I’m falling in love with food.
Yes it’s a sentence written by ex-bulimic.
One may wonder wasn’t life always about food? Oh, yes. It WAS.
I thought I liked food and I liked it too much. I mean I was thinking about it every moment. I was spending all my hard earned money on it. I was willing to drive 20 miles out of my way for my favorite snack. I was over the moon about food. I loved food. I really thought so. Boy I was wrong.
The connection between me and food was so close, deep and affectionate – it seemed like love. However it was not. It was some screwed, abused based relationship - sick passion with the trace of despair, emptiness and hearted for life.
I wanted out of this relationship. I wanted it to be over. Permanently.
But of course, I couldn’t give up eating altogether.
I knew I had to change my connection to eating somehow. Thus I thought I needed to start enjoying it less, not more!
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.
As soon as I started recovery I ate crap. Some plain chicken breast with broccoli. Tuna inn brine. Fat free yogurt. I hated it.
Then again I had no idea how to fix my relationship with food.
One afternoon while spending time with my BF, after not seeing him for whole three days, I was thinking of how much I loved him, and how dear the time that we were spending together was. Then it hit me:
I had never loved food. I had not actually liked it at all.
I mean when you love something, you spend time with it. You pay attention to it. You enjoy it. And although I thought incessantly about food, I used to consume meals as if they were stolen pleasures. As if I was not really allowed to have them, let alone had rollicking times eating them.
For me food was not allowed to be itself: a source of pleasure, joy, and nourishment. Instead, food was the middleman between feeling something I didn’t want to feel and numbing or distracting myself from feeling it. I did not eat for enjoyment, taste, or particular sensations, I ate for the effect the food had on me. Food was my drug of choice.
Greta, you are so wise. I could never put into words my screwed up relationship with food during my various food-stages: heinous restricting, huge overindulging, and back and forth and back and forth over and over...and yet here it is. You've written it perfectly.
ReplyDeletegreta, again, you have spoken to my soul! i feel like this posting is a beautifully choreographed dance . . . driving 20 miles away is the ballet's introduction, realising that you have never really loved food despite the obsession is the climax, and embracing where you are now is the conclusion, to be continued . . . i love this post, and again, i am so happy to read things from someone who has clearly lived through exactly what i lived through. it's amazing that we developed these patterns on our own, without influence or direction, but our actions were so similar. i will forever heart you! it's midnight here in the states, and i've just settled to my wine and will be having dinner shortly! it's such an amazing feeling to not be doped up on laxatives and food because midnight on sundays was always the safety zone when i could go bulimically crazy. thank you for recovering with me. :)
ReplyDeleteGirls, your comments mean so much.
ReplyDeleteI must confess - I’m writing those posts for you but mostly for myself. There are so many thoughts going through my mind - I need to clear them out and to be over with. Through bloging I’m recovering and discovering the true and real me. Thank you for being here.