“The thought that burrowed becomes a crack that splits everything in my head.”

I have always had a sort of ambivalent relationship to my body. I haven’t always taken very good care of it, and at times it has shown. Hangovers that have lasted too many days. Scars, cuts and bruises- both accidental and intentional- have taken their place alongside tattoos.

As I have hit my late thirties, the tightness of my skin has begun slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, to slacken, the way that the waistband on a pair of overwashed old pants does. The ebb and flow of diets and binges, of weight loss and gain, has shaped me, and around my hips and lower back there are some fine tiger stripes etched in pale skin. But even so, I have rarely actively resented my body. Or had. 

As the winter of 2020 gave way to the endless spring of Covid-19, food became a comfort at a time when many other forms of luxury seemed to have disappeared. People on bikes and mopeds navigated quiet streets with green or orange square backpacks dropping comfort food parcels to the doorsteps of indulgent diners keen to feel some normality in the rich, greasy embrace of fried chicken, curry, burgers and pizza. “I’m saving money by not being able to go out, or have holidays”, I would say to myself as I pressed the order button on my laptop. “There’s nothing else to really enjoy at the moment, so why not?” My wife and I agreed. 

Over the two years of boom and bust lockdowns, I ate. I ate and kept promising myself I would get into shape when the world got back to normal. I ate as I watched my body change with a mixture of curious indifference, resignation and slight- only slight– horror. My tits and stomach started to expand, my face and chin lost definition and became more pockmarked with the greasy acne of excess calories.

My thighs started to rub against one another more in the heat, and my sweaty skin felt more irritable than it used to. My armpits. My god, the smell sometimes was just…

None of this is to say that I completely stopped caring about what I ate. I still tried to be healthy, I still cooked fresh meals, I still ate plenty of fruit and vegetables, I still drank plenty of water when I remembered to. I just stopped stopping myself when it came to treats, snacks, take outs, portion sizes, comfort and indulgence. 

Don’t get me wrong, my body has never been toned- I was never a gym bunny, but I liked to look good in clothes, and naked. In the past I would complain to friends and coworkers when I had put on some weight and they would say, “But you’re quite tall so you don’t show it really,” in that way that left me constantly wondering whether they were being polite and deceitful, or dismissive but genuine.

Those, by the way, are the only two options for how that conversation goes. No one in reasonable conversation says, “You know you’re right, you have packed on the weight and we have noticed.” Or, “If you like I can give you the name of my personal trainer, they’re really good at helping you plan a weight loss regime.” Also, you can only really bring that topic up very infrequently, it’s a sensitive subject for whoever starts the conversation and even more difficult to navigate for the people that are thrust into it. What are they supposed to say after all? What do you even want to hear?

I started to buy larger clothes. Tops that hid the developing curves of my body, and bottoms that hung from my waist and did not chafe in between my legs. Slowly ratcheting up the sizes; medium to large (that’s okay, everyone is in comfies right now anyway), large to XL (this doesn’t even look bad on you, baggy is in right now so you look on trend). I stopped worrying about getting the scales out. I stopped worrying about portion control. I stopped caring what other people think. After all, body positivity, right? A beach body is just a body on a beach. Right? 

By the time those two years had passed, and food had become the number one comfort pleasure, I had put on around two stone. I would look in the mirror on the landing and say, “It’s not too bad” or, “Maybe I just need to do some pilates to engage my core, that would hold my stomach in and then I’d look pretty much normal.” All of which is fair enough when you’re trying to lie to yourself.

The problem really comes when you see yourself in other people’s photos of you. When you start to venture into social situations again and you’re captured in a moment by a well meaning friend, leaning forward, your stomach, now a gut is literally hanging over the waist of your jeans. When you see the picture of you at three quarters on and you recognise your face and your clothes but not the absolute barrel that has replaced your waist and midriff. Those don’t lie.

