The Disappearing Woman

I know that, at least for me, the idea of sexuality is a huge trigger.

My first kiss was preceded by a panic attack in my high school’s “zen garden” and directly followed by a drive home during which I cried the whole way. I ran extra miles the next week and then punished myself for not being good enough, deserving enough, beautiful enough, thin enough–what have you–by bingeing on pasta and french bread afterward.

Since my first encounter with ED up through my first kiss, my failed relationship with Lysander, and into today, the idea of being a woman, of following through on what that implies, has the potential to send me into a downward spiral faster than you can say “lingerie.”

After I broke up with Lysander, something in me shifted. I still had the goal of looking like  a “sexy” fitness model imprinted on my brain, but the near-brush with sexuality set off an even stronger drive within me: disappearance, conversion,

Death.

It was then that I started starving myself. I needed to feel control over my body again, and so I “locked down” my clean eating diet. It was then that I started supplementing with protein powders, then that I stopped eating cereal or a handful of chocolate chips after dinner and only ate my prescribed 6 meals a day with varying levels of protein and whole grains and veggies.

I chopped off all of my hair. I wore my jorts from the boy’s section at target. I became obsessed with putting on muscle. I did everything I could to hide my femininity.

And my body helped out. As my body fat dropped to dangerously low levels, I found myself unable to comfortably wear bras. I eventually caved and bought what was essentially a AA training bra from the Gap and a bandeau crafted for the flat-chested heroin-thin models at American Apparel.

Eventually, but for the fact that I was still, for all intents and purposes, shaped like a woman, I felt like I could pass for a prepubescent boy. And then I experienced the ultimate end to my claim to womanhood and sexuality:

Amenorrhea.

One step closer to disappearance and death.

Objective complete.

Stay hungry,

@MissSkinnyGenes

To catch up on the “Getting Healthy…Period” series see: 

Getting Healthy…Period

My Boy…Friend, ED

Sex With ED, or Let me Be Frank