bluevibe's Journal

So, here's my schpiel: 

I grew up in a cult.  A lot of my childhood was spent feeling rejected and longing for support that I never recieved.  I've succeeded in forgiving my parents, for the most part.  I try to see where they were coming from (born into uptight families, looking for a more 'free' way to being up their kids). 

There was a matriarch in the 'community', and for her own freudian reasons she just never thought much of me but was very affectionate toward my older sister.  I called her Gramma, so you could say her lack of love and affection served to traumatize me to a substancial degree.  My parents were both in psychological lala land, and did not have the strength or know how to move away from this unhealthy environment, an environment which provided financial as well as emotional support, and which promoted, at least in part, the break up of a nuclear family in favor of community love.  Not surprisingly, my parents both had affairs with group members and their marriage didn't survive the aftermath. 

 My Mum had a nervous breakdown when I was about 8.  She never fully regained her strength, and having a large benign tumor removed from her cerebral cortex ten years later didn't help anything.  She had been suffering from the effects of the tumor pressing against the parts of her brain devoted to memory and intellectual ability for years without seeking help.  My Dad's always worked hard, but that often meant little time left to spend with his children.

Me and my older sister were not brought up in a book loving environment.  School was something we succeeded or failed at on our own.  We didn't get any input from our parents about how to think in a rational, precise kind of way.  I envy adults who have been brought up in that kind of environment; it gives them such an advantage later on in life.  We didn't have any kind of family stability, no real structure and no real direction.  It's not that we weren't loved, but the attention to detail that is so necessary for children wasn't there. 

My entire life, I've felt like an outsider.  I've never felt utterly bound to a community, and my childhood expereience has made me skeptical and weary of any group expousing community mentality. 

At 14, I found two friends to dedicate my life to.  One of them happened to be anorexic.  The other became bulemic.  I already knew I wasn't good enough the way I was, so following them down that path seemed a perfectly sane idea. 

I began coming home and eating huge bowls of cereal while watching anything on tv.  I did this secretly, in private and hid the evidence.  I began putting on weight.  I wasn't happy about that, so I began to diet.  By 16, I was either dieting or overeating.  Once I ate nothing but tomatoes and exercised continously for ten days.  It was difficult, but when I began to see results, I was determined this was the way to happiness.  

By 17, I was binging and purging to avoid weight gain.  My weight fluctuated much of my teenage years, but never enough for anyone to really notice.  I wasn't clearly anorexic or clearly overweight, and BED had not yet been classified a medical condition, so the soietal awareness wasn't there.  

For almost half the time I have existed on this earth, I have been consumed with body-image and weight.  Over the past 3 years or so, I've sought to better understand what I realized had become a disorder.  My desire for food had surpassed normality: I was now addicted to it, would use it to numb emotion and anxiety, would suffer from withdrawl, would do humiliating things to ensure I had it.  Food had become my drug, and still is. 

I don't know what it means to say that I am determined to stop.  I can say it all I want, I can beleive it with all my heart, I can go through the motions and succeed for a while.  But food, like the drug that it is, will always tempt me.  How do you overcome addiction? 

It's also importnat to note exactly what kind of a drug food is.  I need it to survive, I can't do without it.  It is nutrition and ritual, it is celebration and art.  It heals, it stengthens, it provides.  It's coveted, it's fought over, it's scare in many areas of the globe. 

Food will make me beautiful; it will make me fat; it will make me thin; it will make my cheeks rosey; it will inflate my belly; it will affect my state of mind; it will feed my brain.  Food is not the enemy, so who or what is?

How can I be my enemy?  And would thinking this way help me overcome my addiction?  What is it, deep down, that drives me to abuse food? 

I am on a quest to discover this complicated, and I'm sure life altering, question.  I don't expect to be healed overnight; I understand this is a process I am going through and that there is still a lot of work to be done.  But I'm hopeful, and I beleive in my ability to keep going.