The Drama.

For many years I documented my own personal journey with disordered eating and body-image challenges. In no particular order, these entries offer a glimpse into my story, pulled right from my personal journals and diaries. These posts are not screened for potentially triggering language and are retyped as they were originally written. If you’re struggling with an eating disorder please read at your own discretion, and reach out for support when you need it.

I’m reading some old-school Geneen Roth, and I'm realizing I don't know how to live without the drama. I've been playing out this food and body drama on the stage of my life since I was 13 years old.

In 8th grade I decided my thighs shouldn't touch and I starved myself for the first time. I don't remember how long it lasted, but I don't think I've ever felt so inspired or so empowered in my entire life. If I could control food, then I could control what my body was doing. And if I could control what my body was doing, then I believed I could control every aspect of my life. I could control the amount of love and attention I received from the people around me. And that would surely take all my pain away.

At the end of the "pursuit of thin" journey, lay the life I always dreamed of. It was a land where I was seen by others. A place where my sinewy body and effortless beauty resulted in not just a different life, but an entirely different me.

I didn't know how to be more open, more outgoing, more funny, or more interesting. I didn't know how to change my personality, so I put all my eggs in the beauty basket. This was what I had control over. This was what was going to change my life for the better. This was what was going to get me seen and loved and understood by my peers. It was my path to freedom and happiness. Happiness through whatever would make me feel desired.

I realize now that what happened in those early days was a let down of massive proportions. It was the process of pursuing "thinner" that was so addicting and seductive, not "thin" itself. It was the idea of a different me and a different life.

Because I did achieve what I set out to achieve, and yet none of the other promises were kept. The promise of a better life. The promise of attention, and affection, and connection. I remember realizing my thighs no longer touched. I saw the lower number on the scale. But I was also realizing that nothing else had changed. No more love. No more attention. No more connection.

A part of me believed that I just wasn't thin enough. That the lack of what I was after must mean I had further to go. Just a little thinner. Just a bit more toned. I still don't see my abs.

But my continued attempts to starve myself began to feel more and more fleeting. Each attempt felt more debilitating than the last. And I found that I could only sustain periods of starvation for shorter and shorter amounts of time.

And thus began the decades long dance that I continue to find myself in the throws of to this day. The now all too familiar dance of rigid restriction followed by the all-consuming chaos of compulsive binge eating.

And with each period of chaotic eating came a sprinkle of weight gain. A pound lost through the diet, followed by 5 pounds gained. And I'm realizing now that despite the progress I've made, I've never truly turned to face that 13 year old part of me. That inner child that still believes the pursuit of weight loss yields the answers I'm so desperate for. That the life of my dreams can be delivered through the perfect body.

Although I no longer diet or restrict, a choice that lifted about 80% of my binge eating problems, I do still find myself in periods of seemingly uncontrolled compulsive eating. I can see it for what it is now, but the long term solution still eludes me.

I'm realizing that this is the drama I've chosen. It has played out for years in innumerable ways, and just when I feel like I might be shifting out of these behaviors they come hurdling back at me with an all too familiar intensity. That will of their own that I've never quite been able to tame.

In some ways I've never faced the real fears that drove me to starvation all those years ago. The fear of inadequacy. The fear of not-enoughness. The gut wrenching fear of facing the possibility that I might be "just average." That sinking feeling of not being "special" in some way can overtake me with a force that knocks the wind out of both my gut and my soul. It's an existential fear that haunts me no matter how intensely I try to distract myself from it.

If I conquer my food and body challenges, I'm left looking directly into the eye of this storm. The force of which I'm not sure I can handle. How do I come face to face with an existential fear that no amount of therapy or books or mentoring can ever begin to protect me from? There is no source of comfort available to me then. If the food is gone, the pain will overtake me. I will surely suffocate. I will surely drown.

As I write, I know that this is all a narrative. A story I tell myself in order to justify my ongoing self-sabotage and inner drama. I don't know how to live without this. I don't know what life looks or feels like. I don't know how to just be with that inner turmoil. It's tolerable, but it feels completely and utterly intolerable.

I know the answers lie in the moment I choose to meet my feelings. When I can open the door and invite them in and sit across from them without any food, or coffee, or alcohol to buffer the discomfort of the unfamiliar. Like the pressure of carrying a conversation among strangers, the awkwardness that lies between me and my feelings feels like something I would rather avoid forever than greet for a moment. But on a deep level I know this is the only place the answers can be found.

I know they're there. The question becomes how long I'm going to make them wait.