The Opposite of Running

I’ve been obsessed with safety, the idea of being and feeling safe all my life. Safety is the very opposite of being afraid, it’s the opposite of running. Feeling safe at home, at school, but most importantly in my own skin. I imagine it’s like breathing very slowly, calm like the dark silky surface of a garden pond. Not a single ripple, not a sound. But my stomach is always in knots, my breathing rapid. There is always hesitation, a slight tremor in my voice, like it’s about to break but never does. He’s shy, she says and they nod and smile. Being shy can be cute when you’re a kid. Everyone likes a polite young man. You’ve raised him well, he’s come a long way. But I’m keys jangling on a key chain, I’m coins rattling in someone’s pocket. I sleep with my fists and jaws clenched tight. I feel vulnerable, I feel like prey. I still act like a victim, I never liked the term survivor anyway. To be a survivor means to have survived, to have risen above it all, to forgive and forget. To move on. But what if I can’t?

Anger

Afterwards, when everything was out in the open, I sensed that the grownups around me were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen. They would say things like “don’t be afraid of your anger” and “expressing anger is healthy, just let it out”. It’s almost like they were expecting me to go off or explode at any second, that’s what a normal boy my age would do. You get mad, scream, maybe break a few things (or even better, you get into a fight at school and it’s ALL because of what happened to you) and then it’s over with and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief and move on. They made it sound so simple, so easy. But this “anger” they were talking about, it simply didn’t exist. I felt sad, scared, confused and very alone, but I didn’t feel angry at my parents or anyone else. Everyone’s talking about my anger, like they own it. Just ‘cause I’m a boy I’m supposed to direct the anger at other people and get in fights, not harm myself. Loud voices in class made me shrink in my seat, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I didn’t want to be noticed at all. No feelings, no thoughts, no sound. I wanted peace and quiet, I wanted everything to be clean, spotless like those blinding white sheets you see in the ads on TV. I wanted to sleep through everything like a small hibernating animal, wake up and all of a sudden winter has long passed and it’s spring. I wanted order, perfection and I wanted to be in control, I just didn’t know how. My body felt strange and unfamiliar to me, like it didn’t belong to me and I didn’t belong in it. It became a shell, my armour, a wall between me and the outside. You can punch and kick that wall all you want, try to tear it down, but you’ll never succeed. You’ll never find the person hiding on the inside. Grownups were hoping for this huge explosion of words and angry tears, when all I longed for, all I really needed, was the silence afterwards.

Realization

I wrote this poem in middle school. It's childish and I laugh at it now, but it's the only poem I've written on this topic. When did you know?

(Be)longing

When I was 8 years old

I wanted to be one of the guys

More than anything

I wanted to belong in their world

Voices deep like grown men’s

A foreign language unknown to me

The sound of boards hitting concrete

made my skin tingle like a sunburn

Just a bunch of guys being physical

Light-headed from too much sun

Out of control and trying to impress

Their bodies a mystery to an 8 year-old

Butterflies dancing in my stomach

and something else

But I was too young to understand

what that feeling meant.

Control

A couple months ago my friend asked me to write a short piece on anorexia and eating disorders and how it affects boys, because it’s often overlooked and not many people talk about it. I thought to myself, piece of cake, I’ve written about this stuff in my journal lots of times, I’ve talked about it in group, how hard can it be? Well, I was wrong. The thing about anorexia is that it will slowly take over your life and then you wake up one day and you’ve become the illness or it’s become you, I’m not sure which. It’s almost like you surrender yourself to it. I guess it’s a relief in a way, to just let go, because most people suffering from an ED are control freaks and have to be in charge of everything all the time. I had some pretty big and scary changes happen in my life and I was desperately trying to control every little thing that was happening. I can stop my body from changing, I can stop it, I can, I can! I'll be light as a feather, calm and empty. I'll be me before it happened. I remember feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and extremely helpless. I'm caught between wanting to be in control, and giving it away to the grownups around me. What happens if I do? What happens if I don't? It's like that moment when I'm on my board, and I don't know if I'm gonna land safely or fall. Obvisiously when you’re a kid you have very little control over what happens to you or around you, but one of the few things I had control over was my food intake. I don’t think I meant for it to happen, when I was 11-12 years old I didn’t even know what anorexia was or how dangerous it can be, it just sort of happened and I got stuck. I wanted to hurt myself and my body and I was never hungry anyway. It’s like eating when you feel sick or nervous, the food grows bigger and bigger in your mouth and it’s impossible to swallow. Every time I ate in the cafeteria I’d feel every kid watching me and my hands would start to shake really bad. Sometimes I'd drop my knife or fork and it’d make me jump in my seat. It’d get so bad I’d run to the bathroom to throw up or skip meals. It wasn’t a conscious decision to stop eating, once I started I just couldn’t stop, but I think I’ll stop writing now because this isn’t short at all.

Stuck

I'm not sure where to begin, it's been so long since I've written anything. I have tried lots of times, but I feel stuck, total writer's block (not that I'm a very good writer to begin with). I've been following other blogs, lurking a little, but too nervous to leave a comment or reach out to anyone. I want to write about feeling angry, frustrated, sad and most of all lonely, but I keep deleting stuff, it all sounds so stupid and negative. I should list all the things I'm grateful for, keep it lighthearted, not rant and rave and act like the world owes me something. Should, must, have to. Grin and bear it. I tell them I'm fine when I'm really the opposite, and it'll be okay with this huge smile plastered on my face. But most of the time I say nothing at all. It's safer to say nothing, to wear a blank expression, to be neutral, to act normal. Almost invisible. The outside is perfectly still while the inside is chaos. I wish, I wish, I wish that someone would magically appear from nowhere and say I too feel that way.