I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Where does this stuff come from??? (Warning, it's pretty dark and horrible.)
Saturday afternoon. So, I was driving from the movies (I saw "Laws of Attraction" - Pierce Brosnan is as hunky as ever) to Target when, out of nowhere, I started thinking about my eating and how I use it as a way of feeling better about myself and then the thought popped into my head, "just like I do when I have sex with a man I don't love just because I'm trying to substitute sex for love." Whoa. That just totally came out of left field and the worst part is that it's true.
(I can't believe I'm writing this, but perhaps if I can put it to paper, I'll be able to put the shame and disgust and self hatred away and move forward.)
I have slept with more men than I can remember. I've done it after parties, while drunk, with men whose last names I never knew. I've done it with men that physically repulsed me and then beaten myself bloody mentally over it afterwards. I've done it with men that I knew were only with me because my self esteem was so low that they could use me and then discard me. I've done it on first dates. I've done it on one night stands. I have, in short, treated my body like some kind of dumpster, a container of filthy, horrible things.
I have also put worthless, faithless men ahead of my friends because I was so desperate for the validation that only love, or what could pass for it in my mind, could bring me. I have pushed nearly every friend I've ever had away with my selfishness and single minded obsession with finding Love. Why Love? Well, of course, because Love will make me whole and will mend this huge hold in my heart where my own love for myself should be. That's the way it works, right? Sure!
As all of these thoughts started slamming into the walls of my brain, I started to cry. Not little, quiet tears, but huge, hot, salty rivers running down my face. I put my hand to my mouth to stop myself from screaming with the agony of it. I felt again the shame my actions had brought with them, and I couldn't hold back the heaving sobs. I pulled into a parking spot at Target and just sobbed and sobbed, safely ensconced behind my sunglasses, of course.
I cried until the need to cry subsided, which was about 10 minutes, I think. I did my shopping, loaded up the car, and came home. I've had the oddest sense of calm since I got here, as though something important happened, and I knew that I needed to write about it - put fingers to keyboard, as it were - just to help it all come out. It's as though there's this terrible, poisonous place that I've found inside me and I just want to empty it so that I can let it heal. I don't want to just close it up again, as I've done so many times before, because I will never be free of it as long as I do that. This time, it's time to feel the pain, to own it, and then, please God, to move on.
An online friend said to me, not so very long ago, that they were afraid to meet me because they weren't the person I thought they were and that they had habits that they weren't proud of. If today's post offends or disappoints any of you, I can only say that I was never really the person you thought I was. This is who I am - a compulsive overeater with low self esteem who has engaged in meaningless sex in order to fill a void in her life. I'm not proud, but it's who I am, and I'm not going to pretend that it isn't anymore.
Thursday evening. I was reading another weight loss blog yesterday, and I apologize for not being able to remember which one, and the author made an analogy between hearing that a friend was allowing someone to abuse her and hearing that a friend was abusing her body by eating inappropriately. Her argument being that you would never tell someone being physically abused that it was OK and that they could just try harder tomorrow, you'd tell them to get the heck out of the situation before they got hurt, so you ought to feel the same way about someone abusing themselves with food. I'm not sure that I agree with her on that, and the two situations are worlds apart, but it did start me thinking.
What I do when I eat too much, or eat the wrong things, or don't exercise, is abuse - I am abusing my body. There are no bruises or scars, but my visible sign of abuse is my body itself. The size of my body is proof that it's being abused. I would never sit back and tacitly approve of a friend being abused by doing nothing to stop it, so why am I content to do just that when it comes to my own body? Surely I should love myself no less than my friends, right?
I will say that I'm doing better today, significantly better than yesterday, the day before, or any day since Saturday's little mishap. Something really seemed to click into place when I thought about the connection between abuse and my eating. I don't know if it will last and I'm not setting any long term goals, so it's just the next meal and the one after that will take care of itself.
Wednesday night. So many meetings, so little time. I cannot wait until this week is over. My days are solid meetings each day and we seem to get another major project that is due "by the end of the month" every time I turn around. Today, we had a three hour meeting. Three. Hours. We did have a Bio Break after 130 minutes, and I thought that was kind, but three hours is still too long to be in a conference room with no windows, an InFocus unit, and a laptop armed with multiple PowerPoint presentations. Ugh. You know, my degree was in English Lit - I should be explaining the importance of water as a theme in "The Sun Also Rises" or expounding on why Jane Austen was a feminist. How did my life become a huge techie geek fest?
Interesting weather shift today. Yesterday, we set a record for the highest temperature on record at 90 degrees, at the beach. When I got home last night, the house was a toasty 86. Overnight, however, a major storm front moved in. When I got home today, we had clouds everywhere, blustery winds, and I wanted to cuddle up with a throw on the couch. We don't have weather here in southern California. I think someone has mixed us up with the east coast or something. "Hey! Yes, you there in Virginia. I think you've got our mild, sunny weather and if you'll just pass it back over here, I'll gladly throw this changeable stuff in an envelope and FedEx it to you, OK?"
