Lots of people around the world often don’t feel good enough, deserving enough of the best things in life. Why is that?
I never felt I was good enough for self-love.
I even felt I wasn’t good enough of proper nutrition.
It is never the big things that have come to cause me trouble; it is the tiniest thing that I have very carefully chosen to ignore and have placed them on their little island to fester… this little talent of mine is small but miraculous, and what I have come to learn about myself is that my desire to sink this little island that holds all of my tiny little troubles should NOT be my main goal!
One problem is not unlike another. It just depends on how much growth we give to them and how we let these problems evolve. Do we talk about them or write about them do or do we allow them to get us into trouble?
My trouble has always been with food! I love it, but I hate it, I control it as much as it controls me, or is it the other way around?
Not one single day has ever gone by that I don’t inspect what I am eating or that what others are eating. I longingly watch people eat delicious cakes and ice creams with scrumptious chocolates and berry sauces, and I think maybe one day.
I have mastered the art of not eating my entire life, and not only does it hurt and leave my body completely disheveled, but it hurts deep inside my soul. It is a way to self-harm without any physical scars. It sometimes feels like a noose around my heart, yet it is all that I have ever known, so each day I wake up, it’s like here we go again.
I am pretty sure I have been doing this since I was 7 or 8 years old. I listened to others and tried to be the best person I could be, I tried to get attention, but the attention never came or never exactly felt enough or fulfilling.
I know I never knew how thin I was until I was older, I saw images of myself, and my initial thought was oh, I was thin once. I was really happy, and even though it just was not clicking how long this was going on and how much I was depriving myself of proper nutrition and self-love.
I kind of became the girl who went to dinner parties or lunches, and I just didn’t eat at all. I would order and do all the talking by the time my friends were finished. I’d say how I was full too. This was exhausting; I mean this consumed my every movement every thought I processed was all about food and how much I desired to eat it. Yet I told myself how ‘peachy’ I was every night going to bed starving and that I had just achieved another day of barely eating.
Not only was I thin and far from perfect, but I was also an emotional wreck! It is hard to put on this act of smiling and laughing and yet feeling utterly alone inside. It destroys you one way or another.
I was with friends, and someone slipped a book into my hand about eating disorders, which only made me feel disgusted… as if! I did not like being caught out; it was humiliating and the opposite of what I was trying to do.
That would send me into overdrive or just forced me to try to prove more, so what a “normal” person I was. But I knew I wasn’t, and when you are fighting a losing battle, it is so hard even to think that you might have to smallest chance to win!
“You deserve the best, the very best because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts.” ―
The one thing I can say for sure is that if I put all of the energy into loving myself that I did into controlling and depriving myself, I obviously wouldn’t be who I am today. Still, just maybe I might be a little happier a little more understanding and more able to wrap my arms around myself to note that this is what love feels like and that this is a live performance we are bound to make mistakes we are real and nothing takes from that!
I was recently at a talk on ED (eating disorders) the crazy thing is that I said I was there doing research, unbelievable! Though I was there, and while listening to one person talk and share their story I sat in my chair sitting upright and listened attentively ( I was very together), and as this person spoke about her pivotal moment where she thought why have I not been allowing myself to live well? Am I not worthy of a good life? Am I not worthy of love? I exhaled, and my head tilted down. I knew that a spark lit somewhere within me, and there was the warmth that felt like a hug deep within or someone squeezing my soul. This became my moment, and It was me then asking myself, am I not worthy of a good life?
I am here and very much alive all I need is the acknowledgment that I am worthy of love.
So there almost as if the baptism of faith for myself I told myself that I had to release this noose I had to breathe. I had always been worthy of the love I only had to open myself up to it.
It is never precisely quite easy, though I am in recovery, and every story needs a beginning, and this one is mine.
I will never give up, and I will never give in.
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