The photo above on the left is me a long time ago, on the right is a more recent photo. I remember getting that headshot and thinking, it wasn’t really me. I couldn’t look like that.
What was it like to wake up each day having an eating disorder I didn’t even know I had? To live in a world that only revolved around that addiction and not even know there was another way to think or live? I felt so unworthy underneath and covered up so much of myself. I didn’t know the the sensitive loving being beneath it all, the love I kept hidden and safe from being hurt. My eating disorder didn’t look like everyone else’s, I didn’t binge and purge, I didn’t starve myself for weeks. It was more subtle, more calculated and deeply unconscious. A whole level of living I couldn’t see I was stuck in till years later. I didn’t think what I had could be an addiction until I was sitting in a spiritual psychology program. It was called USM, I was listening to the facilitator Ron Hulnick share. I heard him say to someone, “the level of the addiction, is the level of the importance of that lesson in your life.” This blew my mind, could food be something of this level of importance for me to overcome? I had never even thought about it. In that moment a lot made sense. Everything was about food for me. What was I going to eat next? My only thought after I ate was, how am I going to get the weight off, would I gain weight back? While I ate it was complete worry with every bite but I would also space out while doing it. I didn’t know when to stop I didn’t know when to start, I didn’t even know what I had eaten most of the time. I was looking out from flesh I didn’t know I had the ability to change. I didn’t enjoy eating. I wondered why weight mysteriously came onto my body when I only ate “healthy” food (unknowingly) all day. I was a space out eater, food was my cigarettes. I didn’t realize I wasn’t enjoying much else either, I mean it was an entire existence where everything revolved around trying to control my body. I thought this was how everyone thought about their body and food, ashamed and embarrassed, I didn’t know any other way. I judged my body, shamed it, blamed it, covered it up, hid my weight in big baggy clothing. I desperately wanted to have a life like the “pretty” girls. I compared myself to EVERYONE. It was about control all of it, the dichotomy was I couldn’t control it ever. I unconsciously was in an illusion of distracting myself with food to numb out unresolved pain. I was like a rubber band stretching myself out then back then out then back over and over again. I would eat to reward, I would eat to punish myself, I would eat to celebrate, I would eat to “heal,” I would eat when I felt the embarrassment of not being able to fit into the clothes I wanted.
I would test myself with food, buying something I knew I shouldn’t eat, keeping it in my pocket or storing it somewhere and keeping my attention on it to see how long it would take until I would give in. It was unconscious but I did it and it was a pure distraction from my feelings and all that laid underneath in the deeper levels of what was coming forward to heal. Sometimes I would chew up food and spit it out. But I would gain weight because my body was absorbing whatever was in it. The more I worked on my disorder the more it manifested into more subtle patterns. I would let go of the weight and my deeper emotions would come up, the reason I put on the weight in the first place would surface. I was being peeled like an onion. One time after about 20 pounds came off someone I really looked up to complimented me on how I looked. I couldn’t handle the attention of one compliment from this person I put on a pedestal. I put all the weight back on within 3 weeks. What took 3 months to take off took 3 weeks to put back on. The “unconscious” parts of me knew exactly what to do to protect myself from being vulnerable. It was what I was used too for so long. I couldn’t handle the attention. It wasn’t about the food it was about the shame that laid underneath. The eating disorder seemed to shift and change (as any addiction does once you start to work on it). It started to transform once I made progress I would eat in ways I had never eaten, in parking lots of grocery stores, alone binging all the things I had refrained from eating. I started taking laxative supplements if I ate too much. Imma tell you the next day after taking these supplements I would get pain in my abdomen so deep, sharp piercing pains where I couldn’t walk straight, and I did it again and again torturing my body. I would exercise after every meal but could never keep the weight off.
Memories of my mother buying me fattening foods then telling me I would regret eating them started coming forward. Being called fat and ugly by my brother and his friends, memories of my father telling me my body would spread out if I ate too much. So many mixed messages and shame in having a body. I just kept walking and let myself really heal the pain and that was when my whole perception started to shift. It’s like a whole level of life came off. I began to forgive, I looked at things karmically, I started to see that if you forgive it will heal you. If you let out the pain and embrace it you will start to chip away who you are not. I saw everything as leading me to my freedom, my voice, and what I was creating. I used everything as a guide post to change who I was into a better person and to bring me closer to God and to heal a part of me that thought I was evil for creating it in the first place. We can heal, we can love and we can use it all to free ourselves. I did and I still do and it opened me up to my gifts in powerful ways. Yes as I chipped away at this one thing I didn’t even know was such a powerful lesson for me I began to heal deep wounds within myself, with my family, I began to relate to myself and the world differently and I started creating in ways I never had before. I began to believe I could enjoy life and I didn’t have to condemn myself for creating it but take responsibility for all of it and find how it brought me into my deeper spiritual self. That was just the beginning.