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

[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.