conversation

This post is super long but it’s something I need to write. It's not an easy topic to deal with but I know that when I bring it out in the open and force it into the light it then forces me to own up to my behavior and deal with it head on once more.
I've been pretty upset over the past few weeks at my rapid weight gain. I've been taking stock of my exercise habits and calories and I know that part of it is the fact I've been eating too late and too much sugar. There is another part that is much uglier.
In order to keep my calories within range I've fallen back into old habits. For me this is something that started in college the summer before my senior year. I love food, all kinds of food and growing up we always had so much food. Any family gathering was an overwhelming array of snacks and food and more food. My grandparents would rent a house at the beach for a week in the summer. For more years than I can count we would have huge breakfast, huge lunches and huge dinners. Finally just a few years ago they started just doing the big breakfasts and big lunches but it was still always a lot. I'll miss the beach house this year but I digress.
So growing up and having so much food I was chunky, heavy, obese. In high school I was a, “binge eater”, meaning I would control what I ate all day long and then I would get home and eat everything in sight. My senior year of high school I was babysitting my cousin after school so I could eat a ton of junk food and then tell my mom at dinner that I had already eaten. When I travelled that summer after senior year of high school I was able to really control how much I ate and I could eat as little as possible. Without my mom there to watch it was a taste of the freedom that was coming with college.
Freshman year of college I gained weight, I don’t know how much I didn’t have a scale back then. I would try to not eat but then I would get so hungry and at App you could use your mean card in the vending machines so I drank A LOT of sodas and ate a lot of junk food. Not the bad for you kind of junk food but I’ve already mentioned I’ve a thing for sugar. Instead of eating a meal I would eat candy.
Sophomore year the diet and caffeine pills started. I had a roommate who would go through my drawers and throw it out but I would find this out years later. Still I was drinking soda and eating sugar so I didn’t gain but I didn’t lose either. I just didn’t have a grasp of what soda and sugar does to your body.
Junior year second semester I had the unique opportunity of being a model in a bridal show. Donna needed models of all sizes and my friend PMG told Donna she had a friend who would be perfect. I loved it, I had SO MUCH FUN! I’ve always loved fancy dresses and wedding gowns and dressing up. After the show I went back to Donna and asked if she was hiring. She let me come work for her and it was the best job I’ve ever had. If I could afford it I would go back and work for free just to be in Boone working with Donna. Again I digress. Because of this job I stayed in Boone over spring break and then I needed to find a way to stay up there over the summer so I could keep my job at the store. I found out about a conference assistance position that provided a free dorm room. I landed the job and I was SO HAPPY!!! I was able to work at the store during the day and then I did hours at night as a conference assistant. The memories I have of that summer are still some of my favorite it was just incredible. Donna had another opening at the store and I got my roommate a job there as well. She was subletting an apartment over that summer so she and I would hang out some. My friend PMG was taking summer classes so she and I were hitting the gym together. Then I got mono. My little brother had to drive to Boone to pick me up and take me back to Charlotte (I still didn’t have a drivers license or car at this point and yes I was almost 20). Because of the mono I lost weight but then my mom force fed me and I gained it all back and probably then some. It was after I returned from being sick that the bingeing behavior changed. I had heard about purging. What girl who was in high school hadn’t heard of this? Instead of starving yourself you would eat whatever you wanted and then you would either throw up or take laxatives or exercise or some would probably do all 3. For me I had tried once or twice in high school to throw up but I couldn’t, I just didn’t have a gag reflex. The idea of laxatives was not something I considered b/c to me I didn’t want the issues that I’d heard came with that (yes I know this is not rational but it’s being honest). I would already exercise a lot. When we would take the afore mentioned beach trips I would spend hours and hours walking on the beach to try and walk off the ridiculous amount of calories being consumed. So this particular afternoon I didn’t give up and I was successful in purging the Chinese food meal I had eaten. I loved Chinese food but I always felt guilty for eating it b/c it’s so bad for you. I now had my answer I didn’t have to starve myself anymore I could now eat whatever I wanted and there would be no consequences…
Except this isn’t exactly the case there are some foods that are easier than others. I had a case of heartburn so bad one day during my senior year that I thought I was having a heart attack. They did an EKG at the infirmary and told me I needed to avoid spicy foods. I had used spices or Texas Pete or Tabasco sauce on everything under the misconception that this burned more calories. Now I only use it when I want to and because I like the flavor but again I digress.