But even then you can sort of find some acceptance. It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m not unhealthy. I still go swimming, I still like walking. I am doing my daily steps. I’m not wheezy and out of breath all the time. I must be fine. I’m just one of those people that can get away with being a little bit larger. It’s not the end of the world. 

I ask my wife, “Have I gotten fat?” She says, “It’s hard to say really, I see you every day so it doesn’t feel like you’ve changed.” Which is a lovely response in every way. She doesn’t see me as a pile of expanding flesh, but as a whole person; a mind, a partner, a lover. That’s what I tell myself anyway. ‘She looks past any imperfections and sees the real me,’ I try to think, before adding, ‘the one encased in a growing pink, fleshy mass.’ She’s not going to discard me for getting fat. Is that an affirmation, a mantra or a question in my mind?

“Besides,” she adds, “I like your body, I feel comfortable in it and you give the best cuddles. As long as you feel happy with it, that’s all that matters.” Something in her voice sounds far away. I press for more.“Would you still fancy me if I was fat?”

She stops putting her clothes away in the dressing room drawers and turns and looks at me directly. She walks forwards and plants a kiss on my lips, squeezes my boobs and grits her teeth a little bit as she makes a slightly guttural noise. ‘It’s nice but that wasn’t a yes’ the voice in my head says. The thought burrows and starts to split. The grey areas start to lose their contrast a little and things in my head start to feel more black and white. 

It’s not just that food becomes a shorthand for enjoyment on these weird days. These times are scary and uncertain and for those of us working through them, they feel more stressful than ever before. I sit in Zoom meetings all day and actually move less than when I was in the office. Dealing with other peoples’ stress and trying to manage through the paranoia, the desperation, the creeping sense of existential dread, food is distraction and comfort. “At least I’m not smoking again,” I think at the time.

The stress of work and the creep of constantly being ‘available’ starts to erode my boundaries. The expectations of taking more on because this is our war time and we all need the ‘British Blitz Spirit’ to get through it together, becomes invasive and creeping. Bodies don’t metabolise as well when they’re stressed. Floods of cortisol send me into fight or flight mode and slow my metabolic rate. Just in case. I might need that fat in a minute. I might need to run, I might need to escape.

Except I can’t and I don’t. There’s no running away from work. There’s no running away from a global pandemic. There’s no fight to be had either. So my body holds onto stress and the weight, the fat molecules in my blood and viscera look on with patient disinterest as my hormones start to play havoc with a burgeoning waistline. 

The work stress doesn’t ease either. Everyone has gotten used to this way of working now, and savings have had to be made in other areas anyway, so I have to pick up the slack. It’s okay though, I’ve got this. My line manager told me so. My performance appraisal last year, in the middle of the pandemic, when I broke down and cried to them about not being able to cope, was a low point. But they told me that I was doing fine. That I needed to not be so hard on myself and that everyone was struggling but that I was doing an amazing job and should be proud of myself.

A year on, I still don’t feel that. I feel like she told me just exactly what I needed to hear at the time to keep going and to not fall apart. But a year on, I really am falling apart now and eating an entire bag of supermarket triple chocolate cookies to myself for a morning snack is just a part of how to cope with that.

I hate that I’m doing it and watch myself, almost from a state of dissociation, as I stuff the last half into my mouth whilst no one else is watching. Tomorrow, or next week, I’ll do the same but I won’t care if someone is in the room with me anymore. I keep the packet of sweets in my work bag to have later. God, I’m disgusting. 

How much do I weigh now? It must be the heaviest I have ever been. I get home and decide to brave the scales. It’s been so long since I used them that when the LCD numbers flash up on the small grey screen I don’t flinch. I gasp audibly. My wife calls from the other room to ask if I am okay.

No. One hundred and eight point seven kilograms. That is seventeen stones. That is – mental maths – nearly two hundred and forty pounds. That is the same as a heavyweight boxer or a professional wrestler, or a front row rugby player. I am none of these things.

