I hate my body, and because I hate my body, I hate myself.

I've had a long and complicated and, quite frankly, boring relationship with the way I look. It's the same old white-girl middle-class bullshit that all the teen interest magazines warned us about back in 1999, before prescription drugs replaced the hysterical monthly long read on "issues." I first binged and purged when I was 13, I restricted my food intake my last two years of school, I dropped to 108 pounds three years ago and have since rocketed up to 153.

I hate it. I want it to stop. I obviously want to stop gaining weight, but I also just want so badly to stop hating this stupid body. I cried tonight, because my BMI is teetering at 29 - I'm just six pounds away from being obese, a prospect that terrifies me - and I feel like no matter what I do, I just can't win. I can't smoke this away, I can't purge this away, and going to the gym feels humiliating. I feel like a beached whale. My socks make those wrinkled marks around my ankles. I have a double chin all the time.

I hate it so much.

I'm fat. I'm not pudgy or cute or whatever. I'm just fat. I was leafing through a magazine and they had some photospread about pregnancy, and I fit nicely between the second and third trimester. I've got fat-girl arms, and love handles, and my tits are just outrageously big. My body has become this huge other thing, something that feels far away from the way I want to look. It's shocking every time I look in the mirror, because when I was thinner - 108, 122, 132 - I thought I was huge. Now I actually am.

I know, this is so crazy self-indulgent. But understand: all the things I used to do to control this horrible, ill-tempered body have been taken away from me. I mean, I quit them, because they were killing me - good for me! - but the thing that I was so scared of for so long has happened. I just want to hide. I'm so ashamed. I hate this. I'm crying right now.