Where is Air

    A few weeks ago I was at the park, out for a run, believing that my lack of time exercising in the last year would have no impact on my ability to sprint. When I say I was running you may mistake my words for the literal definition instead of the figurative meaning I am implying. I mean I was running, well jogging would probably be a more accurate title, but I was desperate to get away from all the hurt and despair and hopelessness that felt like bags of sand attached to each ankle. I wanted to run from the pain that felt like it was killing me alive. I began to jog and for the first few miles I was painfully holding pace and then a sharp pain screamed at me from my side. The urge to hold in each breath hit me like bricks because with every breath the sharp pain roared to life and the thing I was doing to stop the pain was now the source... and the thing that would ultimately bring healing to the stitch in my side, breathing, felt like the very thing that was at the root of it all.
   There are days like today when breathing feels as useless as the idea of swimming the ocean in it's entirety. I have found myself again desperately seeking help and freedom from this eating disorder and instead of feeling hope I feel nothing but the lack there of. I don't understand how it is possible to want something so desperately, to seek it with such ambition and to find myself covered in the fingerprints of my indulgence. As humans, when we are in pain, we find a way to make it stop. It is honestly a instinct of survival and for me it has turned into a seduction unto death. I find myself broken tonight. I have put myself in a place where people are making decisions that they believe are best for me and yet those decisions feel like the pain of the abandonment and rejection I was running from to begin with. I put myself in this position where I don't have a voice. I am the patient and they the professionals get to tell me that I am wrong about my theory that punishment based consequences do not motivate me unto recovery...but instead they reinforce the pain that is there to begin with. I go along with it because I am taught that my opinion doesn't matter because I am blinded by my illness, or that it matters but it doesn't change the contract being put in place. How am I supposed to leave and be in a place where I can make decisions based on my intuition instead of having to look to an exterior source for guidance. How does this not continue the cycle of doing whatever I am told as to not have love and care withheld from me. I am broken into pieces, running from that which is myself...running, running, running until breathing becomes too sharp and furious and staying alive is no longer worth the air that keeps me surviving. I just want to stop running. I just want to stop breathing.

Why

Why

Asking me why I do the things I do is similar, in my opinion, to asking me why I wear a seat-belt when I am driving, why I wear a helmet when riding a bike. Each time I fasten my seat-belt I don’t stop and think to myself, I am going to wear this because it will protect me in a car crash. I guess if I stop and think about it that is the reason. However it is so automatic, so reinforced by repetition, that it is just part of the process of getting from one location to the next. I do it because I know it keeps me safe.

There is really no rhyme or reason to the rules that I follow, other than knowing that when I don’t follow them I feel unsafe. My heart pounds, my hands shake...I feel like someone is asking me if i want to be a horrible and disgusting person and if I just accept it, it would be choosing to be unlovable. Food is neutral to me in that it doesn’t sound appealing and revolting to me in that it bares its mark on me as evidence of my weakness. It is like having sex with someone you are afraid of or don’t want to be with at all...or for me it is sleeping with anyone ever.  After it’s over the act itself has happened, but the feelings it leaves you with are just beginning. In the moment, before it happens, you might say to yourself this is normal, this might feels good, this might be ok. And inevitably there is this moment when everything shifts and it, this demon inside of you, feels like it is choking the air from your lungs and it’s not ok and it feels anything but normal… but it’s too late. Saying no is futile. The chance to politely refuse has long since passed. The demon has awakened and the evidence of your choice is palpable. It is there is the sweat of his body. Its there in the sickness that screams in the pit of your stomach. It’s there in the inability to stop shaking. It’s evidence lingers as proof of everything you want to hide. So you try to slow it down, pretend to fall asleep or just be a body to be used. Or maybe you speed it up, trying to get it over with as soon as possible. But in the end it really doesn’t matter...in the end you will just be left with the demon that haunts you until he returns again.

