The first time I fasted for more than 24 hours, I did it to see if I could. The work week blended together in its routine; wake up early, go to work, leave work, drive down to the local deli, get a steak salad to wolf down in the car, then begin the traffic-filled trek home. Stopping to get the salad delayed the drive by twenty minutes, twenty minutes I decided one day to not take. By the time I was home, tired, ready to settle into my night time routine, I had realized I had forgotten to eat. I decided, spur of the moment, to let it roll; I had gotten that far, why not keep it going? 24 hours turned into 48, then 72, then 96. By the fourth day, I just wanted the 100, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I wanted to prove to myself that the rumbles of hunger, the panic, the self doubt, was all in my head. I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t subject to the wants of anything, not even my body. The longest I did was two weeks, something I felt I could do again if I wanted. On a whim, I learned that while moderation was hard for me, control was easy. I wish I could say I was proud of that. 

I stayed away from drinking until I was 24. I feared losing control, something I had articulated to those I was close with before. The idea of losing my grip on the situation, of the reins being taken from me, was maddening. I was afraid that I would lose myself to vices; I struggled with snacks, why wouldn’t alcohol be the same? Because when my guard is down, I want it down. When I let things in, I want them to come in, and when I relax, I want to enjoy things full-heartedly. It felt like a matter of when, not if, I would fall into the trap of addiction…if I started down the path. So I stayed away. I held on to that image tightly, and tried to be proud of that. The first drink I took wasn’t for me; it was a lie I told myself, told to the people who listened with a raised eyebrow and a tilted head. The first drink I took was foolishly chasing after the idea of love. And even when that fell away, when I grappled with sadness and despair, I didn’t fall into any trap, because I wasn’t ever at risk. I can easily take a drink, and I can just as easily stop. I learned, through a foolish pursuit, that I am not and would not let myself be a victim of addiction. I wish I could say I was proud of that.

One night, pushing boundaries and pushing myself out of my comfort zone, I went to a party. I was invited by a woman I had met at a different party, who told me I should go. I had been stuck to the wall the entire previous party, almost afraid of moving, but determined to not show it. She walked up to me, no fear and no hesitation, and told me that she’d rather be at home, playing video games. She was honest, and I feared that because I wasn’t being honest with myself. I didn’t want to be there either. In spite of every urge in me saying no, the anti-social desires and the homebody nature in me kicking and screaming, I went. I had fun, spent time with the woman who invited me, and when it was time to go, she couldn’t go home because she was too drunk. I got a hotel for us and even though we got close, I knew that she was not in the right place to say yes to anything. I brought her back to her home, kept her safe, then went home myself. When I told this to people later, they said that I should be proud of being a ‘gentleman’, as if not taking advantage of someone too drunk to know up from down was commendable. I learned how low the standards are for men and how I can clear them. I wish I could say I was proud of that.

Breaking away from my ex was one of the hardest things I ever did. Not because there was love left, or because it was a tough decision. It was hard because, like so many things in my life, I was determined to never give up. I used to pride myself on throwing myself against a wall until it broke down, and that every day I got up was proof of another wall I had broken through. Through one shape or another, breaking away from her I had seen as giving up. I had seen it as surrendering, as walking away from a fight, and at the time I was too proud to swallow the pill that this was not something I could break through. When I finally did it, when I finally broke away from someone hurting me and holding me back, the realization didn’t hit me, even when she did, repeatedly in the face. I learned that walking away doesn’t mean giving up. I wish I could be proud of that.

I hold an obsession in my heart about control. I hold on to this so tightly that the people in my life can see it, as if the tension in my body radiates to those who can observe me. It was a point of conversation, among friends, family, people I am close to. But I realized there is no anxiety in the control I hold on myself; I don’t demand acknowledgement on an island of isolation. I am in control of myself because I have been pushed to the edge of temptation, the edge of reason, the edge of loss and never faltered. I have been pushed past when others would fall, would succumb, would snap, and I never did. I hold back the creature that I know I could be, but never would let myself become. And I am proud of that. 

