Brittany Silveira
Life by Numbers
At 32, my puny life has been entirely dictated by numbers.
1,200 calories—the recommended daily intake to thwart any unwanted extras: when I learn that all-consuming target as a pre-teen, lying on my yoga mat, watching a Special K diet commercial, surrounded by piles of weight-loss magazines, doing 100 leg lifts per side, there’s no escaping the prison; thus begin the quotidian calculations and bedtime recaps, demonizing every bite that passes my lips, the relentless tallying-up of damage.
0 for endless black coffee (occasional jitters, chest pain, and heart palpitations—the price to pay for cutting appetite), 10 for lettuce, 80 for yogurt, 95 for an apple, 120 for oatmeal, 500 for a measly bowl of pasta (appalling), then destroy all efforts at dusk by gorging on any scraps these barbaric hands can scrounge up.
145 pounds, the literal highest of the lows, fueled by midnight binge-and-purge sessions, awakening chipmunk-faced, pimple-ridden, knuckle-bruised with an acid-seared throat, ballooned belly rock hard, stuffing my lumps and rolls under baggy sweats.
125 pounds of “set-point” weight—still too plump for my pesky stature of 5’2", where I once attained the pinnacle of prepubescent-yet-just-womanly-enough at my thinnest of
105 pounds during a week of daily sex, sunbathing, all-inclusive Cuban cocktails, and feigned contentment: blind to my newfound, recklessly coveted slim figure—how I’d finally reached the peak! unlocked the door! become the ultimate me!
20, the age of unconsciously whittling away, barely sustaining my slender (at last!) physique on nicotine, marijuana, alcohol; suppressing, constantly—hunger, needs, thoughts, dreams, desires; ensnared in the heaviness of invisible chains.
8 years since exercise became a part of my lifestyle and I still haven’t demystified the elusive puzzle of “self-love”—this is how I know I will never be satisfied, will never accept this body, will never wrap my grateful arms around it and thank it for everything it does, everything it allows me to do.
12 years since I’ve stepped on a scale because those damning digits would dismantle me in a cruel way that cannot be pieced back together.
2 inches of extra height—I swear that’s all I’d need for life to be better, for my shape to disperse itself more evenly, to not have to suck in my stomach every second spent in public, for my bra bulge to not be so maddening, for my bat wings to not jiggle so grotesquely, for my jowls to not droop so low, for my chin to not double so harshly, to blot out my troublesome “earn and burn” mentality, for food to be anything other than a villainized, inevitable precursor to flab.
36C deflated breasts as though I’ve borne a brood of children, but this saggy shame is all their own, and I can’t tear my dismayed eyes away from the horror when I catch my reflection, or feel the stickiness of sweat pooling against my ribcage, or use my hands to hoist them back up—can you tie ‘em in a knot, can you tie ‘em in a bow?
35—the “best year” of my mother’s life—scorched into my memory as the benchmark of my worries about growing old; its imminent doom warps my mind because what have I accomplished thus far?
1,095 days until that grim goalpost smites me, yet nothing has changed; I am still the profoundly self-conscious
8-year-old with thick thighs chafing in crinkly shorts, scrutinizing the width of my arms, the profile of my head, the size of my ears, the bushiness of my brows; I am still the
10-year-old who cowers when my older brother spits out, disgusted, that I am too hairy to be a girl; and then, at
13, when a sneering classmate looms over me and asks why my arms are so “furry,” I morph into an even bigger beast who never defeats the monstrous self-criticism that persecutes me and transmutes into a ruthless sickness by
15, when I learn certain things should never be done to wither away into a more appealing version of yourself (let-the-washroom-sink-drown-out-the-gagging kinds of “fixes”).
31, bare faced when seeing a family friend for the first time in over a decade, she is aghast and I am unable to prevent the awkward misstep that makes me want to crawl out of my skin: my God, what happened to your eye? I chuckle, embarrassed and apologetic of the racoon-reminiscent, cavernous dark circle on my left side that she’s actually mistaken for a bruise—a punch in the face: Ah, no, just not wearing any concealer today, haha, sorry (to whom? for what?).
Every year, I crumble deeper into self-crucifixion. Every fold and follicle, pound and pore, magnified. What a waste to have been gifted this fully functioning body from generations of strong, glorious women—only to despise and desecrate it based on aesthetics.
Numbers that take up everything. Numbers that add up to nothing.
Until they run out.
