obsessed with obsession?
obsessed with obsession?
inspecting my purity complex
// content warning: disordered eating, obsessive behavior
the urge to self-actualize via casual rebranding has arrived again at my door as it does every autumn, always around the same time i start noticing the asters. this year it takes the shape of things and so i spend some quality time with my forever bestie pinterest, creating hyper-specific mood boards for a new, better self i’m convinced would absolutely wear a collared shirt under a sweater. i do this mostly so i know what to look for at the thrift store, so i have a vision in mind of the general vibe i’m curating in this next season of my life.
i haven’t bought a single new item of clothing in over a year, which feels to me like both an accomplishment and a vague foreshadowing of a mental illness resurgence in the works.
i love thrifting. everything about it. but my obsession with secondhand clothing, and secondhand shopping in general, has of late turned into a sort of competition with myself, a game to win, and to lose if i find myself “tainting” my closet with ASOS. idiot girl! as i attempt to revamp my wardrobe, i’ve become aware of my weird resistance to buying something from a website (gasp!), even if said website is plastered with an exuberant quantity of sage green graphics boasting of sustainable fashion practices. i’m trying to relax, which is actually one of my favorite oxymorons, and reminding myself that having an 100% thrifted wardrobe is not winning me any awards, even if i do sort of deserve one.
you can, of course, make the case for personal fulfillment – that prioritizing secondhand consumption can be rewarding for me in the privacy of my offline reality (huh?), regardless of any hypothetical good-person validation from others. that was my whole deal, the only deal, when i started frequenting thrift stores ten years ago. i just wanted to do it. i knew buying secondhand was a more conscious way to participate in capitalism, if you believe that can be a thing, helping to keep clothes out of landfills and denounce fast fashion’s disturbing labor practices. plus, it was considerably cheaper than going to the mall, which i hated anyway, save the food court. i enjoyed the treasure hunt for vintage pieces that were well-made and felt truly one-of-a-kind. these are still the primary reasons i thrift, but i have to shudder and squint when i realize it’s no longer solely my passion and values prompting my choice making, but something sneakier, an urge I’m familiar with but don’t always recognize right away.
neurosis! gasp. i want to wag my finger at my own brain like a disapproving boomer. once again this purity complex rises to the surface of my life, like an unwelcome herpes outbreak, or an egg-gone-bad in a pot of boiling water. people tend to think of purity in the context of gender politics or religion, but the pressure to be pure can creep like a poisonous vine into any aspect of life, as long as it can find a door or window left ajar.
i’ve been flirting with purity since i was far too young to understand it, spending five out of seven days a week staring at my adolescent body in the mirror in ballet class, which was exactly as excruciating as it sounds.
“if you want the perfect ballet body, you have to stop putting dressing on your salad.”
“so we look our best on stage, everyone should start dieting a month before the show.”
i grew up on all or nothing. i could choose perfection or i could choose failure. abby lee miller truly and iconically summarized the general sentiment of competitive dance in the 2010s with “second is the first to lose” and “save your tears for the pillow,” both of which i imagine will continue to haunt zillennial dancers for the rest of eternity.
at the peak of my high school dance career, i went vegan “for the animals,” a charming and convenient cover story that would disguise my new weight loss regimen. it ruined me. my downfall had little to do with veganism itself and everything to do with my desperate and misplaced grappling for perfect health, the crippling orthorexia that quickly overtook me, spreading like a parasitic film over my insides. my hair was falling out. i was starving. i lost my period. it was like having a different brain.
i genuinely have little memory of that time period, besides obsessing over what i was going to eat (mostly bananas and absurd quantities of potatoes) and when. it took going away to college, quitting dance, and making new friends who forced me to eat sugar and fat (i only allowed myself peanut butter once a week) to regain my health and selfhood. for years i struggled with my relationship to food and occasionally still do, but in the rearview mirror and old journal entries i can see how it all happened:
i couldn’t control my life, so i controlled what i ate. i controlled my body. and now, i guess, i’ll control my closet. with all this in mind it becomes astonishingly clear that I’m not actually all that bothered by a speculative ASOS purchase – what irks me is the (entirely fabricated) absence of purity, the criteria for which i also made up in my head, all in the name of contriving some semblance of tangible order.
i took your arm and showed you down this long, dark hallway because i’ve realized that written on its walls are warnings i scribbled for a future self, unsightly memories that now look something like lessons. it’s hard not to be embarrassed by a used-to-be brain, as if there’s shame in not knowing before you knew. looking back, it was as though this foreign entity had invaded my body, and decided to host a little instagram takeover for a few years. i did not provide formal approval for any of the content shared.
i’m not digging up this garbage to prove how damaged i am, because i get ample opportunity to do that every time i drink whiskey. nor am i making the case for “learning” from past episodes of mental illness in order to prevent relapsing down the line. no, i’m simply interested in my obsession with obsession. the sudden awareness of this purity inclination returning donned in a new disguise got me thinking about compulsion, about addiction, about trauma, the way they weave shadowy lines through our lives in a similar, undulating way – lying dormant for a while, and then sprouting up abruptly overnight like a pimple, intent on ruining (at least) your next few days. how long will it be until it’s gone? how long will it be until it’s back?
sometimes i write thinking i’m describing universal experiences, that everyone will read this and think, yes, i, too, am plagued by the multi-contextual urge for purity, obviously! other times i think i must be the dumbest, most unhinged and dramatic person in the world. this particular time, as i read and reread this, i think i might just have some mild OCD, though clearly i’m wildly unqualified to self-diagnose.
it’s laughable almost, what a privilege it is to curate a wardrobe in the first place, and here’s all this whiny rumination on veganism and perfection. i suppose this is how we convince ourselves that our challenges, our inner complexities, are not worth a second glance. i am not in the business of feeling sorry for myself but again and again i shove mirrors under microscopes, picking apart my every cell until they all fit back together in a thousand new ways.
i log onto anything and post a photo or a meme and say here is a life i am living. it’s always harder to describe what it looks like on the inside.
what’s fascinating and scary about my abusive relationship with purity is i mostly enjoy the game of it all, the challenge of maintaining my composure. it’s like being alone out at sea, setting sails in brutal winds, and from the beach just a mile or so away, it’s a perfect blue day. on the deck, it’s back-breaking work, but if i pull just the right ropes, the sight of the boat from afar is serene. that’s the thing about mental illness – you can’t see the wind from shore. it’s only the capsizing that makes a scene.