Are You Worn Out?
As long as I live, I will never forget the sense of despair . . . and the weariness.
I was engulfed, encompassed, surrounded, and overcome by . . . I wasn’t sure exactly what . . . I just knew I couldn’t stop the binge eating. And I was a Christian who thought I should have my act “together.” Clearly, the issue was serious. It was affecting my state of mind, my emotions, my physical body, my relationships, my work, my reason for being alive, and my interaction with God. I dearly wanted answers. But the answers did not come.
And I was starting to feel like something was desperately wrong with me.
It was pretty humiliating for me to realize that I was making choices that I couldn’t stop making. For a long time, I just thought the bingeing was “a problem” or a “bad habit.” I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was not a good thing, but I was absolutely convinced that if I would just exercise enough will power, or make a solemn promise to God, or confess enough times that I was victorious in Christ; then I would stop eating the excess food and be done with it. But that hadn’t happened, and I was ashamed to admit that no matter how hard I tried, the needed willpower was just not manifesting. When I was a full-time homemaker, I often thought if I had a job outside of the home, and wasn’t alone so much, then there wouldn’t be a problem at all. If I just stayed busy, then I wouldn’t have the time or the desire to overeat. In other words, there was always some element outside of myself that would make it all better. It was the “dangling carrot.” At other times, my mental processes, my emotions, and my active choices were so distorted and confused that I really thought someone should just “put me away.” And there were times I would have been thankful if someone had. Compulsive bingeing made me feel crazy. As a matter of fact . . . it was crazy.
Case in point: I once pulled the remainders of a bakery cake out of our alley trash can in order to finish what I hadn’t eaten during my binge from the day before. I always tried to hide the fact that I was bingeing, so if there were any “leftovers,” I would dispose of them secretly. The outside trash can was usually a safe place because, normally, no one was going to have a reason to rummage around in a plastic trash bag already taken out for pickup. That is, unless you’re addicted to food, and you decide that you want to finish off the uneaten half of the layer cake that’s inside. Well, my cake was still in its cardboard and cellophane bakery box, so I fished it out of the bag of smelly garbage that had been sitting in our metal can for twenty-four hours. The poor thing was partially smashed from its secret disposal, but once it hit my taste buds, what was the difference? I ate the rest of it. I was twenty-five years old when that incident happened, and was, by then, well entrenched in my sickness. But it took me thirty-five more years to come to the end of myself.
And when that day finally came . . . I began to learn a whole new way of living.
(Next blog: Thursday, 1-20-22)
