I hate the Superbowl. The Superbowl doesn't include friends and drinking and cheering and laughing at commercials for me.
Every year it rolls around and I'm reminded of my first time. Our lives are full of "firsts". Most are beautiful, exciting, thrilling, and we look back on these memories fondly. If I could take myself back to Superbowl XXXVII, I'd hold my 14 year old self's hand, look her in the eye, and tell her that this journey she is about to embark on will wreak havoc on her body, tear her down for the next decade, and teach her more about herself than most people get to learn in a lifetime.
I hate the Superbowl. I wish I could have been there to hold her hand as she dragged herself down the hall to her room. And I wish I could have been there to hold back her hair as she painfully, silently, forced herself to throw up into that little purple garbage can. I wish I could have been there to calmly tell her that she needn't spend the next ten years with her head in a toilet.
I wish I could hold every 14 year old's hand, boys and girls, and tell them it's ok to be loud. Tell them they are not too big, society just cannot handle their big spirits and all of their energy. I wish I could express to the world to stop trying to smother yourselves and stop trying to fit.
I hate the Superbowl, because every year I'm reminded of my addiction, and the first time I experimented with trying to fit.
And every year it gets further away. And every year I still can't believe this is something that I still struggle with. Thirteen years later.
I've had many other firsts, and lasts, since then. But none as prominent as my first purge. My life seems to have been numbed by my eating disorder, since, for years, nothing else mattered.
Every year the Superbowl comes around and I remember a time in my life when it seemed there was no other choice but to go to extremes, to harm, to hurt, to bend, to break.
Looking through the rest of my life, oddly enough, the only other anniversary date that stands out to me is June 22, 2009. This is the last day I ever weighed myself. And a few months later, I smashed my scale. Something that meant the world to me, something that harmed me and broke me. I broke it right back. I took back my power from the scale. Every day that passes is a day that I hold the power, taking it back from the scale.
I can look back on this time in my life with regret, and wish I had done something differently. But, more productively, every Superbowl that passes is an anniversary that I can take my power back and know that I never have to live that way again.
I can hate the Superbowl, because of what it represents for me. But I can be proud of all I've learned, and how far I've come. And how far I plan to go.