Anyone notice what I'm not talking about? Yes, that's right, that would be my eating. My explanation for that is simple: my mother always told me that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. My mother is always right. (Thanks, Mom!)
Tuesday evening. Sunday, in the midst of running errands in the blazing heat, I saw a homeless man sprawled out, sound asleep, on the grass at my local shopping center. My first reaction, I'm not proud to admit, was to think, "Ewwwwwwww, how gross," because he was clearly unkempt and looked, well, homeless. Immediately after that thought, I slapped myself mentally and said, "that man is a human being, too. He's down on his luck and I'm sure he'd rather be anywhere except out on the streets. Shame on you for being so small minded!" Then, I said a very quick prayer for God's protection on him before I continued on my way.
For some reason, that incident has really stuck with me. Here I am, obsessed about my weight and the clothes that I want from Evans UK that I can't have, and this man has no home. As I lay in bed last night, I said another prayer that God take care of this man and the rest of the disenfranchised in our society, and felt incredibly blessed. We have so much to be thankful for, each and every one of us, and yet, at least for myself, show so little awareness of how lucky we are. There are families around the world that cannot lie in their homes at night without worrying that a missile will land on their roof or that someone will break into their house and hurt them or their family, and that is tragic.
I don't want to minimize anyone's pain because, no matter what anyone else's situation is, your own pain is totally valid. I guess what I'm proposing is that we need to be more grateful for the good things in our lives, because we, as a nation, are so very blessed. I know that not everyone believes in God, or believes in Him the way that I do, but I think we can all say "Thank You" to something or someone, and I believe we should. Perhaps, by focusing briefly outside ourselves, we can gain some perspective on our own travails and find new solutions or even learn to live with what we have.
Monday afternoon. Last night, while surfing the web for fun clothing in my size (a fruitless exercise most days), I ran across this site and my avaricious little heart began to pound. I shopped at Evans in 2000 while I was in the UK with my mother and loved it then, so I merrily began adding things to my cart. By the time I was done, I'd whipped up several hundred pounds worth of clothing (it really is gorgeous - this is not difficult to do) and was ready to check out. I clicked the little "check out" button and, to my dismay, discovered that there wasn't a place to enter my country, nor my ZIP code. They don't ship outside the UK!!! Horror!
So, here's my thought: certainly someone reading this must live within the lovely confines of the United Kingdom and be willing to accept shipment of a reasonably sized package for me. Once said package is delivered, I can just get FedEx or UPS to come and pick it up for delivery to my greedy little hands. This wouldn't cost you a thing other than the time to bend over and pick the package up from your entryway and put it back out again once the pick up is arranged. I would be happy to do the same for you, should there be something you need from California or anywhere in the US. This could be the start of a very satisfying arrangement!
On the food and weight front, I weighed myself this morning because I enjoy suffering, and found, to my surprise, that I'd lost six pounds from my last weigh in on March 15. I'm not sure if this is a real loss or not - it might be water. I don't feel any smaller and my clothes are not any looser, so I'm not getting excited. Food is OK today, although I feel sort of on the edge of another binge. It's so odd how cerebral my eating is once you know where to look. Whenever I eat something I wasn't planning on, there's always something going on in my head that triggers it. I never realized that until just recently, because I've really been paying attention. It's fascinating stuff, I tell you!
Sunday morning. To quote Sheryl Crow, "God, I feel like Hell." I woke up feeling sluggish, slightly nauseated, but absolutely certain that one binge isn't going to knock me off of the path I want to walk.
Just to help me focus on what's important, here's why I want to gain control of my binge eating (in no particular order):
* I want to lose weight. Seems pretty obvious, but you don't actually have to lose weight in the process of stopping your binges. In addition to not binging, I am also restricting my calories so that I will lose weight.
* Binge eating is terrible for my self esteem, which is very small and weak anyway, so I need to do anything I can to help it along.
* I am a diabetic and I shouldn't eat a ton of calories all at once. I shouldn't eat a ton of calories ever, but definitely not in a 20 minute span of time. Losing some weight would definitely help this, too.
* I don't like walking. Walking makes me feel slow and ungainly. I am forced to walk for exercise right now because my weight would put too much pressure on my joints if I were to run. I only need to lose about 30 pounds before I can start a walk to jog program and, if I can get my eating under better control, that would be about three months away. I could be running by September - heaven!
I do realize that the binges are merely an outward manifestation of something going on inside me and that I have issues to deal with - they won't magically go away. I am working on the inside, too, it's just that you can't see the progress as easily, only the road I still have to travel.
