Eating Disorder/1988-Present

I don’t drink. Nor do I smoke anymore, that’s not my addiction. Since I stopped dating I gravitate towards food, namely pizza. I have struggled with eating since I was 23 that is when I started to drink diet Pepsi, I only stopped since I started on Prozac and the combination tasted weird. So I switched to diet 7-Up.

Although I was slim I never learned to eat properly. I could never eat salad since I loathed lettuce. I was never able to eat vegetables without vomiting. I used to drink Diet Pepsi in college to the point of going to the bathroom and vomiting. Since I didn’t have much money back then, I would subsist on Diet Pepsi and a bag of small Pretzels for the whole day. Every day for almost 3 decades I would buy a Double Big Gulp, two a day, to keep myself from eating so much, and then just as a bad habit.

I was not an overweight child, I was thin in college, and I was anywhere from a 3-6 when I turned 40 I got even smaller, a size 1. I didn’t know why I starved myself then, now I realize my 20 year old sister married that year. That year I was in therapy with a 43 year old man named Scott. It was an extremely painful relationship that lasted 2 years. After the therapy ended, I stuffed my pain with food.

After Scott, whom I really believed I was going to marry, I started eating it hurt me in a way that doesn’t make any sense. We weren’t dating, I never slept with him, he wasn’t my boyfriend; he was my therapist I saw twice a week for two years.

I used food as a way of coping with the loss of Scott. I didn’t gain all of the weight at once. But I found myself comforting myself with food more and more. I always had good ideas back then, “Let’s get a pizza!” I would buy pizza because I was sad, lonely, happy, watching something good on television. When you watch something good on television you have to eat something good. Peanut butter out of a jar with the Academy Awards was just depressing. When I couldn’t afford a pizza from Me-n-Ed’s, I would buy one of those u-bake yourself pizzas for $5.00. I did that a lot, a lot. I had to accept the fact there was no one for me. I stopped cutting which lasted for so many years, more than 25 years. The cutting soothed me then, it was a way of self-soothing whenever my emotions got out of hand, when I was overwhelmed with feelings I couldn’t deal with. The incision came to calm me, and fix me. Only, it didn’t really fix me, it only scarred my flesh and my soul.

When I wore a size 1, I was a bag of bones, I liked my body. The protrusion of bone that jutted through my flesh empowered me somehow. It was beautiful to look at, the perfect bones of the pelvis I could now see. The beautiful collar bones that pierced through, the bones I could feel down my spine and the huge space between my thighs, the lack of flesh women crave between their thighs was there. I could wear anything then, and looked smashing. It wasn’t like it is now, “oh, that doesn’t fit.” I used to have a whole bunch of sizes in my closet until I realized I was never going to fit back into many of my clothes, I gave them to charity, and tried to give them to Moe, my sister who is a bone, she didn’t want them. But you always keep that one dress you think you will fit into some day, that sexy dress that made you look good. Well, I eventually had to part with it it wasn’t ever going to fit, ever again.

I didn’t want to admit I had gotten F….A….T…. The word women hate. I used to look at myself in pictures, and I would say, “I’m still good.” “Not too bad.” The picture I took for New Year’s had no excuse I couldn’t lie to myself anymore, and say, “I’m still not that fat.”

Between the woman who was size 1, and the woman who stopped cutting, this woman became a size 18. When I stopped cutting that was almost the hardest thing I had to do, learn to process my emotions, my feelings in a different way, in a safer way. Before I could think, that razor had dragged across my arms and legs, the rivers of blood were not pretty.

The same thing happened with food, before I could process an emotion, I had already bought the pizza and eaten most of it, it not all of it. The bad thing about this, the most horrible thing about this is my daughter would eat with me too. Had I been a sensible eater I don’t think she would be as overweight as she is. Eating was like a party, it was way better than razors, it didn’t hurt. There was no aching from the cuts afterwards, there was just more flesh, instead of less skin. I thought I could handle it. There were times I had such joy with the Lord, and my weight reflected that. Somehow the closeness would end, and I would be ordering pizza.

After my daddy died, I comforted my grief with food, pizza primarily, and making cookies from the chocolate chip packages in the bakery aisle, with walnuts, always with walnuts. I loved cookie dough. I think every food addict does. There was something so wonderful about raw cookie dough, with walnuts. It goes back to childhood; moms never letting you eat the cookie dough or the cake mix. There was no one to tell me not to, not even myself.

I never had a successful relationship; they were all I don’t know what they really were, a woman, a girl, trying to be loved, men deciding it wasn’t a good time to see me, men who were emotionally unavailable. There weren’t the Valentines gifts, the New Year’s dates; no it wasn’t like that at all for me. I thought it didn’t hurt me anymore, since I had stopped cutting. I just started eating, instead. I substituted one vicious habit for the other. The razors were all clean in my house, but something sinister took its place.

I developed a heart arrhythmia when I was 39 years old. It was because of the bulimia and all of the diet Pepsi I used to drink. I would drink a double gulp of diet Pepsi in the morning, and another towards the evening. It was all of the caffeine. Between that and the bulimia, I had developed tachycardia. This was a side effect of my food addiction.