I put the scales back and make a promise to myself. “I will get below one hundred kilograms before the year is out.” That’s an achievable goal. I’m not going to starve myself, but I am going to start taking better care of my body. 

I head back into work and the salaried panic attack resumes instantly. The figures, the recruitment drive, the retention plan, the attainment gap, the database, the outreach, the skills audit, the business mapping, the meetings, the sideways looks, the comments, the performance review, the management committee, the social media strategy, the content delivery, the mental health crises, the cost of living crisis, the budget deficit, the missing resources, the absenteeism, the constant emails, the out of hours emails, the gmail messenger pings, the imposter syndrome, the creeping dread of failure, the plummeting self worth, the encroaching doubt, the, “Can you just’s”, the, “Oh by the way’s” and the, “We need to talk about your falling standards”. 

I split again. I am not good enough. I am a burden on those around me. I am a disappointment to everyone. I deserve to fail. Everyone else is better than me. I am a failure. I need to be someone else. 

No, stop that. 

I practice some self care. “I’m just popping out.” I go to McDonalds. I order a meal. I eat it in blissful silence. I make sure the nutritional information is turned away from me. I already feel inadequate, I don’t want to feel guilty as well today. 

Defeated. Deflated emotionally. Inflated gastrically. I head back to the office. I show grit. I grin. I show grim determination. “I will get through today.” I feel the sweat and the grease on my face and I wonder if I believe it. I survive. I go home. 

“I will start tomorrow,” I say to myself.  Time is the strangest of things. The older we get the more we feel its effects on our body. We know that we don’t have endless tomorrows, but we act as though we do. We know that time feels slower when we’re younger, and we know that we feel it start to speed up the older we get. We know that we’re accelerating through our life, and frankly, it’s fucking insulting when well meaning mindfulness apps tell us to ‘slow down and take some time for ourselves’. Yes that’s all well and good but when exactly? I’m bloody busy. But the universe, or God, or whatever, has a way of putting a cosmic speed bump in our way sometimes at just the point that we don’t expect it.

I am racing down one of life’s many roads and I don’t see it at first, you just feel it. I lift, lurching into the air and my stomach flips, I feel slightly weightless for a moment as the engine lights in my brain all flash red and amber at the same time. That moment feels like it lasts for a long time, it’s not fleeting. Everything seems to happen at that moment. And then I lose focus, I hit the road again and I swerve, unable to concentrate and I crash into an obstacle that I never even saw a few seconds ago. 

Brenton Thwaites hot. Brenton Thwaites topless. Brenton Thwaites bisexual. I find the entries in the Google search history as I’m looking for something else.

The crash comes quickly. I’m disorientated. I’m stunned and feel instantly sick. Shaking, my hand moves the mouse cursor and hovers over the second search. I click. His perfect antipodean body stands in jeans against a golden hour sunset. He looks off to the camera’s left. His brown hair looks like it is being swept gently by a warm breeze. His stomach is sculpted into a six pack, his pectoral muscles are firm, defined and perfect. His skin is a healthy tanned brown and his arms and shoulders are broad and strong. His face is youthful but mature. He looks younger than I think he is, or hope he is. His teeth are perfectly white and his sparkling eyes seem to be smiling at whatever he is looking at off camera. 

I click again. The next picture. He is in white Calvin Klein underwear. His thigh muscles are big but they’re well defined under his tight, perfectly smooth skin. He doesn’t seem to have any body hair. Possibly it’s Photoshopped, but maybe he waxes, or Veets, or shaves, and possibly he oils and moisturises his body to perfection each day. This time he looks at the camera. His eyes are smouldering. He’s not smiling here. But his jawline is exquisite. I feel my own jaw, and trace a line along the developing jowl under my chin. I look at his perfectly sculpted stomach muscles and his tight navel, and chiselled pecs. 