I will not share all the details because it’s humiliating and gross. Bulimics don’t want to talk about it because the realities of it are so unbelievably disgusting. In the early stages I thought I had my get out of jail free card. I could eat and eat and then throw up and then eat some more. I had a meal card which gave me access to lots of food and my roommate was leaving every weekend which meant that I would have whole weekends where I had the room to myself. The thing about community bathrooms was you didn’t want to use those. This was all taking place in the privacy of my dorm room. I figured out what did and didn’t work and I was still taking diet and caffeine pills and drinking, oh I was SO healthy…
My mom figured it out when I was home senior year over the holidays. We’d eaten pizza and I was dumb and ate too much and then immediately went to the bathroom and she came back banging on the door and made me promise to stop and I did and that was the end of it. Except it wasn’t and I think my Mom, like most parents, just didn’t know what to do so she decided to believe me.
I moved back to Charlotte and in with my parents. I was living with them from August 01 until September 02 and then I moved into a cute little house where my friend Amy let me pay her $300 a month for rent. This was when I went on the soup diet mentioned in a previous post. In addition to the soup diet when I would get really hungry I would eat and then throw up.
I had to move back in with my parents in June 03 and I lived there until May 05. During this time I continued my restrictive eating, bingeing/purging and also discovered prescription diet pills. Adding exercise into the mix I was thin, but September of 06 I started dating the guy with the little girl.
From our 2nd date we pretty much became inseparable. I lived down there and we did everything together. We had the little girl every weekend and initially I wasn’t binging and purging but the stress levels started to rise and with that I reverted back to what I knew best. He told me up front that he didn’t want to get married again, looking back I vividly remember the conversation that we have. The reason I didn’t just walk away, because he said something that made me believe he might just change his mind and I was already head over heels for the little girl. He went thru shoulder surgery and I was there. He was going through the custody battle and I was there. I was helping to heal hurts between he and his family that his first wife had caused. He gave me a card on valentines saying he wanted to spend his future with me. I took it to mean a proposal was soon to come but I was wrong. He wasn’t even divorced yet. Valentines Day I had an appointment with a therapist to discuss what was going on with him and his wife and me and his daughter and all of it. I was so scared she would look at me and call me out on my eating disorder but she didn’t. What she did tell me is that she couldn’t really help me because she knew that I knew that our living situation was wrong and that he wasn’t even divorced and that meant he was still married and I needed to move out of his house. It would take another month before I would move back into my own house. Our relationship wasn’t strong to begin with and there were all kinds of things that looking back I see that I didn’t see while it was happening. Bottom line he was not the guy I needed to spend the rest of my life with. I’m not going to go into all the reasons why I’ve probably already covered them in previous post. He always said that I wasn’t “open” enough with him. Which ironically I actually heard this from another guy that I dated last spring. I wasn’t “open” enough and I didn’t “share” or whatever. I’ve come to realize that this is just them not understanding how I communicate. Neither one of them accepted me for who I was anyways, or if they did I never felt that way. The biggest skeleton in the closet between this guy with the little girl and I was the fact that I was throwing up all the time. He was critical of how I worked out, he was critical of the fact that I didn’t eat correctly, he was in general critical of everything and there at the end I felt I couldn’t do anything right.
When he and I broke up it made me evaluate who I was and where I stood and I finally sought treatment for the eating disorder. I went to a lady who works for a church’s counseling center here in Charlotte. It might have just been me but I felt like we weren’t really getting anywhere. She asked me in one session why I didn’t like myself. I’ve since come to realize that the reality is I literally hate myself some days and I can’t explain why. When my Granddaddy passed away in April 2008 I quit going. I was running out of money and I just wasn’t really getting anything out of it so I cancelled my appointment and said I would reschedule and I never did it was a lot of money to pay for something I didn’t feel was helping.
Last year I took Bible classes because a friend had gone through the same classes and had an amazing story of being delivered from her eating disorder entirely. I took the classes, thought they were awesome, but old habits don’t disappear. I was stressed; I no longer just used this behavior as a weight control method but also to help when I was feeling overwhelmed or upset. I don’t know when the change happened, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it went from being something I did just so I could eat whatever I wanted to something that had a grip on me and the best of intentions to stop I would still find myself back in the same place again and again.
