I am now well on the way to completely rebuilding my perception of myself after some long hard years of having an eating disorder. It is not an easy task at all, learning to get comfortable in your own skin. Even for people who have not had the same experiences as I have. In this world it seems that we are all judged according to the way we look, especially if someone looks like a malnourished stick insect. This is what is considered the height of beauty. It is crazy!
I work in a magazine store and every day I am forced to look at images of thin models and celebrities sprawled all over magazine covers. These models are worshipped by the world because they have bodies like skeletons. It is so difficult for me sometimes you know. I know now that this is not a healthy and desirable way for me to look, yet I still often catch myself comparing my own body with theirs in the same way as I always did when I had my eating disorder. I used to do this intentionally during that time to give myself more of a goal to lose weight. I looked at all those people in the magazines and told myself "I can get thinner than that! I will get thinner than that!" At that time, this was the greatest challenge that I had set for myself in life and to be honest, looking at the people in all those magazines out there did nothing but reinforce my intention and my eating disorder until it was totally out of control!
These days it is so hard to stay strong and proud of myself for what I have already accomplished so far in my recovery when I am surrounded with all this contradiction day after day. Here I am trying to accept myself for who I am and what I look like and everywhere I turn all I see is skinny models! It makes me sick! My biggest challenge now is to just accept all this without letting it distract me from rebuilding a new attitude about myself. Even though I would never want my body to be in the shape it was before, I am still feeling uncomfortable with myself and how I look nearly every single day.
My stomach feels like a balloon most of the time. It is always bloated and heavy because of the damage I did to it with the bulimia. Whenever I eat or drink anything my stomach swells up to the extent that I feel full constantly. Sometimes I just want to lie down until it goes away, but it never ever seems to. I am trying to live day by day rediscovering and rebuilding myself up to feeling the ease and self confidence that goes with being a woman. Yet, it is not easy when I feel more like a pot-bellied pig than a confident woman!
In this world people are celebrated for being thin and I believe that they are admired for it because indirectly, they are looked upon as being strong and powerful for being able to control and discipline themselves when it comes to their diet. This seems to portray and define some aspect of power in people when it is obvious that they are able to refrain from eating much. Does that make them stronger than other people who like eating and really enjoy nourishing their bodies with food? Does that make them more admirable, in turn making someone who is heavier appear weak or greedy?
When I was in the midst of my eating disorder I can tell you honestly that this was the way I thought. I thought I was more powerful and in control of myself than other people who weighed more than I did, just because I weighed less. I felt sorry for them and would look at them and secretly laugh to myself, thinking that they were pigs because they could not keep themselves from eating whilst I praised myself for my efforts not to eat. I felt some kind of inner strength and a great sense of achievement out of all that. I truly believed that I was strong and a real winner!
Nowadays I do not feel like that at all and when I go over the past in my mind now, all I remember is how sad and out of control my life really was. I realize I was not strong in the slightest and I was certainly not someone to be admired. I was nothing other than a scared and confused little girl who was so afraid of growing up into the world. I had no real sense of purpose or sense of myself and I tried to smother the lack of acceptance and confidence I had in terms of who I was inside a skinny, under-weight body. It was insane!
In this world today it is easy to get attention because of the way you look. That is how we all place value on ourselves and others. People love you and think you are a goddess if you fit the images just like those which are plastered all over the magazines. I used to believe that if I made myself look this way, then it would make me feel happier and more acceptable, just for being admired for the way I looked. In a sense it was a way of avoiding the responsibility of really facing and handling the problems I had inside. It was my own way of suppressing all of my deep inner pain. I believed that if I looked good on the outside, then nobody would ever be able to know the real me who existed inside. What a silly idea that was!
In the end I found out the hard way that having what is considered an acceptable body does not make you any happier. In fact, in the long run it only makes you more miserable and unfulfilled when you eventually realize that the feeling of satisfaction you tried to achieve in life for being thin did not work out quite as you had thought. When you lose that one last shred of hope of becoming happy, the one that you counted on to make you feel like a great and beautiful human being, when it is gone you only end up feeling emptier and totally pointless. Where do you turn next? Well, in my case I had nowhere else to turn except to venture inward and really get to the bottom of my problem by discovering who I really was beneath all the pain and turmoil that had accumulated over the years. That was the one and only place I had left to turn, unless of course I wanted to accept death, because for sure, that was the direction I was headed in!
So after all, I am happy and proud to tell you today that I am still here. Of course, I am still in the same skin, flesh and bones, but I am now brand new person who definitely has a reason for living. I am now well on the way to being completely recovered from a long experience of having an eating disorder and I am just so happy to have survived. Okay, so I have a somewhat heavier body than I had before, but who cares when I have a lighter and more peaceful mind. And would I trade inner peace to have my skinny figure once again.....No, definitely not!
Yours in Light
