This is the inside of my head

Some chaotic end-of-holiday musings and evidence of ongoing body/weight rhetoric annoyance.

The weather is the perfect weather for the last day of a holiday. Damp like the reserves of energy we had as we landed at the airport. It’s windy as if it’s trying to blow us back to where we came from. It can’t come soon enough; we’re dragging our bodies through the city we exalted in and now the exaltation has fizzled out like fireworks.

Sometimes, being with others is like watching Punch and Judy. Disjointed, jerky, wooden puppets acting out charades, façades impenetrable. And I’m only here to penetrate. When I scratch off the surface, my fingers meet nothing. These beings on the seats next to me have no substance - are programmed to execute a predictable sequence of actions in order to achieve a measured, milquetoast effect. I don’t do inoffensive, however. I want to leave a mark, no matter how indelibly dirty.

I want to leave the hotel without further hesitation in case a staff member comes over to foist a bill on me for ruining their sheets and towels after overdoing the vermouth. It’s embarrassing how this still happens to me as those I know admit that they left that behaviour behind when they finished uni.

The hotel room air con has parched my throat to the point that it is as if I’ve been swallowing pumice stones. I miss the sofa and being able to feel my way through the day with my eyes shut, instead of having to have them propped open constantly, painfully aware of what is happening now and will happen next.

Back to food. Erratic. But no more erratic than eating behaviour on holiday, in any case. I can’t tell if everyone is free and easy because that’s how they are in normal life or because they’re on holiday and any degree of regimented-ness is flung out of the plane window, to be destroyed upon contact with the runway. Then we all jet off into a rules-free realm where we talk about how refreshing salsa verde is and how rich the chocolate cake is at dessert. People are so inane when it comes to food. We all laugh, sheltered from a reality in which we might stop to question the gaping lack of insight in everything we say.

Now, I’m no gourmande. Not even particularly cultured (I opted out of the museum visit today). But I won’t fawn over souvenirs sporting the name of a place I have not visited. I’m not like those people who buy Oxford hoodies in London or thistle-shaped shortbread in Manchester. (My disdain for my fellow inhabitants of this earth is unbecoming).

I look at people wasting away and assume they’ve done it to themselves (like I said, unbecoming). Well, their mental illness did it. We must absolve these individuals or some responsibility because your decision-making ability is impaired when you’re not giving the most energy-hungry part of the body fuel. I feel sorry that these people haven’t yet been helped. But I’m sorry for myself because their being like that reminds me that I live in a society in which people step on the scales holding sacks of potatoes to convince a private medical provider to send them weight loss jab syringes in the post.

Oh, you’re going for the Halo Top ice cream, I see. You’ll perhaps see the light eventually and realise the real deal cannot be replicated using xylitol or whatever other sugar alcohols go into that stuff. The imagery associated with that product makes my skin crawl. Everyone would be better off if we stopped demonising certain foods and yet marketing flies in the face of that for profit’s sake. I’ll eat fat and sugar and repeat to myself the mantra that I won’t let it get that bad for me again. There’s no freedom in eating that way with abandon because the limit does not exist; no amount will be ever be enough when it fundamentally misses the mark, your ice cream.

I’m defusing the rhetoric rammed up my nose and down my throat like a forcible nasogastric tube. It’s the only way I have of coping in a world that pays lip service to accepting those who refuse to worship at the weight loss altar. When actually, it’s we who are sacrificed. Flagellated and laughed at for daring not to follow the path paved by Big Diet.

Performative satiety. People adore it. Oh, you couldn’t eat another morsel? Tell me why I should care. No one is keeping tabs on your portion size/the contents of your lunchbox. You’re not morally superior because X meal “filled you up”. I’ve experienced hunger cues across the spectrum, from chronically zero appetite, to being ravenous all the time. Neither is better nor worse. But there is the phrase “a healthy appetite” for a reason, don’t you think? If you’re inflating your insides with carbonated beverages in lieu of food or relying on caffeine over carbs for energy, please rethink.

Back home
I’m okay today because I’ve pulled the drawstring of my world exactly as tightly as I like it. No work. Walking. Reading. Listening to audio documentaries. Eating croissants. Marking time. I’m “doing what works” as Yiyun Li so gracefully paraphrased someone involved in conceptualising dialectical behavioural therapy.

She uses the phrase “living demandingly” to convey the intensity of her son’s existence. I, too, place demands on life and suffer the consequences of such lofty expectations in the form of crushing disappointment.

Yiyun Li ended up in a psychiatric hospital when she tried to wean herself off antidepressants. “Brain chemistry manifested as a cognitive crisis” is how she describes her state at that time. Her belief that “writing offers the approximation of salvation” resonates with me; I’ve just finished her latest book ‘Everything in nature merely grows’ and, in case you couldn’t tell, I would highly recommend.