Eating Pain

I eat my pain and wear my shame for everyone to see.
All the sad and all the mad are so tasty to me
I salt my pain and season my hate
'cause a little spice makes it great.
When I feel pain it's in my tummy
and I cover it with food, cuz food is yummy
Food makes me feel good?
but doesn't work like it should
The sweets, the chips, and all that I take
is only food which becomes weight
which becomes shame
and that makes pain

Forever.

Today my head is full of life.  Full of laughter, my hubby's smile, a little girl that should have had a rubber duckie, the feeling of moving a paint brush just right, leaning back in a recliner with a lap full of soft warm purring cats.  I went slowly through today, I savored it.  I spoke with my mothers and they are going through hard times so I let them know that I love them, that I hurt with them, and that I have faith that they can work their way through respective issues.  I hugged my husband a lot today. I all but jumped into his arms and I stayed there.  I kissed my favorite spots on his face and enjoyed how wonderful it feels to run my fingertips over his evening stubble.  I made him laugh, which makes me smile and I watched him make art.  Everyone creates something and he creates conversation and good will.  One of the most difficult arts there is.  While painting my ceramic the most darling little lady came to the ceramic store to find her glass pig that she had painted with her mother.  She came clomping in straight to the dog which was right at eye level, and says, "Hi  Dog!"  She tells me hi, my husband hi, the other dog hi, the owner hi....  Her voice was little and sweet like birdsong.  Filling the whole store with her exuberance for greeting everyone in a timely manner.  The sweet spectacle was repeated at her departure.  Today was like a good long stretch that makes your toes tingle.  It all felt so right and comfortable.

I woke my poor hubby up this evening and told him about how my head is full of life.  I told him about everything above and since he was there with me today he laughed that I was delighted.  I told him that if I could paint happiness it would be a soft out of focus meadow.  So out of focus you really almost can't tell what it is.  It would be all soft bright sunshine on top, soft greens and blues in bottom and small spots of pink and white for the flowers.  We made a game of the conversation and he asked me, "okay how do you paint a kiss?"  I told him that would be a big red rose, so big that it take up the entire canvas and a white butterfly.  Because a smile is more than red and white it is also the desire to smile.  So the rose is the lips, the butterfly the teeth and the overall effect would be the smile.  lol.  It tickles me and excites me to feel so good.


All this good will is beautiful.  If my mental difficulties were compared to a dark enchanted forest then today I  found the clearing in the center where the sun shines and the meadow grass is soft and fragrant.  Of course my artistic juices are flowing and in a weird way I think have finally been called to something.  I feel it in my heart.  I need to create what I feel good or bad or indifferent.  hee hee.  I need to express how I feel in paint.  Rather than bury my pain, my anxiety, and my fear I need to push them out of me through a paint brush.  Rather than distrust my happiness, and contentment I need to give it a place to grow on canvas.

I feel fragile like an over-sized china doll.  Because when I am down, I am very, very, down.  I am dirt down, root down, deep down.  Now that I am back on solid ground, rather than in it I am scared that I will break or trip and end up underneath again  but that next time I will shatter and I won't be able to put myself back together again.  I am afraid that these days, these moments, these experiences will not last.  And I know for a fact that no matter what they will not last forever, nothing does, even forever ends with a period.  Maybe this a gift of my eating disorder.  Maybe having learned to savor every nanosecond of every moment no matter how simple is the price the eating disorder paid to me.

The Dirt

So it has been a hard month or so for me.  I hate it when I hear someone ramble on about their problems, but this blog has a lot to do with my problems and my attempt to fix them.   So I will just simply list them.  

1. I caught the flu and missed a week of work.
2. While I had the flu I ran out of my sleeping medicine, this triggered depression for me.
3. While depressed I continued to work and one night at work I had an anxiety attack in front of a co-worker.
4. I was binging every day with every meal.
5. I finally reached out to my therapist and my psychiatrist.
6. They both recommend we go back a step to the visits that were closer together, and my psychiatrist refilled my sleep medication.
7. My mother called to tell me that she is getting a divorce from her most recent husband.
8. I spoke with my nephew who has recently had two strokes and will now be disabled for life.
9. Slowly but surely I started to come out of my depression.  
10. I started by beginning to shower again, and getting out of the bed even when I didn't have to work.
11. Today I went back to group, and thirty minutes before group started I found out my grandmother died.

So here I am at 2 am trying to figure out how to deal with these big things and all the other little things.  Oh and I forgot to mention that I can't remember right.  Twice during this time I left the oven on overnight, and today before I went to group I put chicken on to roast and went to group and left it on.  Thankfully it did not catch fire.  But our date night was ruined because we had to package our meals and leave.  

Of course now I am laying blame on myself.  I think it is my fault that I could not defuse my anxiety.  It's my fault that I binge.  It's my fault that my mother has gotten worse, (she is Bi-Polar, ADHD, and has PTSD.) It's my fault that my nephews kid's do not have a good family life.  I also feel like I am heartless because I haven't cried over my Nana's passing.  All of my pain and their pain is my fault.

Now that I written that all out I see how silly it is.  I am already feeling better about this.  It is my fault that I binge, but I binge in response to my anxiety.  I don't know how to defuse my anxiety yet so that is a work in progress and I need to be patient and take it moment by moment and make sure I celebrate my victories.  

I felt it was my fault that my mother got worse because I am barely involved in her life at all.  But she is a grown woman who has multiple times started therapy then dropped out.  I do not have the ability to heal her, only she can work on herself and I am not responsible for her bad decisions.  

My nephew is an incredibly stupid individual and always has been.  I felt that my blame here was that I didn't take his kids away from him as he had them.  I was not then or am I now in any kind of shape to raise a child let alone two.  

I have not cried over Nana dying, I might cry at the funeral I don't know.  We were not close, I am not really close to any of my family.  Nana felt that after her son divorced my mother that he should not be involved in my life.  At that point she and I were through with each other.  I saw her once more after my dad's funeral.  Now that she has passed I am trying to concentrate on the times before the divorce when she was just my Nana and she didn't care that I was her son's stepchild instead of his blood child.  He raised me so as far as I am concerned he is my dad.  Argument aside I don't feel a major grief impact because we were not close, no harm in that.

I do feel incredibly guilty about leaving the oven on.  I know my memory is not so good right now and I believe it has to do with the stress that I am under.  I feel very guilty because my Sexy Bear is so very good to me and he doesn't ask much but he does ask that I turn the oven off when I am through because it is dangerous and somehow I can't remember to do that lately.  

I am not sure what I am going to do except for continue to take it day by day, moment by moment, and handle each problem as it arrives.  Thank you for listening.