Three Birds in a Nest

Trigger Warning: Includes discussion of disordered eating

Bird classification has become a recent passion of mine. I read up on crows and vultures, pigeons and swans, ducks and parrots. I read about these birds and try to classify these people as one of them. I am searching for the perfect simile but it always escapes me. They pick at my soft spots like vultures, feast upon the flesh I offer up to them by my own hands. They laugh and caw loudly like crows, making sure there is nowhere I can go where their words do not follow me. They repeat the same phrases like parrots, and I hear my thoughts through their mouths. There is no simile that works and really it feels much too mean to liken entire people to birds in my story.

Let us trace a different route. I am getting ready for an event; lipstick carefully applied, hair straightened, rings loose on my fingers and earrings that I had to fight with to get on. I think I look passable, pretty even from a distance. I arrive and we make small talk, we chat about school, and work, and I make the same customary jokes I do at every social gathering. One of their flock meanders their way over to me. Here is what she states; you are so skinny now! how’d you do it? what’s your secret?

I tell them it’s stress, that I have no secret, that it just happened, that I don’t know what they’re talking about. This is a lie. It’s a lie I've become so comfortable with that I sometimes convince myself it is the truth. I echo it to friends and family and I am more than happy to present it on a silver platter for all to ooh and aah it.

Here’s the truth:

I don’t know.

I really don’t know. I think I am the sort of actress that deserves an Emmy because my performance is so convincing even I do not know when the curtains come down. I would start from the beginning, but I do not know when that point is.

Here is the closest thing to the truth I can offer:

I am ten, obsessed with blue, spending hours piecing together puzzles, and reading. I also happen to love McDonalds. I get the same thing every time too - a filet o fish, fries and a chocolate milkshake. On one occasion I hear my uncle remark about how much I love it and my parents laugh with him. My stomach drops down to my feet, lurching as if I am on a roller coaster. My face heats and my skin feels rubbed raw. I am humiliated. It is a small comment, and I doubt they even remember it.

I do know this. It has been twelve years and I still feel embarrassed about it.

This memory is a wound that has festered, rotting away beneath the surface unseen by the naked eye. Or perhaps that is too dramatic, I certainly have been accused of being so. Maybe it’s more like getting a small and unremarkable splinter, one that you never really manage to fully pull out. Or maybe it’s like a bad knee, you fell once and now every winter it acts up and aches and aches.

I am fifteen. I am admired for my discipline and control. I do not eat sweets or chips, I do not drink soda, I do not eat after eight, I do not like junk food. My favourite take out is a veggie sandwich and my favourite drink is water. I love having others remark on how healthy that is, how disciplined I am, how they wish they were more like me.

I am invincible. I am untouchable. I feel the warm glow of pride whenever I am praised for this and this is my crowning achievement.

I am also too big. I fantasize about being 115 pounds, light and airy. My stomach protrudes the way you might expect a man who has only sustained himself with beer all his life to look. My arms are flabby enough I am convinced if I jumped off the roof I’d probably be able to fly with them. My chin and neck are not separated, instead are stuck together like a nasty piece of gum to the bottom of a desk. I’m taller than my sister and my mother. My shoe size is bigger than theirs and unlike them, the only person I can share shoes with is my brother. I am too much. I have moments where this is at the forefront of my mind, and many where this is not. I hang out with friends, get school work done, go to the mosque with my family, chat with teachers, write, and shop for clothes. I am happy. This is the happiest I will ever be.

At some point I travel miles and miles and spend a summer at home. There is so much to recall from this trip; the heat, the bazaars, the people, the clothes, the rain so heavy it floods the street. These memories are not what take up the most space in the luggage I take with me on the return trip. In between finely tailored kurtas and books and toothpaste their words rest. My relatives all comment on how I barely eat, and how I’m so skinny. It’s sometimes said with concern, sometimes said with scorn, and sometimes said with yearning. Once when we are talking about weight I open my mouth and they laugh and roll their eyes. What do I know about looking in the mirror and finding only things to frown about?

