From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 30
Content Warning: Disordered eating, body-image distress, coercive control, psychological manipulation, dissociation, references to childhood abuse, and spiritual themes.
I wanted to live. I wanted to feel alive. I spent a lot of time numb, and I wanted to feel good. I didn’t want to be stuck as me. I wanted to transform.
I learned to for him.
Our weight went up and down over and over for him. We’d reach our goal, and he’d do something to trigger us and then abandon us to manage everything ourselves. But he’d be watching, and we knew that we were expected to continue writing him, offering our body to him, keeping open to him. We didn’t want to fail and be deemed unfit to serve or to manage our own life. Have to admit we couldn’t do it, we couldn’t keep functional.
The stakes were high.
Looking back on it now from a safe distance, I had struggled with food prior to him and became more disordered while with him. It was like we threw gasoline on ourselves and he lit the match over and over, and we’d die for him and come back different.
If it were sane and consensual, such a symbolic ritual would be beautiful.
That was not beautiful.
That was a way to die without dying. To show our insides. To see with our own eyes how much pain we’d been living with and not acknowledging.
I can recognize now that even though my looks and form did improve from extreme ways, it wasn’t enough for him, and eventually I accepted it never would be. He was disgusted with me and my body.
I remembered that disgust.
My father threw his disgust at me too.
He would never grow to accept me, love me for me, or even look past what he didn’t like.
I collapsed and did not take the front in our day-to-day lives or with him for years. I kept away. I tried to heal or preserve myself.
Me, the person I had wanted to transform, had become pretty fucking grateful to be alive at all.
-Rogue
