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.

Support and Hope

I love my husband more than I can understand.  It is such a deep love that there is no end or beginning.  It simply sprang into an unending loop of existence that expands with every second.  And even more amazing is that he loves me even though I have damaged myself for so very long.  I have made many mistakes in my life, mistakes that have scarred me to my bones, mistakes that have painted my very soul with blood.  He looks right at me and he sees the girl with the long brown hair that loved her family and her Lord.  She wanted nothing more than to be kind to others and be liked in return.  He found that person inside of me and he took her hand and he brought her into the light of his love.  By doing so he showed me that loving yourself and others is harder than simply not caring, that it is in fact one of the hardest most rewarding goals a person can pursue.  He has shown me that family is not just people you are related to, but rather people that are as much a part of you as you are a part of them.  He has shown me that love does not come from cookies but rather from listening and feeling what other people are experiencing.  He has taught me to laugh at myself, that mistakes are only mistakes and need not be dwelled on past the learning experience.  He has given that young lady hope that she can someday live the life she dreamed of so very long ago and he has agreed to support me through this transition as I seek to bring those dreams to fruition.  Whether I succeed in fulfilling every dream or not I will be a better person for the rest of my life because of his love and devotion to me, and my love and devotion to him.  

My husband has given me love but he has also given me hope.  Because if he loves me even through all of this then I have hope that I can become the person I want to be.  Tonight my group leader gave the group a quote.  I will include it below.  The quote explored the concept that people are born the way that God designs.  Then because we are free to make choices we try to make choices that will make the world like us better, but all we end up doing is trying to bury that beautiful, essential part of our selves deep inside because for some reason we decide that it is not good enough.  I am determined to find that inner self, the original Lorane God intended me to be, and I am determined to bring as much of her as I can out into the world.

“The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather”  - (Buechner, 1991)

Daily

I don't sleep so well anymore.  My brain it just will not stop thinking.  When I do sleep I sometimes dream of running.  Not running from someone but simply running for the joy of it.  I imagine the feeling of my feet pounding onto the ground and pushing me far ahead while my arms are tucked close to my body.  I hear myself breathing hard as I am running for all I am worth and it feels so wonderful to push my body.  To feel my muscles work to push me faster and faster and the light is all golden and it is just beautiful, wonderful, and it is only a dream.

All of a sudden I am not able to run anymore I have awakened and as I push up through blankets to the light all of my weight slides down on me at one time.  I know that when I get out of bed and I put my feet on the floor to stand that weight will cause pain in my feet.  The pain is only sharp, quick, strong and gone, just like that.  But it's a lie the pain will stay there all day in every step.  Some steps feel like a stab all the way up my legs, some are deep in my bones and joints.  This makes me walk like an old lady.  I am bent over and I can't help but shorten my steps as though I really believe that if I take shorter steps they will hurt less.  Of course they don't, because no matter how short my step is I am still putting all of that weight down on my foot.

I stretch and work my way into the bathroom so I can begin my morning ritual of a shower.  I tend to maintain eye contact with my reflection in the mirror.  I don't want to even accidentally see what shape my body is in.  I don't want to see the pliable rounds and curves of my flesh.  The soft bruises where my clothes dig into me and scar me.  I don't want to see the stretch marks or the varicose veins that cover my legs like the shadows of dead vines in winter time.  So I maintain eye contact and focus on my hair and facial features.  While I bathe I wash every inch of my body top to bottom because I am scared that I will smell.  I don't look at myself while washing myself either, I just simply close my eyes.  Every day, every single day when I get out and I use the towel that I have laid out to dry off with I am hit with guilt because I can no longer wrap the towel all the way around my body.  They don't make towels large enough for me to wrap up in.  That is one the many little things that makes me ashamed of who I am everyday.

Now that I am clean I look to see what I will wear for the day.  I have specific dresses for each day of the week because I no longer take joy in picking out my outfit for the day.  Having an assigned outfit for the day reduces my stress and worry because I don't harbor the hope that maybe this top or that bottom will be more flattering.  I would waste so much time trying on different outfits hoping for a miracle that would make me approve of who I saw in the mirror.

I have certain rituals as I prepare myself for work.  I make my instant iced coffee the same way every morning and every morning it goes in the same to go cup.  If it is not clean I will wash it and then use it even if other glasses are clean.  I also start pretending that I have other things to do.  I will do this and do that to prepare for my day while drinking my coffee then act surprised when I don't have time for breakfast.  This would usually mean a stop on my way to work for a fast food meal.  And since I did not have time for breakfast I would either order two meals, one for now and one for later.  Or I would make plans to have something delivered later.

Then I would arrive at work.  Work makes me nervous and proud.  Nervous because of all of the people that "know" me and want to have a little chit chat; and proud because I still go even though I am nervous, and I have worked really hard to get the promotion to a job I love.  But now is the hardest part of my day, walking the gauntlet.  I smile, gather my purse, lock my door and enter work.  I force myself to make eye contact with everyone walking by and I either nod if they are on the phone or say, "Hey! How are you?"  I try to call everyone I know by their name as I go and sometimes ask about loved ones or interests. I worry over each interaction, "Did I smile big enough?  or too big?  Should I have laughed a little less since my stomach shakes when I laugh? I bothered that person I know, I did I shouldn't have made eye contact with them"

By this time I have already been arguing with myself all morning.  Sometimes it starts as soon as I wake up, other times it hits me in the car.  See I am unhappy with my obesity and hypercritical of any action I take.  I can make decisions, but the repercussions of the decisions literally will echo in my head for awhile.  Something as simple as brushing my teeth can cause me to obsess over whether I did it correctly all the way to work, then I face the gauntlet before I get to my desk. So I have all of that commotion going on in my head. I think the worst part of walking to my desk is that I am exposed.  Everyone can see my body.  Everyone can see that I eat my pain.