Food may seem normal in the moment. It may taste good and may seem to be okay. But then it goes into my mouth, into my body, and that same demon awakens. But this one I thought I had mastered. I learned to stay away from it, to control it, to not be enticed and everything went still. Everything went numb. But, that was until I found that once again, the trick was on me. I needed it to survive. But going back to it felt like embracing, welcoming, even becoming one with the demon. The feelings of disgust, of sickness, of guilt and shame all came roaring back to life as the evidence remained far after the food was consumed. My hands would smell of it. My mouth would taste of it. My stomach would feel it, as though impregnated by the devil himself. I was sure people could smell it on me, know that it was my choice and know that it was my fault. But the worst part wasn’t the evidence people could see or smell. The worst part is the unbearable weight that lingers inside me. The shame of knowing it was my choice. The inability to unfeel it, unthink it, or unsee it. The decision to do and feel what you detest the most, knowing it the only thing that will save your life, feels not only unbearable, but also incriminating of becoming everything you never wanted to be. So to rip things into pieces makes it feel smaller, makes me feel in charge of the amount i put into my mouth, almost as if to demolish it and slowly allow it will make me feel like there is always a chance to stop, to say no. For food to get on my hands, grease, oil, anything really, is to be unable to rid myself of tangible evidence. I can see the condemnation on my hands and the demon gets louder faster. It is worse if it is white. To pick the lowest calorie option is to choose the least bad, to be the least bad...out of all the evil, you pick the smallest demon, the one that does the least amount of harm. Sometimes you eat as slow as possible to try and indirectly stop it from getting as far. Sometimes, you just eat what you know you will fast to get it over with. More often than not you go lifeless, trying desperately to disappear, to make your body just a body and keep your soul from being a part of it. So I let it sit in front of me and I occasionally take bites, I do what is asked and go through the motions, because I have resigned to what is needed of me, and still try to do enough to get by without fully giving over my soul completely. That way I can at least try to tell myself that I didn’t want for this to happen. I can pretend I fought against it so that I don’t feel like I have become the perpetrator. If I go through all the motions maybe I can trick myself and others into thinking I am not the evil that I have become. I am not the darkness that constantly tries to consume me… the darkness I fear will then consume others through me.

Are there times it becomes about my body and my weight and my appearance? For sure. Are there aspects of things that are just flat out eating disordered? Of course. But I guess I feel like it is easier for me to tell someone I just want to be thin, than it is for me to tell them I want to disappear. It is easier to explain food scares me because it will make me fat, than it is for me to tell them it leaves me feeling used and violated. It is easier for people to think it is about a certain number, than it is to explain to them that I am desperate to say no. No  to the evil. No to the one who is bigger and stronger than me. No to the evidence it leaves behind, covering my body, leaving its fingerprints,claiming me as it prize. I am desperate to say no to the hell without my no killing me.  I am trying to say no so that I can one day, maybe, just maybe,  be clean enough to be loved...to be wanted...to be good.        

So yes, I chew gum after I eat to get rid of the taste in my mouth, but really it’s to get rid of the evidence inside my head that I gave in. I spray body spray on me after I eat a meal in hopes that no one will smell it on me when they get too close. Most of the time I always refuse a little bit so I can convince myself I still tried to not give in. I wash my hands so they don’t carry any reminders of the choices I made. I walk to try and run from the noise inside my head...the feelings of being a disgusting whore that chooses to be used, that will never do anything but take up space. I walk or run from the darkness that tells to just let go and give in to death. I try to escape from the little girl inside me that is incessantly screaming to be held and protected and who I have no capacity to do either of those things for. I’m doing the best i can with what I have but what I have is not enough. Trust me, I know that. I am empty and scared and I want someone to save me from the memories that consume me. I want someone to flip the switch in my brain that would make food just food. I want eating to stop feeling like I am being violated by choice. I want the memories to fade away. I want life to grow from ashes. I want to find a way to somehow, someway, to say no the evil, and say yes to my voice and my body being my own. I want to someday be free.