I look down at my own chest. My flabby man tits sag, hairy, pale and defeated. I look at the ladder of creases that climb down the rolls of fat underneath and how they seem to have a left/right pattern all the way to my bulging waistline. I look at the little bit of t-shirt lint stuck in the hair around my belly button. (It doesn’t deserve to be called a navel when it’s on a belly like this.) I remove it and let it drop feather-like to the floor.

I look at the grey hairs that have been starting to protrude from my melanin-tinged birthmark on the left of my belly. My gut. I am not him. I am this mess. I look at all of this and I crumble. No, I don’t crumble, I flop, I melt, I wilt. A belly this disgusting can’t crumble, it’s too gelatinous to crumble. It’s too flabby and floppy and flaccid to crumble. Empires crumble. Rock faces and stone buildings crumble. I don’t deserve that epithet. 

The thought that burrowed becomes a crack that splits everything in my head. A split is when everything becomes a binary along the borderline that is my mind. Good and bad. Light and dark. Black and white. Ugly and beautiful. Perfect and terrible. Loved and hated. Secure. Abandoned. Suddenly there is no more room for greyscale, for nuance and interpretation. There is only the split.

I am not what she wants. 

I am not what she deserves. 

I think about how she has put up with my wretched body. I think about how she wishes for someone better. Someone driven and filled with a desire and a hunger for life. I think about how she must be desperate to escape from me. How she must swerve my needs for intimacy; the proof of her love for me. I think again of her kind words and boil inside as it becomes clear to me that all this time, she has been fantasising about Brenton Thwaites. Her mind lost in blissful reverie as she tolerates the emotional weight of her depressed and anxious husband, and instead drifts into the arms of him. 

I crash again. 

Tears stream down my face, taking the last of any confidence I had left in reserve with them. They fall like summer rain, heavy and warm, but instead of providing respite from the heat of a tropical day, they add to it. The well of shame and fear in my stomach is rising into my chest and throat. I feel the heat of it radiate out through my chest, my blood pumping the self loathing faster and harder around my body.

Adrenaline courses its way through me as I get ready to run, or to attack. Neither come. My body remains rigid; damp and aching, it cycles every thought I have had about my body back to me. “I’ll lose it eventually”, “I don’t look too bad”, “She loves me for who I am, not what I look like”, “I think I look quite strong”.

The lies come back around. The voice of each of them is hostile and cold. They build to a crescendo and it’s impossible to block them out. As a distraction, my right index finger starts to scratch just above the elbow crook of my left arm. In a moment or two I have torn the epidermis. It stings and distracts me from the voices. I move my finger and begin again. Scratching with purpose. I begin to bleed and I focus on my weakness as I feel any hunger subside from my body. 

As the scabs and scratches on my arms grow over the following weeks, I reach my goal. The stress envelops me and instead of just slowing my metabolism whilst I am eating too much food, it stalls my body to the point that eating feels close to impossible. One day, I eat a cereal bar. I throw it up. Another, I eat an apple. Or rather, half an apple. I can’t finish it.

I smoke instead of eating. I smoke instead of scratching myself. I get medicated again. Fluoxetine has a great side effect of making you feel completely nauseous. For a month I pick at very little. I build up to eating perhaps a meal a day. My wife looks at me sympathetically. “Don’t eat it if you can’t manage it. It’s better to keep something down than nothing.” She’s feeding me. She’s trying to keep me fattened up. But why? She hates my body. She wants Brenton Thwaites to hold her, to caress her.

I hit ninety-eight kilograms. Let’s keep going now. Let’s get to ninety-five. Finally I eat a whole meal. My wife praises me. It does feel good to eat it. But the thought is burrowed in now. I need to look like him. I need to be who she wants me to be. 

“Who do I want me to be?” I think to myself. The thought is batted away. “Who cares?” comes the reply. “If she leaves you, the world will only look at you for your body first, so keep your focus there. You’re under one hundred kilograms and it’s only August.” I know it will never be enough, but at least it’s something.