A Re-Emergence

I haven't written, or even checked my blog in a few days...and once more, it is the occasion of another sleepless night which brings me back to it. It's 4:00 AM and I've been awake since 12:15 when I woke up from dream about eating and food. While that might seem odd and certainly not a disturbing topic to most people, to me it is, unfortunately, neither. Having had a history of ED (Eating Disorders- mine was anorexia), and being stuck in a struggle with that illness again, it is nothing too rare for me, of late, to be awakened by one of these. The typical one is that I've eaten something...not just something...but EVERYTHING I can get my hands on...and I wake up in a cold sweat of panic and self-hatred.

When I say that I'm struggling with this disease again, I do not mean that I'm eating less than 500 calories a day and in medical danger, as I was when I was younger for over 15 years of my life. I just mean that I am struggling with the "stinking thinking" that goes with it. I've recently lost over 45 pounds in an effort to lose the 80 I'd gained last year from medications such as steroids and some psych meds (which I've now changed for better ones), which caused me to blow up in size. I needed to lose those 45 pounds and I need to lose at least 30 more, but to undertake anything like that for a person with a history like mine, is an extremely delicate and even dangerous undertaking. And my attempts to do this have re-triggered my daughter's ED and HER struggles have triggered mine again.

As I journaled my feelings about this and about myself tonight; I looked at the illness and at the thoughts behind it with much greater understanding than I used to have. I KNOW what's causing it right now, at this particular time in my life. It's that I feel completely out of control in the events in my life. My family is facing a lot of stuff right now; both relationally and health-wise...and my response to this chaos, is to try to control SOMETHING; ANYTHING...and that, is my weight. While I started with a desire to regain my health and strength as well as my waistline...somehow, in the process, I began to lose sight of the weight I'd lost. I began to look in the mirror and see, not a thinner woman but a FATTER one. I began to look surreptitiously at my shadow as I walk outside in the early mornings...and it looks swollen and huge. I began to look at young girls in the malls and at the clothes the stores wear to dress them...and I felt old, fat an unattractive.

Tonight, all these feelings swarmed in me as I typed. I went to a support site for ED and saw pictures which the site had labeled "shocking" and they didn't shock me. Most of the girls I thought looked good. Now, I've not lost my mind enough yet, to not know that this is a very bad sign. Just last year, when my daughter had made collages of pictures like these and hung them all over her room, I was horrified by them. I was amazed that she really thought they looked good...and that she wanted to look like them. And now, it horrifies me that I'm feeling that way again too.

I have an odd mixed bag of awareness and illness. Of health and of sickness. I know I'm not at the point of no return. But unless I get a hold of myself; unless I have some help from God...things will deteriorate quickly. And that will be the last straw that this family can tolerate. It will cause utter destruction.

Me in the throes of ED

Some part of my mind is stuck back in a waif-like 20 year old body...a person who was smart, quick-witted and depressed enough to be intriguing. But the FACT is that a depressed skeleton of an almost 48-year old woman is NOT attractive. Self-hatred is not appealing in anyone. No one. No matter how old or how young you are, no one wants to hear you talk in self-deprecatory ways.

I realized tonight that what IS appealing is someone who fights against every odd to survive; Someone who clings to their health and works hard at maintaining it. Someone who keeps their body as strong and at as good of a weight as possible. Someone who takes their thoughts captive and makes them to yield to the authority and the guidelines of God.

If I want or need control, I need to work at controlling my sick mind and body and making them to conform to right and healthy paths. Even if I get a little obsessed with eating a certain way, that's okay if I can do nothing else...as long as it is in a healthy way and I do not let my mind go skittering out of control, the way it has been for this past week.

I'm not a teenager anymore. Time to grow up and stop thinking like one.