Full Moon Day

These days can be happy, too.

Today is one of those interesting days where my body feels something that is not of this world.  I was just sitting here trying to decipher what it is, this underneath, ever-growing, filling, bursting sensation inside my being.  I've come to the conclusion that it must be many things.

A season of change just beginning.  My mind choosing to feel.  My body following my mind's choice.  It's the moon and its pulling, the prayers and God's leading, the sounds I'll soon be missing, the long links I've built that must now be stretched, praying strength and elasticity over them so they might hold and grow bolder.

That these relationships might last.  That my beauty in Christ might be longer believed by my soul.  That I might take today and push it forward onto the ever-present tomorrow, yet still believe in newness and the ability of my created soul to blossom, building on the past which always follows us.  For the future does not follow the past, the past always follows the future, and so there is hope.

Why would I ever choose to mar it with my own insufficiency?

I won't.  I must simply teach the rest of me to listen to the Truth.

Just a feeling

Sometimes I just don't get it - one moment I'm desperately trying to find a way to keep myself from binging, to hold down whatever meal I just ate, to delicately nibble some fruit to trick my brightly lit-up mind into believing it's had enough.  And then I find myself, half an hour later, teeth brushed, purse in hand, tummy feeling lovely and full, and I can't figure out what on earth got into me.  Why I would ever feel that way.  How I could be like that, or why I'd ever want to waste food.  But there it is.  I just feel like that.


Learning to overcome...

Real Life Bulimia

The past two posts were a zoomed-out view, but now I'd like to begin what I really wanted to do with this blog: share what it's like.

The last 3 days have been a roller coaster.  I love free space to think and dream, but with thinking and dreaming come all the emotions I hadn't been feeling before May.  All the ones I thought I'd felt but never really had.  All the chaos that was my inner life.  I was dying inside but I stayed so busy with life that I never even noticed.  That little extra bit of serotonin in my synapses made my emotional self light up and while it's great, there are times I just want to hide from myself.

It's in those moments that I realize the similarities between bulimia and organizing your closet: it always gets messier before it becomes complete.  I'm a messy person, I guess.  Maybe we all are, just in different ways.

Friday was one of those free space days where I just can't seem to find space from myself, and wherever I turn I bump into shadows and places I don't want to face - can't face.  And before I know it there's that overwhelming numbness that comes over me, and as I shamefully look back I can see myself scarfing the brownies or the corn flakes or goodness knows what other random things, just so I can get it all out.  The problem is that while for that short space of time where you push and pull your body to its limits, it feels cathartic, afterwards comes a numbness so great that the only escape is to begin the cycle over again, until your body aches and you find yourself exhausted and no one can quite figure out why.

It's not just because it's physically taxing, it's because your whole being is trying to figure out what just happened.  And you can never really be sure.  So as always, a pact is made with the self to never do that again. Life goes on, you smile, you hug people, you chew a piece of gum and down some water and hope for the best.

Well, I do.  Guess I'm still struggling to own it myself.

But then there are people who are willing to confront you. "Goodness, Sheila, look what you are doing to your body!  Use this for good, don't let it ruin your future."

And so I keep trying.  I keep fighting.  I won't give up.  Because life is still so incredibly beautiful and I am enjoying it so much.

2 days (mostly-ish) strong.  Keep fighting.

Mosaic of Grace

There's always new life.  Even when the binging/purging comes fast and there's that feeling of being trapped.  But here I am, a new day.  With no mistakes in it yet.  A fresh breeze and the fresh realization that I am here and alive and ready to live new today.  Once again a new resolve - how?  not sure.  But one thing is sure:  My God is patient and he can and will give me the strength that I need.

When will my life start?  It has.  It has.  It just may not always look like the picture book, but that's alright.  Keep promising anew that this way will end here and reach forward to a place where life flows only in one direction, not trying to force things to move quickly and then to force them backward to make them right.  It's a place this gentle breeze can blow away - to move forward and stop building walls.

To see what God has for me, even in the craziness of this life I seem to live in bits and pieces - yet He mends it and makes those fragments into a masterpiece, a mosaic, breaking away the dark spots or using them to create a shadow in the art, needed to see the brilliance of the glorious work He is crafting.

My life - yes it is a Mosaic of Grace of Life, of Glory, of daily inner tragedy and turmoil, yet also of love and dreams and now, a determined clinging to the One who made me, the subject of this art, so that He might, in His way, make me whole.  In a moment of lucidity among my rebel years I wrote a poem, and lines of it keep flitting trough my mind...

... I am blessed to be the me 
that He created,
within a dull and grey-blue sea 
of look-alikes.

For I can be this person,
who I am!
By uniqueness never worsened,
always fresh ...

Beginning the Story

Today I am here with a topic full of mystery for many, and a topic full of shame for others.  But I am not here to add to shame or to solve the mystery; I am not here with all the answers or even a perfect story to tell.  I’m simply here to bring this struggle, openly, to the world, so that perhaps, a few might understand a little better, and some might not feel so alone.

Shall I begin to explain the journey? 

My name is Sheila, and I am bulimic.  It’s not a description I often truly own, even to myself, but I need to embrace the fact if I am truly to recover.  I’d like to say I’ve conquered my eating disorder (ED) and I am here to help others do the same, but I’ve not.  Beginning with anorexia, leading to an EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) type of disorder which ultimately lead to bulimia, I feel like a walking ED sometimes, yet when out living daily life, I hardly label myself as such.  It’s just how I’ve lived the past 5 years.

I’ll be honest:  I’ve never been hospitalized.  I’ve never been under 100 lbs.  I’ve never passed out from lack of food.  I wasn’t a dancer or a gymnast or a model.  I’m not going to pretend I was any of those things – my ED journey has been far from stereotypical.   But really, how many people actually fit any stereotype?  Very few.

So this blog is about the un-stereotypical ED journey.  The ED journey of a young woman who loves Christ and family and travel, who revels in sunsets and works hard at university, who climbs trees whenever the opportunity arises, who has her heart set on being a baby-catcher and passionate advocate of mothers (a midwife).

I’m just Sheila.  A bulimic.  Determined to recover.  One step, one day, one minute at a time.

And when we don’t take steps today we can pick ourselves back up and smile, knowing we are not alone.  And tomorrow has no mistakes in it yet.