Weight

My body is a weight I’m not strong enough to move.

I wish my throat was sore, or my head was pounding, or my nose was even a little bit runny, so that there would be some kind of excuse for the dread I feel when I think about stretching my leg beyond the heavy crunchy covers and down to the hardwood floor.

But I am fine.

I know the motions. I can walk to the gym and run on the treadmill, turn on the shower and dress in the same template of clothes I’ve learned works for my too-quickly aging body, and make my way out the door. I leave no time, so I will be late for work. It’s better that way. I can’t risk the space that comes with time, the space that stretches the seconds out long enough to notice the emptiness behind the tasks that make up my days.

I am a taskmaster.

I can endure the most mundane functions, the most brutal repetition. I cling to it. The completion of simple habits is my meaning, the survival of them my feat. These habits are the rollercoaster tracks that keep me moving.

The anorexic life is a predictable one. Or maybe I was orthorexic — the one obsessed with exercise — I was probably both, but it doesn’t matter. At the time I just thought I was winning, eating the same low calorie contraption at the same time each day, running the same eight-mile path despite how frail and tired I felt because what was feeling, really, and desire beyond the need to complete my routine was no desire at all.

And then I won.

My body gave up its fight too many years later. But the habits that once drove me now haunt me. They are the millions of little boxes that make up my days. The boxes are shaped differently now, bigger, with different kinds of food and more of it, different kinds of exercise just less of it, but they’re still there. Everywhere. I need to check them each day to feel normal, to feel like I deserve to be here, to shield off the wave of guilt and disgust that will come if I don’t. There’s little space beyond the boxes.

I can’t risk the space.

I once read that anorexia never leaves you, and it was the most comforting fact I’d ever heard. It means that this nagging, grating obsession that persists pounds and decades later is not my fault. It means I’m not losing because there’s no way I can win.

The air is cold above the sheets and I know the walk to the muggy grey gym will be even colder. I imagine a world where I can do anything. Where time is an open space of options, where boxes aren’t waiting to be checked. I imagine myself slowly making coffee, letting my thoughts wander recklessly in a messy essay for the full hour before I head to work, unconcerned with the sweaty, foggy gym and red glowing numbers assuring me I have value. I can see that life between boxes if I look hard enough. It’s close.

I lift my leg to the hardwood floor.

My body is a weight I’m learning how to move.