strange and hard to believe they were real and not just images in a guide book or on a television screen.

i dont have long at this computer to reply to everything you said as i am on the hunt for the last copy of a book about american film and society and i will cry if i dont get my hands on it.
i guess its strange to think that problems with food really are so common because the people i grew up around are the most well-adjusted and confident people i have ever met. it wasnt til i move out of home that i became insecure and began to desperately want to change myself and its totally distanced me from my family and my old friends in a lot of ways. these days my own mother doesnt know what to say to me when im in tears a lot of the time and she ALWAYS knows what to say.
everything is so complex, its just like infinitiy but whereas that seems an abstract concept, all of this is too close to home to be able to deal with it.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

I don't thinki I know any woman who has a 'healthy' relationship with food, or exercise, or their body. That probably isn't much of a comfort, but as I'm sure you're aware, you are certainly not alone.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Now you've mentioned it, I think this is probably true. How awful. What I can't work out is why. What's the point of knowing your weaknesses if you can't explain them?

Re:

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

It may be to do with the type of women I know, i.e. high achieving, successful women, who are therefore more likely to be obsessed with perfection. And why is that particular body type considered to be 'perfection'? My guess is that it's because it's the hardest body-type to achieve within a modern, Western lifestyle.

I may be way off the mark, though.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Actually that's the best rationale I've heard. Especially somewhere like cam - you're the same academic ability as most of your friends and, unlike other environments, can't feel good about yourself for that reason ... so it all comes down to more superficial things. Of course, it isn't consciously that competitive, but everyone has to be the best at something, you know?

The distressing thing is that when I'm not being logical about not eating, actually, I rather like it.

Re:

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Re. your last comment - yes, me too. I wonder if you ever get beyond caring about these things?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I hope so. I'll probably grow out of it by the time I'm thirty. Just as my looks start to fail for good...

[theobscureone.livejournal.com]

I worry if I skip a meal, but often feel bloated and disgusting if I do eat.

You've put succinctly into words portions of my own relationship with my body: thank you.

That said, I highly recommend Pilates, especially if you have the requisite stick-to-it-iveness which I seem to lack when it comes to exercise. But Pilates really is effective for those bits that most women want to slim down.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thankyou. I'm still trying to find someone to go with, but I'm really quite optimistic about it. Have you tried it yourself? I'll let you know how it goes.

Sometimes I think it would be better if we were all just immaterial, but I'd miss kissing too much.

[theobscureone.livejournal.com]

I have tried it, and love it. Lessons are really helpful--especially for me. They kept me going, kept me actually doing it, rather than just learning and then depending on myself to get up the motivation to do it by myself at home.

Please do let me know how it goes. I hope you'll have as much, or more, luck than I've had with it.

I'd miss kissing too much.

Yes, so would I.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

actually the first session never happened - it cost about four times as much as we were expecting to and we didn't have the money on us. Next time maybe. It's frustrating, but I'll get over it. Instead we sat on the grass in the park and talked for an hour, which really made me feel like it's summer.

putting up fairylights in my room and listening to bjork. i seem to have random ennui and no way of shaking it off. there are times when I hate my own company.

[theobscureone.livejournal.com]

Ohh. Definitely try again. It's worth it.

And yes to the ennui. If you figure out how to conquer it, please do pass along the secret, would you?

[verte.livejournal.com]

I think it's more to do with women being more instinctively perfectionist than men. I've been thinking about this a lot. The pride I feel when I successfully skip a meal and don't feel hungry has never been desirable enough to really take hold of me entirely unfortunately. It's the crossing out, that little nagging voice I try and stifle that makes me neurotic about it all. What I have never really accepted is simply the fact that I will never, ever be thin. For a not thin person I have a reasonable figure. I think that's a fairly objective statement. But at the same time I can't bear it.

I suppose it really just comes down to the fact that you and I both really enjoy food.

Sorry - this is rather incoherent. I have my old phone number back again. Hurrah! And beware: in one of the plays I am now wearing a bonnet. I may die of shame.

love, xxxx.

ps; I have a chocolate craving as of now. Darn it.