TW: Disordered eating, weight, numbers.
I’ve struggled a lot with disordered eating. I have been improving greatly, and I’m so grateful, but one of those reasons is because I don’t allow myself to step on the scale. Even at the doctor, I will ask them not to tell me my weight. I know you should base your confidence off of how you feel about yourself, not the number on the scale. Still, my mind lets a number dictate how I feel about myself. I hate that regardless of the number I see, it will not warrant a good feeling, or outcome. This is a piece I wrote one night regarding this (I’ve never written a poem before, so bear with me, lol).
A World Without Numbers
A language without numbers Is perfect for me Maybe then I will feel worthy Of what life has to feed I could have pizza And soda And still feel like me The digits won’t decide If I get to eat In a world without numbers I would have peace of mind There won’t be evil figures In my head on rewind Fluctuations up and down It all ends the same Make it go lower No matter the ache So arrest the digits For they’ve become felons Vandalizing my thoughts With pounds armed as weapons
Unruly Bodies 
What a beautiful poem. Numbers destroy us just as much as they do validate us. I’ve thought about how numbers rule our lives countless times. Grades, weight on a scale, miles on your car, votes in an election, people you’ve slept with, amount of times you do different things. We tend to tie ourselves up in these numbers that only have value when we give it to them. At the end of the day, the number will never be good enough for us. If we must label ourselves, do it with love and kindness. We are not numbers, we are so much more complex than that. No number can represent something so beautiful.
I really love your poem. I have also struggled with disordered eating in the past, and I was checking my weight every day to make sure the number was decreasing every time. It is crazy to think about how much we let something as arbitrary as numbers dictate our lives. I really like the part of your poem that says “I could eat have pizza and soda and still feel like me,” because that is the goal and should always be the goal. Being happy about replenishing your body and having feel-good food should always make us feel good in our bodies.
Thank you so much for being so vulnerable with us and what a well done poem! Your poem is relatable in so many ways to me as I feel numbers often consuming my thoughts constantly whether it be in the context of food that you write about or in reference to grades. Generally though, this idea that numbers, though they themselves do not hold any connotation, when socially constructed to be thought of a certain way can become “felons” and be used to alter how we feel about ourselves is such an important observation.