Anorexia Voices

"And by the way, Victor, you're not fat."

I shrugged off the remark as something any concern parent would say to her child. But as the running got underway and my mind unconsciously began to reflect, it hit me. My mum is not one to give verbal encouragement, and when she does, I know she's serious. She's getting worried.

How could I blame her? As I looked back, since the exams ended I've been running and going to the gym more often than ever. Together with Andrew and my mum, the family has begun a switch to a "eat less" diet. The suffering minority (Dad and Nicholas) thus has to put up with simpler, blander foods, with Nicholas as usual verbalizing his displeasure often enough to hurt my parents. Andrew's new weighing scale which can measure fat percentage is being utilized more often, leaving the old trusty spring scale to rust in the corner. I'm eating lesser and lesser, although still significantly more than the ladies in church, but much less than my usual portion. It still isn't noticeable that I'm asking for white rice, and less of it too, from Lao Di Fang. I even had to tell my parents that I don't go for second helpings now not because their cooking has gotten lousier, but that I'm just trying to cut down.

And it has been effective. Even as I sit on my chair, my tail bone can touch the seat. Never before has my butt decreased so much to this extent. My thighs are thinner after all the running; I didn't notice till Yaosheng remarked last week in church about how his thighs were still as huge as ever, and I chided him for making that remark next to someone like me whose thighs were "definitely" larger than his. Nonetheless, a quick glance (and a few more to confirm the horror) was that my thighs are now thinner than his! The funny thing is that according to the weighing scale I'm still at 74kg, and worse still, one day I can look fat as hell, the next day I can look scrawny.

Which comes to my next point. I find that I cannot trust my own vision anymore. The whole world is telling me that I look really slim now, and although I shrug it away as nonsense, I cannot help but wonder if they're telling the truth. But when I'm more awake and realistic in front of the mirror, I'm starting to find that it's no longer a dream. A month or two and (thanks to my parents' genes) I'll have the figure of an Abercrombie and Fitch model, save for the six-pack which still enjoys remaining a four-pack while my butt has slimmed down dangerously to the point it no longer serves its purposes as a cushion for the spine.

It's been a while since I've been toying with the voices in my head. Out of curiousity and for experimentation purposes, I've been fooling around with the supposed voices that go through the minds of sufferers of anorexia. It's under control (most of the time, unless I just binged down enough to make me guilty) and I've been listening to how these voices manipulate one's mind. They don't sound like the voices of demons or the Devil for that matter, low-pitch and disgustingly self-inflicting. They sound just like my own voice. With a logical and rational perspective, they push their point across clearly and matter-of-factly. Some of them go like this:

"It's the holidays, you might as well use the time to slim down."
"It's better than fooling around with Restaurant City, Hell's Kitchen Game or Bejeweled."
"To be a good steward, one has to make use of the resources God has given. An intellect, determination and genetics."
"You're single because you don't try hard enough. Since you don't have the money, then use secondary options like personal character, charm, oh, and of course, physical features."

Secretly, I know most of them are half-lies. I've plenty of things I have to do during the holidays, I don't play Facebook games that much to be considered a time-wasting endeavor, good stewardship comes from the usage of resources for God's kingdom first and foremost, not for personal gain, and I'm single because I'm super picky, not because I don't try hard enough. But I entertain them because they drive me on, often to the point of believing these absurb statements just long enough to feel the effects. Even then, I'm still (very eccentrically) analyzing these voices, and I can't figure if they come from a third party or from myself. The fact that sometimes these statements can completely obliverate my own ego, especially with the more irrational but equally believable accusations, reminds me to thank God for the voice of the Holy Spirit which restores my sanity to equilibrium. Nonetheless, it's scary, given their potential to harm one's mind. As time goes by and I tackle and battle these voices in my head, I begin to understand the difficulty by the doctors and counsellors who have experienced handling clients with anorexia and written tons of literature on the subject. And I have become more and more convinced that a medicalized perspective or psychological treatments will not be able to solve this problem. Unfortunately, that's the only alternative a secular, rational society can conjure up, and this problem looks set to grow exponentially as time goes by.

My biggest revelation yet? As I toy with these anorexia voices, I have began to unearth some of the more dangerous, long-standing and terrible ones in my head. So ungodly, black and sickening that the anorexia ones cannot stand in comparison. The very ones that have directed my actions and thoughts for more than half my life, and stand cunningly in total opposition to the voice of the Holy Spirit. And I'm beginning to suspect that these voices affect as many men in the world today as anorexia voices affect women.






Be careful what you wish for, 'cause you might just get it all, you might just get it all... and then some you don't want. -Chris Daughtry, from the lyrics of the song Home

Wouldn't it be good to be in your shoes, even if it was for just one day? Wouldn't it be good if we could wish ourselves away. -Nik Kershaw, from the lyrics of the song Wouldn't It Be Good

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. -Paul (Romans 7:18)