Scale

Simple prose

It's an object used to weigh or measure.

I guess I feel like I have been on this scale my whole life. Trying to measure my worth, trying to determine my weight and pull in life so that I may reduce it. The scale tells me everything I need to know. You could say my perfectionism is the scale or maybe it's my ed. Probably both, lot's of things I'm sure. Like my insecurities. Definitely those. The scale tells me how well I'm doing and that I could be doing better. It tells you how well I'm doing and you think I should be doing better, too. It helps to keep me in line, in perfect order when everything else is out of it. Creates a nice, little suffocating world of rules and lists-- and I love lists. And I love numbers. But I hate math.. Hmm...

Maybe I don't love numbers, I'm just obsessed with them. They calm me or enrage and depress me, depending on what they say. Numbers talk and sometimes I wish they'd just shut up! Whether I use them to calm my nerves as I wait anxiously in the waiting room of a doctor's office, or they are dictating what and how much to consume-- not just eat-- and how many exercises to perform that day, they are very loud.

But the scale isn't just there to feed my number hunger, it's there to blind. To blind me from the real world and the fear it brings. If I can focus on the scale's number, then I don't have to think about how terrified I am that everything will fall apart. I don't have to worry about the things with which OCD is nagging me. If I can take care of this one huge problem in my life-- which would be the numbers-- then I can be okay. I can survive. Because the other huge things in life just happen and I can't control them. And sometimes, they take more than they give. They're scary and painful and force me to do things that I never wanted nor was meant to do. They make me see things that will never leave me.

Jesus healed a blind man and something like scales fell from his eyes... But I don't want Him to take mine. I need it. I do not want to see.

And I do not want to feel. And that's what the scale does best. It keeps me from feeling. It covers my skin and turns it into a rough callous. A thick armor which nothing can penetrate. Not even love. But screw it, I don't need love. If giving up love means giving up pain and hurt and fear, then so be it. But perfect love casts out fear. Whatever. I don't get afraid anymore. I'm hard now. I no longer bleed when cut. Hell, I don't even get cut anymore and if I do I don't feel it. My soft flesh has been replaced by something hard and remains fixed in place by the uncertainties of life as its adhesive. But... all of this is very heavy and weighs on me a lot.

So maybe that's why I hate the numbers so much. Maybe that's what I am constantly trying to lose, trying to get rid of. The weight of life. Maybe the heavier I weigh, the heavier I feel emotionally. Because the more pounds I try to shed, the louder I am screaming from under the heaviness of life as its weight drags me down too closely to the ground with the rocks and the gravel. And maybe that's what the scale reflects. Maybe.

There is so much meaning in every aspect of an eating disorder from purging to starving/restricting to bingeing and everything in between. I often look for the deeper meaning in lots of things and since EDs are never really solely about the food or weight, my contemplations of its hidden meaning in my life led me to this. There is so much more that I could write about what the scale represents but for lengths sake, I will save the rest for other posts. Thank you for reading.