I Know You Are But What Am I

Everytime i try to explain this part of my psyche and my life, someone, usually a lady, comes up and sass me out.

Yes i had and somehow still have body issues. Yes men do have those. Yes, i know girls are constantly judged for their looks for their whole life and fight with self hatred about their image daily. I know that. I'm not denying or complaining. I never complain that i or ingeneral, men get it worse. And i'm certainly not one of those men who brag to possess some weird empathy towards the problems of women. All i'm trying to say is that i had a time in my life where i hated my body so much i wanted to destroy it and that is still there somewhere. SO i might not understand the plight fully, but i have an idea.

When i did my first Stage work at a local newspaper, i met a young man who was smart and weird looking. He had a good job there, was respected and almost admired by the other writer. Still he always was plagued by stuttering, tics and a weird awkwardness. And he looked like a skeleton covered with rubber. He was in his twenties but looked like he was forty. I learned afterwards that he was plagued by anorexia. I remember clearly thinking how anorexia seemed ridiculous to me and definitely something stupid for a man to have.

I always was quite chubby. Not obese, but definitely armed with a protruding belly. Some of my parents didnt really care about that when i was a kid. Well, obviously, with the exception of my grandmother, who loved to tell me "you look like you're pregnant". Yet she always loved to describe how grotesque looking i was, trying to slam every sort of corrective thing on me since i was a tot, with reactions of anger from my mother.

Growing up, i became even more awkward about my appearance. I hated everything about the way i looked: my glasses, my belly, my hair (or the following receeding of em), my teeth (and the fact that i couldnt stanbd to wear braces). All those facts summed with my personality traits who were fighting against each other while i was rocketing through growing up.

Girls didnt really like me. Mostly cause i was lacking confidence.

Then i discovered metal, clothes, tribes. I let my hair grow, i became a type. I got a few more girls. But i still felt a bit fat.

One day, the love of my life, a girl i had feeling for since i was 15 and courted for years to finally be with her and almost get to the point of marriage, broke up with me brutally. That crushed my heart in a serious way for the first time. I had loved and left but i hadnt been abandoned by someone i wanted to be for my whole life yet.

After that, all my issues about how i looked exploded. I started changing appearance, hair colour, spent tons of money on clothes. And i felt fat. Always too fat.

My mother isnt a bad person but she is also a person who has no empathy or softness and she got worse with drinking and disappointments. So, after i stopped being a "son", a "child" to her eyes and became an adult that could be treated the same way she treated everyone else, she started telling me how obese i looked. Did not matter that she was in a much worse shape than me. I obviously could not tell her that. But she loved to call me "faty slob". Tell me how i was "becoming worse looking every time". How "No one could love me" because, yes, of my bad temper and my lack of real goals in life but also because i was so bad looking.

So i started eating less and less and exercising obsessively. etaking stuff that stopped the appetite. Legal stuff no amphetamines or ephedrine, butr everything close to that was game. Add that to the fact that my manic state was popping up for the real first time in ages, blasting my body chemicals in a way that simply ate me up and i became a skeletal mass of tense muscles.

And while looking kinda good, i was still so completely gone in my perennial quest for physical perfection in order to have unattainable love, that i wasnt neither sexy or confident.

I had a lot of life experience, but instead of helping me, it broke me more. I was skippin g meals, taking lots of drugs, exercising like a maniac, and making the panic slow down with booze and tranqulizers.

Of course, i cracked.

When therapy and mood stabilizers came up, i bloated. The stabilizers make you grotesque looking, without a sex drive and with a grey puddy brain. I doubled my weight in a few months. I did not really care. Mother still called me fat and others did too. But chemistry allowed me not to think about it. It wasnt even food. I just became an emotionless blob, with no thoughts or fear or taste or love or anything. I still hated my body, but my brain didnt create the feelings that came withj the hate and helped me get over it. i threw away all my cool skinny clothes. Whatever. It was the bottom.

Then i started getting off of those meds and bgecoming normal again. I ate normally, had sex again and tried to develop an appearance i liked.

Suddenly i started looking good cause i felt good. I felt so good and at peace in my own body, with a mind that was finally in sync with it that i posed naked and posted pics in a contest. And i felt amazing while doing it. I liked myself and i felt powerful.

Still, whenever i meet my family, they call me disgusting. Only now i really dont give a shit. I'm a stuuuuuuuuud! Love machine.