Sick!

(Originally published 1/18/2006)

Oprah Winfrey is highly credited for bringing the issue of sexual molestation into the national dialogue. Some would argue that had she not been so up front and open about a topic that had for generations plagued millions of families then not as many people would have have had the courage to come out and ask for help. Well, brace yourself. I’m about to bring a new conversation to the dinner table. It’s called Relationship Anorexia. And I have it. I have it bad.

I’d been thinking a great deal about negative body image and eating disorders, how many experts blame such conditions on the way society and the mass media depict beauty to the public. It’s almost as if the zillions of people who either don’t eat or puke up what little they do eat have finally given into the powerful marketing campaign staged against them. It would be like I lived somewhere like West Virginia, bombarded by whatever images those poor souls are bombarded with, and finally my subconscious gave in and I registered to vote as a Republican. I wouldn’t know why I did, but suddenly I would hate myself for having ever logged on to Moveon.org. I think this is similar to what happens to the millions of people suffering from anorexia and bullemia. It just takes one more glimpse of Nicole Kidman’s collarbone on the cover of US Weekly and the next thing you know you haven’t eaten anything except a piece of ice since Thursday.

Luckily, I do not suffer from negative body image. If anything, I suffer from positive body image, meaning that I think I’m cuter than I actually am (which can lead to frequent confusion as to why no one talks to me at bars except the friends I came in with). However, I recently realized that I have become a victim to one of society’s other message bombardments designed to make people who otherwise would not feel like complete sh*t: Relationship Anorexia.

Relationship Anorexia, I have decided, is the condition to which one feels self-concious, anxious, and isolated in regards to their single status. This condition is brought on by the overwhelming presence of couples and families in our society. Every song we sing along to, every television show we watch, every magazine article we read is either hyping a relationship, telling someone how to improve a relationship, or centered around someone obsessed with being in a relationship. Relationship Anorexia is the end result of a culture obsessed with happy endings and the fear of living alone.

And what’s so terrifying about being alone? I find the idea of coming home from work and having to explain to someone else why you took your pants off at the door to be terrifying. I also find it terrifying to think that I may never see but just 2 penises for the rest of my life, mine and the guy’s who I kick in my sleep. But recently I was overwhelmed with the idea that I may never meet anyone and my comfort level with my over-the-top selfishness completely disappeared. I felt freakish, like a slimy monster in the street, simply because everyone appeared to be dating someone, everyone but me!

Maybe I’d seen one too many Drew Barrymore movies. Or maybe all the press finally made me jealous of Tom and Katie. But for whatever reason I allowed myself to be freaked out. Instead of looking at my life with gratitude and saying, "I don’t have to share my bucket of delicious fried chicken with anyone," I began seeing my life with sorrow, saying, "I have no one to share this delicious bucket of fried chicken with."

So recently, I met someone, a perfect someone, a someone who knew me and found amusing (or at the very least tolerable) every weird and crazy thing about me. This someone is funny, smart, ambitious, cute, and didn’t make me feel stupid the first time he saw me naked. However, after spending three days together I found myself resenting him for being in my space, for talking to me, for even holding the elevator for me.

Perhaps I am not destined to be married, to vacation and grocery shop with someone, to attend boring office Christmas parties with someone, to watch someone get old and fat and leave me for some twenty year old floozy when I’m 55. Maybe it’s just not in my nature to share with and listen to someone, to support someone, or to rub someone’s shoulders when they’re sick. Maybe that homeless woman who spit on me last winter was right. I am an a**hole.

But a**hole status aside (this is a trait I’d suspected that I’d carried for years), there was something inside me that wanted to be nice to him and wanted him to pay attention to me. Where did this come from? Why would someone such as myself who holds their time alone in such high regard feel like I was incapable and missing out on something? Simple: Relationship Anorexia. I am a conflicted product of a society that tells me that I am not much of anything without someone else standing in as half of me, that I am incapable of being whole on my own. This is not only irritating to me, but more so to people such as this really great guy who I was nice to at first when I thought I wanted a boyfriend then ended up treating like sh*t when I realized that I didn’t.

Just as regular anorexia destroys people’s comfort zones and threatens their ways of life, so does Relationship Anorexia. It turns perfectly functioning, reasonable humans into soft, lonely piles of fluff who, when they inevitably crash, will pull down any sucker standing in their way grinning and asking them to dinner. Had society never thrust Relationship Anorexia on me, I would never have thought that I needed a boyfriend, tried to get one, then made some innocent, caring guy feel like crap.

I encourage everyone to bring the topic of Relationship Anorexia to the surface, because a society in silence is a society that breeds more victims. So bring the conversation to work, to church, to the neighborhood block party. End the violence. Bring it to the dinner table like Oprah brought incest and time will bring all of its sufferers out into the open and heal their pain.
I would love to have someone to discuss this with at dinner, but I am single and eat most of my meals alone. Hopefully I will never choke while eating because there will not be anyone there to try and save me or call 911. Because I am ugly and gross and weird and single. And nobody loves me. And I’m ugly.

God, I’m so lonely! Crap! I caught it again!