When I started running last year I loved the fact that the weight was coming off. It was wonderful to feel good about myself and what I was accomplishing. When the relationship ended between the guy I dated last spring it was actually a good thing, he had body issues of his own and made me feel worse about myself. Then I started dating RS and he wanted me to gain weight. There was no way I was going to voluntarily gain weight when I liked how I looked. Once that relationship ended my 10K was right around the corner. I ran that race and started training for my 15K. I would have expected to lose more weight but that didn’t happen. Instead I started gaining weight. The bright spot in all of this is the fact that I met S. At the end of my 15K he introduces himself to me. So part of the reason I started gaining is because we were eating late and I was eating and I thought that as long as we were running 3 miles before dinner I could still eat and it would be ok. Then when I noticed I was gaining I reverted back to the habit of throwing up. I would be starving so I would eat and then I would excuse myself and throw up. If you don’t know then it’s really easy for me to get away with this behavior. When I’m with my parents I have to be way more careful b/c my mom has suspicions and keeps asking me if I’m “staying healthy”. With S because it’s all new he had no reason to suspect anything and I could get away with what I was doing.
The thing about this behavior is that it takes control. You start to plan how you will binge and what you will have and then it makes controlling the food during the day that much easier because you know you will eat enough to feel better and then throw it all up again and then go exercise. Having a roommate who is usually gone helps me to get away with this behavior. But when I really got honest with myself part of the reason why I’ve gained the weight is because of this behavior. Bulimics are not always super skinny in fact sometimes it even causes you to gain weight. For the past few weeks it’s really been spiraling out of control and I have been aware I need to confront this again. It’s so scary when I have to admit what’s going on because I hate having to acknowledge that I’m failing. I can’t control my weight and what I’m doing to control my weight is causing me to gain weight and I need to be honest and really face what it happening. I can’t afford to go see a therapist and I don’t feel like that’s effective anyways. But being honest and admitting what is going on means I’m again accountable. That was the first thing the therapist made me do 2 years ago is appoint an accountability person that I was supposed to call when I felt overwhelmed or felt like I needed to engage in the behavior.
Yesterday I was flipping through various articles and I came across an article on momlogic.com where I lady wrote about being in a target bathroom and hearing the unmistakable sound of a girl throwing up and thinking about how she’s been there and stopping and considering saying something to the girl or saying something to the mom waiting outside and then not saying anything because the girl would just think she was weird and the mom would just be defensive and she was right. She talked about how she finally sought treatment because she finally acknowledged that her behavior was going to kill her. I don’t know why yesterday that light bulb finally went off in my own head but I finally acknowledged that what has been going on will kill me. It will also rot my teeth, and may cause esophagus problems and acid reflux and jaw problems. The list goes on and on. I did a little research yesterday on self treatment and I plan to do more research. The biggest thing I had to do was confess to my sweet S the reason why I’ve really gained the weight. I had to risk my relationship with the greatest guy I’ve ever dated and really be honest. I’ve told previous boyfriends but to me it’s not really mattered if they knew or not. I didn’t really care what they thought as usually I had either already broken up with them or I knew they didn’t really care that much about me etc… But with S it’s different. He’s different. I know that despite the fact that we haven’t said it to each other I love him. I want and need to get healthy first for myself but also because he deserves to have someone who loves herself enough that she’s willing to be honest and face up to the fact that she needs to deal with this pattern. Because he and I spend so much time together he needs to be aware of what my triggers are and know that when I’m going to the bathroom I’m accountable and if I come back out and I look funny or I have tooth marks in my hand I need to be called out for it. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a vicious circle. I don’t want to have my teeth fall out. I don’t want to have permanent scars on my hands. I want to be healthy and happy. I write out of honesty. I know I have friends who read this blog who will hold me accountable and call me out and follow up with me on what is going on.
It’s time for me to start fighting again and take back the control but I don’t do this on my own. One of my favorite songs was playing last night as I was driving into S’s neighborhood about to confess everything. It’s the song “At the cross” and it has a line at the cross I lay everything, draw me gently to my knees, sweetly broken, sweetly surrendered,” I may not have the words exactly correct but I start this journey all over again I know that God has made each of us in His image. I know that He loves and accepts us just as we are. I know that He has a purpose and a plan. I know that I have to face this and be honest.
I know that God brought S into my life for a reason. He’s the first guy I’ve dated to accept me completely for me. When I told him and then told him it was ok if he wanted to break up with me he just pulled me into his arms and told me he just wants me to be healthy and happy and that I’m beautiful. Even if things don’t work out with S I’m thankful that he’s a part of my life now. He’s awesome and I can completely be myself and be honest and I know that he doesn’t think any less of me even knowing this disgusting secret that is no longer a secret.