1,200 calories—the recommended daily intake to thwart any unwanted extras: when I learn that all-consuming target as a pre-teen, lying on my yoga mat, watching a Special K diet commercial, surrounded by piles of weight-loss magazines, doing 100 leg lifts per side, there’s no escaping the prison; thus begin the quotidian calculations and bedtime recaps, demonizing every bite that passes my lips, the relentless tallying-up of damage.
0 for endless black coffee (occasional jitters, chest pain, and heart palpitations—the price to pay for cutting appetite), 10 for lettuce, 80 for yogurt, 95 for an apple, 120 for oatmeal, 500 for a measly bowl of pasta (appalling), then destroy all efforts at dusk by gorging on any scraps these barbaric hands can scrounge up.
145 pounds, the literal highest of the lows, fueled by midnight binge-and-purge sessions, awakening chipmunk-faced, pimple-ridden, knuckle-bruised with an acid-seared throat, ballooned belly rock hard, stuffing my lumps and rolls under baggy sweats.
125 pounds of “set-point” weight—still too plump for my pesky stature of 5’2", where I once attained the pinnacle of prepubescent-yet-just-womanly-enough at my thinnest of
105 pounds during a week of daily sex, sunbathing, all-inclusive Cuban cocktails, and feigned contentment: blind to my newfound, recklessly coveted slim figure—how I’d finally reached the peak! unlocked the door! become the ultimate me!
20, the age of unconsciously whittling away, barely sustaining my slender (at last!) physique on nicotine, marijuana, alcohol; suppressing, constantly—hunger, needs, thoughts, dreams, desires; ensnared in the heaviness of invisible chains.
8 years since exercise became a part of my lifestyle and I still haven’t demystified the elusive puzzle of “self-love”—this is how I know I will never be satisfied, will never accept this body, will never wrap my grateful arms around it and thank it for everything it does, everything it allows me to do.
12 years since I’ve stepped on a scale because those damning digits would dismantle me in a cruel way that cannot be pieced back together.
2 inches of extra height—I swear that’s all I’d need for life to be better, for my shape to disperse itself more evenly, to not have to suck in my stomach every second spent in public, for my bra bulge to not be so maddening, for my bat wings to not jiggle so grotesquely, for my jowls to not droop so low, for my chin to not double so harshly, to blot out my troublesome “earn and burn” mentality, for food to be anything other than a villainized, inevitable precursor to flab.
36C deflated breasts as though I’ve borne a brood of children, but this saggy shame is all their own, and I can’t tear my dismayed eyes away from the horror when I catch my reflection, or feel the stickiness of sweat pooling against my ribcage, or use my hands to hoist them back up—can you tie ‘em in a knot, can you tie ‘em in a bow?
35—the “best year” of my mother’s life—scorched into my memory as the benchmark of my worries about growing old; its imminent doom warps my mind because what have I accomplished thus far?
1,095 days until that grim goalpost smites me, yet nothing has changed; I am still the profoundly self-conscious
8-year-old with thick thighs chafing in crinkly shorts, scrutinizing the width of my arms, the profile of my head, the size of my ears, the bushiness of my brows; I am still the
10-year-old who cowers when my older brother spits out, disgusted, that I am too hairy to be a girl; and then, at
13, when a sneering classmate looms over me and asks why my arms are so “furry,” I morph into an even bigger beast who never defeats the monstrous self-criticism that persecutes me and transmutes into a ruthless sickness by
15, when I learn certain things should never be done to wither away into a more appealing version of yourself (let-the-washroom-sink-drown-out-the-gagging kinds of “fixes”).
31, bare faced when seeing a family friend for the first time in over a decade, she is aghast and I am unable to prevent the awkward misstep that makes me want to crawl out of my skin: my God, what happened to your eye? I chuckle, embarrassed and apologetic of the racoon-reminiscent, cavernous dark circle on my left side that she’s actually mistaken for a bruise—a punch in the face: Ah, no, just not wearing any concealer today, haha, sorry (to whom? for what?).
Every year, I crumble deeper into self-crucifixion. Every fold and follicle, pound and pore, magnified. What a waste to have been gifted this fully functioning body from generations of strong, glorious women—only to despise and desecrate it based on aesthetics.
Numbers that take up everything. Numbers that add up to nothing.
Until they run out.
Montreal writer Brittany Silveira has been published in Adore Art Magazine, Superpresent, Tension Literary, Swim Press, and Marrow Magazine. Her writing often delves into womanhood: the good, the bad—the hunger of it all. Though there’s hardly anything that won’t make her open up a new blank document. You can read her work on her website or Instagram.