Throwing up after meals, I began to hate to have the taste of certain foods in my mouth. Every time I threw up I could feel my eyes being ripped out of my head. My body would convulse. The finger down my throat became a ritual for many years. It helped when I felt guilty whenever I over ate. I had to get the food out, it was binging and purging. It was painful, and it was my dirty little secret.

I haven’t voluntarily thrown up my food in a few years. It wasn’t to lose weight it was to assuage guilt, even though it wasn’t going to keep the weight off. It became a nasty habit. I was never an anorexic. But I starved myself and walked five miles a day. The extreme dieting ended when I suddenly quit therapy. I didn’t start eating right away, gradually my eating habits changed. I was crushed. I secretly begin to cut again, but the guilt associated with cutting was profound. So I ate.

Eating started off innocently I would bake cookies for myself to feel a little better. Daddy would send me pizza money, as I was unemployed. I know daddy didn’t mean for this to happen, when he was alive he used to tell me that I should start walking.

Eating was like pulling a big wool blanket over my flesh when it was cold. Food felt like a long embrace, I felt loved. Food actually loved me back. It wasn’t critical like momma, who would find something to scold me for. It was warm like a bowl of hot porridge. Whereas men’s love was fickle, food wasn’t like that, when I had it in front of me, it was like the love I never received from men. My mind and heart associated food with love, with being loved, with being accepted. It felt good not to be rejected.

When I saw I was putting on weight, naturally I tried to lose it, and I would keep it off for awhile, but I always put the weight back on. I realized the extra pounds kept me safe from unwanted advances. I was disgusted with the emotional roller coaster of trying to find someone. It was liberating that I didn’t have to deal with that. Mary, my therapist thought I was trying to keep men away, maybe, I was at first, later, it didn’t matter. I had had enough.

I wasn’t young anymore the bloom was off the proverbial rose. So I kept the extra weight, when my daddy died in 2013, I spiraled out of control. He was the only man in my life, who was permanent. We had rebuilt the relationship in the last couple of years before his death, he was like my best friend, I missed him intensely when he passed away, I had never known that kind of grief before.

In the last 4 years I have tried to join a gym, lose weight, I did shed some pounds, gained them back, but would always settle back into a corner of the sofa with a pizza box.

Momma tried to get me to eat better, whenever we would grocery shop together, she would have me check on the back for the sugar, the fat, and the calories, I hated going grocery shopping with her. But it is only because she loves me that she did that. Boi tried to intervene, and we would have conversations about good eating habits. Boi is extremely thin. Moe, is also extremely thin, like my brother and my mother, she paid for me to join a gym last year. I wondered if my weight hadn’t skewed my perception of how thin they really are. Both of them assured me they were at a healthy weight. My entire family is slim, my younger brother and younger sister watch their weight as well. They are both fit, Jimmy works out in a gym a lot; Misi watches her caloric intake. My baby sister Mia is pregnant. I told myself there was always a fat sibling. I didn’t like my weight I thought I was alright with the extra flesh.

But I realized, it wasn’t just the way a person looks, there are health implications. It wasn’t just my life, it was my daughter’s too, and I was responsible for that. Some of her weight was due to her bipolar meds, but the rest of it was bad eating habits.

Being obese is more than just about looks, it is about death. I don’t want my daughter or myself to get diabetes. We don’t have it, but being at an unhealthy weight it is only a matter of time. If a person with diabetes doesn’t maintain their glucose, there is nothing that can kill you faster. My cousin Diana is dying of diabetes she is 56, she is on kidney dialysis 4 times a week. I don’t know how long her body can take that. Her liver is shot. That is my future.

So, I resolve that I would finally give it to the Lord, as He has healed me from cutting He is more than able to break this insidious relationship I have with food.

I was diagnosed with diabetes on May 24, 2017 by my doctor.

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It is only by my God’s strength, my Papa God, my Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit and only by Him that I am exercising, and eating healthier. I kept crying out to the Lord, “I am weak, thou art Strong, in Your Strength, help me to eat differently, not to desire food so much, especially pizza, for my sake and for my daughter’s Emma. Help me to hunger for You, to hunger and thirst for Your Righteousness.”

God has changed my desires to eat all of the time. I eat low sugar oatmeal for breakfast and enjoy it. I snack on an apple, instead of making cookies. I don’t order pizza anymore because I am sad. I find my joy in Jesus, in His love and His mercy.

I have lost nearly 40 lbs from my highest weight. I still have a ways to go, but the Lord has put me on the right path, of desiring Him more than food.

I walk two miles a day five days a week, and enjoy this time with the Lord, in prayer and reciting Scriptures from memory, particularly Romans 8, Psalms 139, Psalm 91, and Isaiah 53.

It was Satan’s lie, that I needed food, particularly pizza, Me-n-Ed’s pizza to be fulfilled and happy.

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“He gives power to the weak and to those who have no strength

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,

And the young men shall utterly fall,

But those who wait on the Lord

Shall renew their strength,

They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary,

They shall walk and not faint.”

(Isaiah 40:29-31)

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, AND BY HIS STRIPES WE ARE HEALED.

(Isaiah 53:5)

“It is written man shall not live by bread alone, but by every mouth that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”

(Matthew 4:4)