I never liked my own drawings; to be honest, I never was a good artist. When I was little, the people I drew were all the same looking; round blob looking things or sharp, angular, unnatural looking beings. There was no in between. I wonder now, why that is, what it had to say about me, what it had to say about how I see myself. I can draw animals, but not people; I can draw landscapes, settings, buildings. But I could never draw people.

I’ve never liked my round face. I hated it. My ex-girlfriend used to crack jokes about my round head being on top of my round shoulders, with basically no neck in between; and I fixated on that. I fixated on the roundness of my body, and the roundness that I saw. It made me look away from the mirror; not her, I had issues long before she came into my life, but the self-loathing of the shape, the eternal, seemingly constant roundness that I always saw in myself when I looked in the mirror. I wonder now if my drawings of people then, being round blobs, was a reflection of how I saw me. The impossibly angular people another side of the coin; flat, round, sharp, soft, curvy, not. I gave up on trying to draw because of how much I hated everything I saw myself make. My hands reflected the reality I saw, and the reality I saw was unnatural, warped, and irregular.

I never liked the idea of telling myself I had “body dysmorphia” but the fact of the matter is, every day from middle school through my mid-20s, I saw the same thing in the mirror. I saw something I hated, something I couldn’t look straight on at. Something, I realized later, that nobody else saw, until they did. I saw someone grossly overweight, someone incapable of changing, a slave to the machine of meat and bone that my mind merely inhabited. And I treated my body that way until it became how I saw it; and despite concerns, pleas, and assurances that that’s now how I was, I couldn’t shake that feeling, couldn’t shake that sight. I made myself into the creature that I believed I was.

I never liked running. I hated it since I was little, since my cousin tricked me into staying on the treadmill until I was exhausted, just so that he could show me how to get past a part I was stuck on in Tomb Raider. I hated the way my knees would ache, that I was slower than the other kids. I hated pushing myself so hard that I threw up in gym class, and one of the kids decided to call me “Puke boy”, probably the least creative insult he could come up with. I hated waking up at 5 am to run with my dad, who took the time out of every morning to try and instill a good habit in me. I was focused on the burning in my calves, the bile in my throat, the tightness in my chest as I tried to push through so my dad wouldn’t be disappointed in me.

This morning, running of my own volition at 6 am, I looked down at my right hand and noticed the curvature of my knuckles. I noticed that they look the way brass knuckles do in movies; each bone angled, a combination of angles and curves, peaking out from my skin. I had never noticed them before; and I don’t know when they became visible. It made me take stock of the little things; the way my skin clings to the muscle that clings to the bone, the contours so much more visible. The divots in my elbows, the outline of tendon clinging to my shoulder, the way my collarbone becomes visible when I reach far forward for something; little things that changed when I wasn’t looking. I look in the mirror now and I don’t see the creature I saw before. Even my face, my round face I’ve had since birth, doesn’t seem so bad; the angles of my neck more visible, the contour of my jaw, my chin, my cheekbones.

I never liked myself. But I’m learning every day to not hate myself.

The original point of this blog was to do media analysis at least one post per month, which I have utterly failed at, as evidenced by no posts since the first incoherent ramblings on Dean Ambrose. So now I’m putting myself on blast publicly, as I am wont to do, which I thought would also be a useful time to do self reflection. One thing I do more often than anything else, though I honestly can’t tell if I enjoy doing it or not, is self reflection. I try to understand why I do the things that I do, why I feel the things that I feel, and why I am the way that I am. And one thing I for sure understand is my self loathing.

I don’t remember how the thought came to me exactly, but I did come to the conclusion that if I was in a room with myself, I would kill myself, or at least the other me; a combination of self hatred and identity crisis. I have a problem with other people named Nick, other people who have things like me, because in my mind its an attack, an insult to my identity. Maybe that’s crazy, but its something I understand about myself. Its like a lot of things I’ve come to understand about myself, a double edged sword; something that can be helpful and harmful. The dissatisfaction with myself pushes me to be better. Pushes me to be stronger, to go further. Complacency is my first step towards degradation, and I can’t allow myself to degrade.

I don’t do “New Years” goals because I try to always have goals in mind. Every day is a step towards them; and with that in mind, I want to reassess my goals and make sure I’m writing still. And now I have a post to shame myself when I don’t.