Sometimes my food goes ice cold before I can convince myself to eat. Sometimes I excuse myself to the bathroom so I can pace in peace and wonder if I can afford to eat this. Sometimes I sweep food under a napkin or press it down to make it seem like I’ve eaten more than I have. Sometimes I drip oil into a plate and leave it by the sink so I have evidence for my lies. Sometimes I pretend to be ill to avoid dinner. (and breakfast and lunch). In the mornings I think about how many meals I should eat in a day. I insist I am happy eating daal for days on end because I know it is low calorie. I tell people I eat so selectively because I’m scared of getting sick. This is a lie. I eat selectively because I am truly fearful of gaining weight, of losing control, of getting even bigger when it feels like I can never curl up small enough to be safe. I am sick, and all I do about this is mount an altar to this sickness and worship at its feet.

I am twenty one. My grandmother still wraps her arms around me as if I remain the child she raised. Maybe I am to blame for this confusion, forever trying to break myself into smaller pieces. She has both angrily told me I am too obsessed with my weight and that I am unhealthy, and has preened about the compliments my size have gotten me. I fit into clothes from when I was twelve. I am not good at much, but I am good at staying hungry. I eat in small plates to reduce the amount of food I eat, I cannot handle eating rice for fear of how big it will make me, I cannot eat two slices of bread a day, the thought of food makes me nauseous, I hate myself when I eat, I spend countless nights so damn hungry, I am so hungry that I get dizzy when I stand up, I eat one meal a day, I eat so much I feel nauseous in moments of weakness, I cannot stop eating, I eat four slices of cake in a day, I eat greasy burgers and fries three days in a row, I eat ice cream everyday for a week in a row, I am in perfect control.

I am in control because if I’m not, then what is?

I don’t even know if I want to lose weight anymore. Periodically I tell my sister that I am finally ready to gain weight, that I want a curvy body, that I want my breasts back, and they celebrate. I stick to this claim until the moment I see a mirror. I turn this way and that and the only thing I see is what needs to be lost. I do not know who I am outside of this never ending journey to be lesser. I want to be better, I want to live a life where I am more than the mirror or the scale but the fact remains that the only time I feel the flush of pleasure, the high of success is when my weight has dropped.

I hate myself. What is there to like?

My mother tells me she’s proud of me when I drink plus calorie shakes that are supposed to help me get my weight up. My siblings tell me they see how hard I am working. I eat broccoli and carrots and apples and nuts. Sometimes I let myself indulge in a sweet or a bag of chips. I eat three meals a day. I look forward to breakfast. I workout occasionally, I speak to my friends, I think I am pretty and in some ways I manage to convince myself that I am healed. I set about convincing everyone around me, I frame it as problems I used to have with food, I imagine myself writing a self help book and giving a TED talk all about how to overcome your eating issues in a week, I think myself to be the dictionary definition of healthy. I am invincible. I am untouchable. I am in control.

Here is what I eat in a day: milk, two slices of bread with peanut butter, seven almonds, two pieces of cake, biryani - rice and chicken and potatoes, a large coffee crisp chocolate bar, water. I feel nauseous. I want to carve away the fat from this body. I am too much, my stomach is too large and I keep pulling at it and I think I need to throw up. I console myself with the knowledge that I can starve myself the next day. I fear stepping on the weight scale knowing the number must have shot up, I feel like my clothes are splitting as my fat pours out through the stitches, I know people find me too unsightly to look at. I can stop myself from eating, I can, I can, I can.

At least until I can't and end up eating too much again.

This is all I know how to do.

A part of me notes that if I lose nine more pounds I will be 100 pounds. From then it would be easy to drop to ninety or seventy. How much will it take for me to disappear?

I don’t know what I am chasing.

There is no end in sight.

So, I choose to present the flock with lies. I’d rather not tell every passing stranger, every friend of a friend who I had class with, every aunt who has watched me grow from child to adult, every friend of my dad’s who still thinks my life passion is Barbies, that I know nothing and am nothing. I’d rather not reveal the greatest trick I’m trying to pull, the slow disappearance of me.

I liken them to birds because I cannot imagine being as free as them. I do not think I will ever get off this ground, out of this pit, into the sky. I do not think I will ever shake my feathers for others to admire, share a meal happily, perch and chat with others. I do not think I will ever be anything or go anywhere.

During restless nights I think to myself that if I were to liken myself to an animal I’d be the decayed body of something or another that only really remains because no one has come by to sweep it off the side of the road yet.

When the sun rises yet again and I awake to it and my neighbour's noisy mowing, here is what I choose to believe; there are more than birds out there. I do not think I will ever be a bird like the others, but maybe I do not need to be. Maybe instead I can be the butterfly, hatched from a cocoon of my own making, looking differently but remaining free all the same.