On Being Grounded

My family very much values strength and a certain level of toughness. All of life's problems are made out to be simple with very simple solutions:

• You just had your heart broken? Meet someone else.
• You're depressed? Get over it.
• You're broke? Work harder. Make more money.
• The dog's sick? Shoot it.

Hell, even when I had a miscarriage years ago - While sitting on my bathroom floor, losing so much blood I thought I'd need a transfusion, I called my Dad first. He told me to NOT go to the hospital. That it would be a waste of money. Issues or problems in my family are simply considered a weakness. We are able to fix everything ourselves, so to acknowledge any different is pointless.

I don't really know how to ask for help. And I feel that all the times I have, help has been rejected. Which is precisely why I talk to myself, write on this blog, and neurotically lean on my friends to help me sort things out. There is one thing that I have been so ashamed of that I have kept it buried for over a decade. No one knows about it. Not Sister. Not Bodhi. Not Robo. Not Trinity. And definitely none of the demons. I have a binge eating disorder. It started, as pretty much all of my other issues did, after the accident. For the last thirteen years I have dealt with my paranoia, depression, loneliness, and anxiety by stuffing my face with whatever bad-for-me food I can find. I will literally clean out my refrigerator in one night. And if I don't have what I am craving to satisfy the binge, I will get in my car at 3am to go find it. Two nights ago, I ate two (whole) frozen pizzas, three large bars of expensive chocolate, and twelve slices of Kraft singles, finished with four ice cream drumsticks. In the time it took to watch two hours of Ted Talks.

But I don't purge after a binge. I punish. When I am finally so full, I cannot fit anything more down my throat, I go weigh myself on my bathroom scale. Then I lay in bed, telling myself how fat, ugly, and undeserving of love I am. I then proceed to "counter" the calories consumed during the binge by starving myself for a day or more. I will get to the point I am so weak, I cannot get out of bed until I either binge again out of hunger, or attempt to drown my emotions with beer. (Which of course, leads to getting black out drunk from drinking on an empty stomach). These "episodes" usually occur a couple of times a year. Depending on my mental state at the time, they can be a one-off misstep that happens one time and I get over it. Or, it can be a cycle that goes on for a month or two. This time, the cycle started somewhere around the time I lost My Girl. For a few months, I had been losing weight at a steady and healthy rate (as well as staving off any binges), through closely monitoring my diet and exercise. I was regularly finding myself in the hills, hiking with consistent partners, and my spirits were high. Then, life just happened and the spiral down to binging followed.

As I have said before, the beauty I am finding in this blog project is I am forced to face the ugly and horrible truths I keep buried and hidden from view. By posting these intimate details to the universe, I have to acknowledge that it is real. I also have to release it and let the burden start to slowly leave me. Life is not happy for me because I don't let it be. Face it, my life is a cluster fuck right now. I have so much negativity inside of me, there is little room left for happiness, joy, or love. I have less than five months left in my twenties and if I am going to begin my thirtieth year with a more stable foundation as I set out to do, I have to get to work. Professional help may be out of my reach, so the only person I can count on to fix me, is me.

I recognize that at this moment in my life, my biggest depressor (and instability trigger) is my lack of financial stability and what it is doing to my social life. My friends and loved ones work very hard to afford their luxuries and should rightfully enjoy them. But while they are attending concerts, music festivals, mini-vacations, movies, brewery crawls, yoga workshops, dinners out... I am alone. I work very hard too, and in a fair and perfect world, I would be joining them. But as we all know, the world is not perfect, and certainly not fair. Often times, friends will offer to spot me. But this generally makes me feel even worse about my situation. Pride is something I have little of, but shame is something I am have in excess. I find that I generally have two choices: Have a social life and go broke, or save money and be lonely. I almost always choose the former. I now realize I will never reach my goals continuing on this path.

I have to buckle down for a little while, perhaps even a few months, just to build some better habits within myself. I have to get my eating disorder under control. The emotional toll is becoming worrisome. The hurtful things I tell myself become more brutal the longer it goes on. I have also got to get my finances in order. Sure, I don't make the salary I should or deserve, but I have to figure out how to live comfortably and securely with what I have. I have re-enlisted in my diet and exercise plan and I have started to track my daily spending. So far, my research has proven I can look forward to missing out on most (if not all) of the "extra" activities with my loved ones. I just hope that when I come out the other side, they will not have forgotten who I am.