Tuesday 13 February 2018

Shrink Tales | Eating



After leaving therapy and reaching home, i tried to deny what had happened during therapy. I tried to forget. That i had been touched some place where it still hurts. Pain is different on different occasions, as we all know. This one was like a toothache of sorts. Once when you chew, there will come a moment when you bite hard and there is excruciating pain. It takes some time to subside. The memory of it will never leave you. To avoid that, you will start chewing with the other side of the mouth. Using that part alone will result in more cavities there later but for now, you are good. Occasionally pieces of food get stuck in the cavity of the tooth that hurt you. When you pick it, you are so careful because you know that at a point you could touch the nerve ending - which is when it will take you back to the kind of pain you experienced when you chewed when your guards were down. So i had been pricked. At one such cavity, Ish, my therapist had found the nerve ending.

I started thinking why someone would be born the way i was born. Because lack of self esteem, the root of all evil in me, is not something a baby can have, is it? That's what i meant when i drew the broken heart baby once. Something was wrong from then, i felt. Feeling not good enough.

But what puzzles me is the contradiction. I think too much of myself. I think i am good at a lot of things, i think i am above a lot of people. But everything that unravelled in therapy pointed towards the idea that i thought everyone else to be better than me and loved everyone else to bits because they are all better than me. Grandparents, sibling, lovers...

Ish warned me that she was going to utter a seriously grave sentence. She said that everything i did was suicidal.

It seemed true. In the case of my eating habits, i didn't have to worry if someone would stop me. If i were to cut myself, i would be noticed. People might talk to me. But if i ate a lot of food, losing all control, no one would even suspect that something was wrong. How many people have passed by me when i was on the fourth eatery to stuff myself with more unwanted food.

Again, there are contradictions. Sometimes i have used my masochistic tendencies of scarring myself to impress people. Open my vulnerability to others in hope that that will get them interested in me. It always worked but now i know that it wasn't because they felt that i needed help it was because they sensed the vulnerability and i was easy game in such a position. Once a man spoke truth when he said that he wondered why i never scarred my face. I went to my neck because of that line the next time but yes, it is true, i have never scarred my face. Because i think i look good.

How is that possible?

Again, when i poured wax over my foot, when it left a mark, ugly one, i wasn't bothered. The scars on my arms - yellow teeth out of smoking, these don't bother me. It's too much for me to understand.

When others always held so much power over me, when they were always kept in a position where they could hurt me with just one line 'hey you put on weight,' i was getting back at them by doing things to myself because i couldn't ever do things to them. They were too powerful. Also because, as a person, i thought deserved it? I asked myself and thought out aloud if i was such a bad person. Before Ish said it, i knew the answer. Does it really matter?

Why do we say that no one, no rapist, no murderer should be subjected to capital punishment? When i vehemently oppose capital punishment, punishment by the state on people they think are 'bad,' as always, in the most hypocritical manner, i always tried to subject myself to capital punishment.

During the week unfavourable numbers on the weighing scale scared me a bit more than usual. I started wondering if therapy was working and if i would leave my unhealthy eating habits. If that happened, i would definitely go back to what i used to feel when i was 10 kilos heavier. And that is some place i didn't want to go. As usual i started digging reasons for the unchanging number on the scale. It had to be sleep. I was sleeping less because of the new job and i quickly made up my mind to tell my boss that i was going to quit if i prove beyond doubt that the reason was the new schedule.

It is the first time that i am getting scared that therapy will work. First time i wish Ish failure.

I have managed to forget a lot that happened during therapy in an attempt of self defence. I am so scared of what is going to happen. It is making me tense.


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