FIGHTING WITH FOOD

I learned to control my eating when I was around fourteen. My life was completely out of my control, and I gained comfort from being able to control my eating. When I was fifteen, I starved myself to the point that I went into convulsions. You would have thought that incident would scare me enough to stop but it didn’t. The desire to control my eating began to be compounded by my fascination with how thin I could keep myself. I loved being skinny and noticed for my thinness.

This battle would turn out to be a lifelong struggle. I would go on to carry six children and during my pregnancies I would eat. After I had each child, I would go back to starving myself or purging whatever food I ate. I would be back to that “goal” weight within three to six months postpartum and that gave me great comfort. I was a master at starving myself and once I started doing drugs, it was even easier. Cocaine made it so simple to avoid eating. I was determined to stay thin and to have complete control over myself. I think that need for control over my eating only added to my uses of amphetamines. I never liked to smoke pot because it would make me hungry and want to eat and then I would have to purge, and I hated that.

When I got sober six years ago and was working so hard in therapy, I started to let go of the need to control my eating and for the first time in decades, began to enjoy food. Over these last six years, I have gained twenty-five pounds. For the majority of these last six years, I have not focused on my weight or my eating. The last few months, however, it is all I think about. I have begun restricting my eating again and I have started weighing myself daily. I’m consumed by all these thoughts about how I look, how much weight I have gained and how I have lost control over myself again. I’m frustrated with myself but not just for losing the control, also for being in this mental space again. Why is this happening to me again? Why now?

Maybe I am feeling once again that all the other parts of my life are out of my control. With my children all being adults now, I have to let go of my control with them. I have to allow them to grow, to make mistakes and figure out what their own paths in life are. It’s so hard as a mother and I think even harder since their father’s death, now having the knowledge that I am their only parent. I want to protect them, but I realize that I have to let them live their own lives. There is also this feeling of no control over the flashbacks and nightmares I have been having or the countless sleepless nights. I have been doing what I can to alleviate them. Meditation, deep breathing, and writing but it has been mostly futile. I have been feeling incredibly helpless and without control over my aging body. I’m more tired than I have ever been, I don’t have the physical strength I used to, and things hurt all the time. I know that these things are all part of getting older, but I am struggling to accept them.

It’s after six in the evening and I have yet to eat today. I know I should, but I also know that if I can get past the hunger, it will get easier to not eat. That is what I really want even though I know it is ridiculous. It is amazing the lies that our thoughts tell us. Where do these lies come from and how do we challenge them? I don’t want to be in this space because it makes me feel like a failure but the struggle to combat the thoughts is really great. It does help writing though, feeling like I’m sharing and being honest. Maybe even feeling less alone.