I turn the bathtub faucet to hot and plug the drain. The ritual begins.
I light my three candles, each occupying a corner of the tub. One smells of vanilla and bourbon, another of burning firewood, and the last of salty sea air.
As I wait for the tub to fill, I turn on my speaker. The playlist I pick begins with Freakin’ Out on the Interstate by Briston Maroney. I turn it up until I can no longer hear the rush of water from the faucet. I hope my neighbors don’t mind. A new coronavirus has infected every part of the world, and I and everyone else has been forced to lock ourselves inside until it’s over. It means not being able to see any friends or family, which has already been hard. Living by myself has made it harder. Each day that goes by makes me feel more alone.
Once the tub fills, I turn off the faucet—steam dances above the water. I drop in a bath bomb. My favorite part. It makes a plunk as it hits the bottom and quickly bobs to the surface fizzing and foaming. Streaks of glittering violet and a pink you only ever see in sunsets bubbles out of the bath bomb as it dissolves. It smells of caramel and black currant.
Now my least favorite part: getting undressed.
I turn off the light. Candlelight flickers across the bathroom walls behind me, silhouetting my figure in the mirror.
I turn around. I don’t watch myself undress. Sometimes it’s too hard to look at myself in the mirror. Today is one of those sometimes.
I step out of my underwear and take off my shirt. I hug my arms into my chest, covering my breasts. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to be naked, even when I’m alone. Today is one of those sometimes.
I step into the bath. The hot water stings my legs and makes them feel itchy. I breathe through it, slowly acclimating my body until it’s completely submerged. From the corner of my eyes, I can see the tips of my hair swirling in the shimmering, almost-black water. I would typically put my hair up to keep it from getting wet, but today I don’t care.
Today, I weighed myself and cried when I saw the number on the scale.
I have a complicated relationship with my body.
There was never a distinct moment where I looked at my body and thought, “this isn’t good enough.” I still have a hard time trying to pinpoint the beginning of my eating disorder. I was never called fat or ugly. I was never underweight or overweight. I was never pressured to change my physical appearance, even when my parents got on a diet when I was in high school. Even when I started obsessively tracking my calories to lose weight I didn’t need to lose. Even when I started following pro-ana (promoting anorexia) blogs on Tumblr. Even when I thought I was only on the edge of having an eating disorder, did I not already know I had one.
Not until four years ago, during the summer before my sophomore year of college, did I come to understand how this disorder slowly devours you. And the summer of 2016 was ripe with conditions perfect for a feast.
I had begun the summer in my usual state of self-consciousness, still unsatisfied with my body. Most days, I didn’t like how I looked, except when my shoulders felt boney and my ribs were visible without sucking in my stomach. But, even then, I always managed to find something not good enough. Like my long, bumpy nose, my boyish torso, or my arms that I still insist are too muscular. And despite hopping from diet to diet, my weight stayed the same for the past few years, fluctuating up and down the same five pounds. My body’s relentless stability was a blessing in disguise, but at the time, I only saw it as an obstacle.
I was home from college for the next two months. But home was where I had no friends. Home was where my parents worked on the weekdays. Home was where I was left alone. It was then that a voice appeared, from the unpaved wilderness of my mind, offering salvation. It was a familiar voice. It wasn’t until later that I realized it was the same voice that said I was never good enough.
The voice enticed me with dreams about life with a new body. A body I had always wanted. A body that wasn’t mine. It told me, “You’re so close. You just need some more control.” It promised me that if I could meet its standards, then everything else in life would fall into place.
And so the ritual began.
I would wake up, go to the bathroom, strip naked, and weigh myself precisely three times. If the scale had gone down from the day before, then the voice was happy. It meant I could have a good day. But if the number had gone up, then the voice was full of wrath. It meant I would have a bad day. It meant I had to make up for the failure. The voice convinced me I could only do that by starving.
So, I starved.
I never made it to my goal weight. I had lost ten pounds in less than a month and a half before my body caved from the hunger. By the time I returned to college, I had binge-ate all the weight back.
The voice stayed, finding home in my mind, and waited.
Sometimes it haunts me, creeps from behind its corner when I’m all alone to offer the same salvation. Today is one of those sometimes.
“You’re fat,” it says as a number blinks between my feet on the scale. I cry.
“You’ve let yourself go,” it goes on. It’s hard not to listen. It’s hard not to believe it when it tells me that quarantine is the perfect opportunity to try again. It’s so comforting. So promising.
Sometimes I give in. But today will not be one of those sometimes. Because I know what it means to give in. It means saying I’m not hungry when offered food, even if I’ve barely eaten. It means going to sleep hungry and having nightmares about eating. It means starving myself of all the beautiful moments life has offered because a voice in my mind has convinced me life doesn’t start until I’m skinny. But the less I weighed, the more it craved. And no matter what I do, it’s never good enough for my eating disorder.
So, when does it end?
I remember asking that same question in a group therapy session with three other women, all suffering through the same thing. The room was filled with quiet impatience. The other women wanted to know the same thing: does it ever go away?
After some time, our therapist sighed. “No. It never goes away. That voice will always be there. Eventually, you learn not to listen.”
That wasn’t the answer I was expecting, nor was it the one I wanted. I think the other women felt the same.
But it was the truth.
It had been a year and a few months after what happened during the summer of 2016. I didn’t believe it at the time, but what happened would be the first and last time my eating disorder ever got that bad. I intend to keep it that way.
I step off the scale and breath in. Then out. It’s time to take a bath.
The last thing I want to do is take a bath. The voice has somehow convinced me that my body would look unpleasant sitting in a pool of water. According to the voice, only skinny people can indulge in that sort of self-care. However, too recently and too often, I have indulged in self-hate.
So, I’m going to take a bath.