Self-care? What are you THINKING of? Part Two

The first part of this post was done via text messaging. However, my post was 6 pages in text messaging form and turned into six different posts on this blog (I fixed it).

So, the correlation between self-care and my eating is that when I eat normally I get negative consequences and when I take care of myself I get negative consequences, too. When I tried to leave my Mother's house because I was purging every time I was around her, I was told by my Mother and my Brother that I was abandoning my Mother. I was explained to that I was horribly imposing on her my absence and that I was only thinking of myself. The response I have to that situation now, thankfully, is "good for me for trying to only think of myself!" I was having passive suicide ("passive" meaning I wish something bad would happen that would take my life away rather than "active"[using a blade, rope, etcetera]) thoughts daily at the time that I needed to leave her house. When I was around her I was not only not good enough for her to stop saying things that hurt me, but I was also not in enough pain for her to take my pain seriously enough for her to change. It didn't matter that I had binged enough to gain all the weight back that I had lost or that I was caught taking dangerous dieting pills. And, in the end, it didn't even matter to her that I was purging-- she wouldn't stop saying those hurtful things.

When I try to eat only when I am hungry, I get a series of uncomfortable reactions. One is that because I have been trained to not listen to myself too much I just am not used to doing so on a regular basis. Waiting for myself, listening to myself to figure out when I am ready to eat is so disconcerting sometimes. It feels dangerous. It means that I am abandoning my mother and becoming a "self-centered bitch". It means that I am not thinking that I need to bring home food to my Mother when I go out with my Dad when I am 13 years old. It means that I am not only thinking too much about myself, but I am not thinking about other people at all either. I am becoming a bitchy, unfeeling, selfish and self-centered, abandoning daughter when I take care of myself.

Another response I have is that I feel the things that I have been eating over. So many, many things. Things that I do not yet understand and things that I have known of for a long time and I am still trying to work through. It hurts and is scary sometimes. I don't know who to talk to about it. I have sensations deep within me that there is something inherently wrong with me. I want to dispose of myself; disappear; regenerate into something or someone worthwhile. Who do I tell this to? Myself? If I cannot trust myself to be a reliable and good and worthy person, how could I possibly find solitude in sitting with myself with this anxiety?

Eating only when I am hungry also means that I may not be able to see my Dad as often. All my Papa wants to do is go out to eat, it seems. If I don't want to go out to eat, does that mean that I am not wanted as company at all?

Another uncomforting aspect of only eating when I am hungry and stopping when I am satisfied is that I will lose weight. I will get more attention from boys that I already don't want. I will also lose my physical evidence (my excess fat) of my emotional turmoil. My Papa said that during the summer I looked so pretty and happy and he was really relieved to see it. Gosh, does that mean that I am not going to be paid attention to when I feel like I am going to fall apart? Will my self-hatred be less evident?

Perhaps not everyone sees my body shape as the representation of my anxiety and upset the way that I do. It's hard for me to not see my body that way. I see my excess body fat-- the 165/170 pounds on my small frame; the size-nine-panted-body that used to comfortably wear a size five-- as a distress signal. I accumulated my excess weight through months of excess eating; of not feeling able to be within myself; of hating myself and loving the world and disbelieving that I belong at all in someplace so wonderful. I took the anger that I felt for other's actions and swallowed it with poptarts, ice cream, and microwaved cheese sandwiches. So, isn't it obvious to other people that this is why I look like I do? This is what I see when I look in the mirror. It isn't admirable. There is something wrong. I am my physical representation of that wrong something. Look at me.

And here is my terror of this realization: it is not working. The excess weight just serves to attract boys who like "hearty" girls. It isn't showing my family that I am sometimes out-of-my-mind with grief and unhappiness and self-hatred and anxiety. They don't see it. The fact that I gained so much weight in such little time didn't send off any alarm bells in their heads that I was frightened, didn't know how to ask for help, and desperately needed more time with people. They saw me gain weight, but that was it. They saw me become panicked about it, but all they said was that I was beautiful the way I am. I'm NOT, though. Anxiety, hate, and fake "don't worry! I'm fine. We'll talk some other time, I understand you're busy"s are packed in accumulations of 3,500 calories around my thighs and stomach and back and arms and legs and chest and face. But they cannot see this.

So, here is one of the things that I am taking away from this: I will only eat when I am hungry. It isn't working to emotionally eat as people cannot see my upset through my weight, people don't give me extra attention that I crave, the problems I eat over are still there, and I don't actually stop feeling all of the negative emotions anymore (I am at least half-aware of my emotional eating so it doesn't fully distract me).

Also, I will take care of myself. Even if this means that I will be faced with consequences that I don't like, I am worth the trouble. There is no consequence that is worth compromising my self-respect or taking care of myself. Albeit any kind of anxiety or upset, I am worth the trouble.

It just is not working.

Love,

-Kat