Lucky Me

I am turning 37 this month. I feel closer to 40 than I ever have before (hmmmm….wonder why). But I don’t let it get to me, because I can look back at a time in my life not so long ago and remember when birthdays, like every other day, were all about the food...or lack thereof. These days, however, birthdays are all about the friends, the family, the festivities.

Case in point - the first of many events to celebrate the advent of my 37th year was to happen this past Saturday night. The night kicked off with a party, and continued at a new local hotspot. Fun, fun, fun!

But I wasn’t there. I was at home, curled up on the big brown velour couch, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, sipping water laced with electrolytes and catching up on movies from the local dollar-a-night rent-a-video box. What went wrong?

It might have been the cheese from the restaurant the night before. Or maybe it was the wine. Or both. It could have been an inadequately washed tangerine from the neighbor’s tree, or the leftover germs from a passing stranger’s waning stomach flu. But all of a sudden, from about mid-afternoon onward, a part of me I don't usually like to mention publicly became a slave to the white ceramic god.

Later that evening, the stomach symptoms subsided, and the situation improved – on the sole condition that I didn’t put anything else into my mouth. I felt absolutely fine otherwise – no coughing, sneezing, runny nose, fever, headache. I began to hopefully consider venturing out to the party after all. But when I went to get up, I noticed that I felt strangely fatigued, a little dizzy, and very cold. I didn’t want to unwrap the blanket. I didn’t want to move. I lost my energy. I grudgingly substituted ‘party’ with ‘bed’.

It took me until the next morning to identify the real source of my accompanying symptoms. I was HUNGRY!

You see, in this particular case, I couldn’t eat….at least not if I wanted to be able to spend more than five consecutive minutes in a room without toilet paper. But after twelve straight hours without eating a thing or drinking a liquid other than water, it is also no great surprise that I became weak, dizzy, chilled, and ultimately disinclined to make it to my own celebration.

What floored me the most was to remember that I used to live like that – feel like that – each and every day, and not think anything of it! I used to sleep until noon just to avoid breakfast, and arise listless, exhausted and irritable. I used to faint dead away in the heat of direct sunlight, and black out in the car on my way home from school. I slept through class, through work, through life. I was known as the ‘shower queen’ in our family, relying on the hottest setting to restore some semblance of warmth to my chilled frame. I used to think I was not just shy but antisocial, because I had little enthusiasm or energy for social outings or other people.

I also used to believe this was the same reason others didn’t seem too interested in me. When the simple truth was that, all that time, I was just hungry. I was, in fact, starving.

Around 10:30pm, with a nod to the fact that I wouldn’t be going out after all, I instead finally, cautiously, gave in to the rumblings of my stomach. I gingerly downed some buttered popcorn, followed up by a single small egg with a slice of cheese scrambled in. This miniscule infusion just made matters worse – awakening hunger pangs so intense I could have cheerfully consumed a whole cornfield, an entire box of eggs and cheese slices.

I never want to feel like that again. I will never live like that again. When we go hungry, nothing else matters. When we go hungry by our own hand, our whole life goes hungry with us.

So, last Saturday night, in that untimely stomach episode, I got an early birthday present. I got my life back – again. In recovery, we get our lives back twice – once when we replace our eating disordered behaviors with the rest of life, and then once again when we NOTICE.

So, this holiday season, notice. Notice any ways, large or small, that you have managed to replace your eating disorder with your life. CONGRATULATE YOURSELF.

Then, notice the ways your eating disorder still impacts your quality of life, and, using the reminder of what you have already accomplished as early proof of eventual success, REDOUBLE your efforts to reclaim your life for your own.

You can do it. And who knows – maybe this will be the year you finally kick your eating disorder in its round white hiney and say goodbye - once and for all!

Warmly, and with holiday HOPE,

Shannon

If you would like to submit a question or idea for a topic you would like to see addressed in a future edition, please send it to Shannon c/o Good News HERE