Displaying items by tag: selflove

Anorexia, like many mental illnesses, prays on your weaknesses, your vulnerabilities. It hits you where it hurts. For those struggling with anorexia, that place is in food and the thought of gaining weight. To the anorexic, gaining weight is far worse than death. As a matter of fact, the anorexic would choose death over gaining weight if she had the choice.

At the height of my anorexia, when someone asked me what my worse fear was, I almost always said, “I’m afraid of getting fat.” But even in my state of complete denial over how my body looked, I knew this sounded ludicrous.

Gaining weight is repulsive for the anorexic. It means weakness, torture, agony, pain, worthlessness, guilt and shame, defeat, punishment, surrender, giving up, and succumbing to her worst fear.

How do you define “health”? Is it free of any pain? Free of any disease? In great shape? Able to run a marathon? Whatever your definition of health, it comes down to this: self-love.

I’ve recently realized something that I wish I could tell my younger self: I am worthy. I am confident. I am enough. It took more than twenty years to get to this point, but as I’ve come to realize, the journey takes precedence over the destination. With time, experience, and wisdom, most people can find the elusive “happiness” by looking withing themselves and not relying on others.

One night, I had an anxiety attack. I was in my apartment, with just my cat, Jinx. I had just indulged in one too many glasses of wine and a depressing amount of ice cream, trying to stuff down my sadness and quell my racing mind. I thought of reaching out to someone, a friend or my sister, but it was too late. I was inconsolable. I wailed and cried, and I couldn’t breathe through my nose. My shallow breaths caused me to panic even more. I heaved and wailed with my arms wrapped around my shaking shoulders, and tears stained the floor and soaked two dozen tissues. I couldn’t save myself from drowning in my own tears.

I kept chanting over and over, “Please come back to me, please come back. I promise to love you better. I promise I’ll love you right. Please just come back to me.” At that moment, there was nothing else in the world I wanted more than my husband to be in my arms.

After a few minutes of this, I had a sudden and uncontrollable urge to look at his picture. I hadn’t wanted to go back there since the day he asked for the divorce. It was too painful to see what we used to be. But for some reason, I wanted to see him on this night. I rummaged through my closet until I found what I was looking for: a mound of pictures of us in a Walmart photo envelope His was the first face I saw when I opened the pack. They were mostly on our wedding day, and again, I crumpled into tears, clutching the pictures close to my heart, promising I would love him better if he would come back to me.

Do things happen for a reason, or do things happen and we find reasons for them? That question has been on my mind lately. I always thought the former was true, but now, I wonder if it’s not the latter. There are so many things that happen in life that have no logical explanation. Losing my mother at age six is an example. That single incident changed the trajectory of every aspect of my life and many other lives.

I asked why all of my life, but never really got a clear answer. I began speculating on reasons for such a tragic loss. To make me stronger, wiser, more appreciative of how fragile life is? To never take life for granted? To challenge me in some way? My mother’s death could not have been for nothing, could it? It couldn’t have been some cruel joke played by a God who claims love over revenge, or a horrible random occurrence set in motion by the universe. There has to be a reason somewhere.

For the better part of two decades, I struggled with body misperception and eating disorders. I looked in the mirror and saw only a fat girl staring back. The death of my mother when I was six had a profound effect on my life and the decisions and directions I took from there on. I learned to play the victim, the poor little girl whose mommy died. I got attention from other members of my family when I cried, threw a tantrum, or lost weight. 

My feelings were more than just physical. They were emotional and mental. I felt fat, a weight in my belly and in my mind, and so therefore, I thought I was fat.