I’m drowning

I feel this pulling in my chest, as if there’s no center, just a void that’s grabbing at nothing but somehow drawing me in like I was out of breath from a punch. While at the same time just waiting to escape from the top of my throat.

Being in my body feels awful. Every moment, without consciously thinking, I can feel body parts bulging out, but when I look down, it doesn’t look like how it feels. Yet when I look in the mirror I’m convinced that I’m chubby and unappealing, even though countless times I’ve been told otherwise.

When I walk, I’m thinking about my posture and what could possibly make more graceful. When I’m sitting, I’m conscious about my stomach fat and worriedly sit up straight just so no one would see. When I’m alone by myself, I am still conscious of my body even when there’s no one around to look at me. When I’m lying down, I can feel myself bigger than what I am, with the weight spreading out. I touch my body parts to see if they’ve gotten bigger, or if they’re bigger than what I’m imagining in my head. I do this in private and in public, and no one even knows what I’m doing. Every moment is like this when I’m awake. And I can’t stop, it won’t stop. I want it to, but it pounds against me. Sometimes I can ignore it, especially when I’m preoccupied, but with the wrong move, I can feel this or that poking out, and I go to touch it to see if I was correct. Then it starts all over again.

This is how it is for me every single day, every waking moment. Just me. I don’t care about other people’s bodies. In fact, I envy all types so long as the owner is very confident. I’m so envious of anyone with confidence in their bodies. I just want to be free of this and be happy or at least content. It’s not just something I can stop. It’s engrained into my mind and into my actions.

I rarely feel like fully explaining myself, only to those that I know that I care about and who care about me. Lately, it’s just been getting worse. Affecting a lot of things in my life. It’s all I can think about and I wish it didn’t matter because it’s such a waste of time, but I really can’t fucking help it, and I’m tired.

If I didn’t have my friends around to help keep me happy I just really don’t know how far gone I’d be. I am just so disappointed with myself with how I look, how I feel, how I can’t get better, how I’m so tired I don’t even want to try.

I know in time, things will get better again, but this is something that has lingered with me for several years. Coming in small waves or large waves. Right now, I feel like I’m drowning.