Best kept silent

It was last October that I finally hit a wall and admitted that I needed to get help for what had been going on since college. I'd been broken into a million pieces and nothing made sense and I was in a black hole and nothing was making it better.
So I sat down with Nancy and she and I talked. We went back to growing up and then the progression of school and after. At one point she asked "why do you hate yourself so much?" I just looked at her b/c there is no answer for that question.
I went every few weeks from October until March. Then we were not so much focusing on what had been going on since college so much as the pattern of my dating relationships. I had started dating the guy I would date thru the summer and I didn't want to have to answer for why I hadn't completely ended it. Plus Grandaddy passed away so it gave me a reason to cancel my appointment and not make another one.
Well I did end it with that guy numerous times but he always had really good reasons as to why it was ok for us to continue dating. Until I finally woke up and stood up and said you're not who I can see a future with and we don't need to date any longer. So that step was definitely me acknowledging that I am a Christian and there are certain standards which I will choose to live by.
However there was still the factor of what's been going on since college. Thru the summer and fall it's really something that I knew I needed to deal with again. Except how, I can't afford the appointments and I kind of felt like it was helping all that much anyways. Granted that could be my fault but I was just unsure of what to do. I didn't want to acknowledge to my friends that I've never quit the bad habits. In some ways I'm really healthy and excercising and keeping track of what I eat. But over the past few weeks no matter how many times I've said I need to stop and I won't do it again somehow I find myself back in the same place over and over again. Thoughts have turned to I wish that there was some magic wand to take away all the money worries and knowledge that I'm hanging on by a thread when it comes to my finances. I'm pulled in a million directions, I just don't handle all this very well and since I'm not drinking excessively this has always been the other outlet for how I deal with the pressures.
So when I had the 2 weeks of really focusing on God back in October one of the things I was very clearly told was that this is something I need to deal with. Except I don't really understand how and in some ways I don't believe it's possible. I've been terrified that b/c I'm not willing to own up to it God is going to call me out on it and force it into the light.
Last night God opened up my mouth for me, because this was the last situation I would have ever thought I would be admitting what has going on. The current boyfriend invited me to his church's annual Christmas dinner and I was having a conversation with different friends of his. It was just getting to know you conversation and I asked one of the ladies the story of how she and her husband had met. The story was interrupted and we had gotten off the topic but I went back and asked her to finish the story. So she finished the story and we were talking about other things. She was sharing that she had been released from different things and as the conversation progressed she revealed that part of this was total healing from her own eating disorder and depression. She is beautiful and never in a million years would I have thought that she would have battled thru this. I have a friend who has battled depression for years and I understand that depression in itself can be debilitating. But she had not only overcome depression but also an eating disorder. Typically this would not be something that you share with someone who you've only just met. But when she was telling the story something clicked inside my own mind. So I asked how does it work that you can receive total healing from such difficult things. I had NO intention of sharing my own struggles. I've only just met this person. She and her husband are really good friends of the current guy that I'm dating I wanted to make a good impression on everyone. I do not share with anyone the fact that I'm still struggling in this area b/c I don't know how to deal with it. But she's just shared with me that she's found freedom, a freedom that I am scared of. However, I know that God wants me to really deal with this area of my life. There is no explanation for how the conversation turned to direction that it did except for that God wanted to use the opportunity to open my mouth and continue the change that was started last year. I'm terrified, and I don't really understand why. You would think that knowing that freedom is available would be liberating but this is something that has been going on now for almost 9 years. I do not know how to deal with life without this. So I'm not really ready to face it but I know that God is calling me to face it and I know that He can't really use me the way He desires until I really work through this. I'm still in shock that I told on myself I just can't believe that in 1 conversation I revealed so much. After sharing so much with someone I didn't know I then I had to explain to the guy that I'm seeing how it came about that I would be interested in taking classes this coming January. If I were him I would be saying I think you're great but I'm out of here.
I'm waiting to hear back if they will be able to add me to the class. After admitting to what has been going on I know that I have to be ready for what's coming. If it was up to me I would go running in the opposite direction but I have a feeling that God is not going to let me run and this time I've got to let Him do the work that He needs to do so He can really use me, again would really like to go running in the opposite direction right now!