onceafatgirl

Now that I have everything I ever wanted, I guess it’s “back to the ol’ drawing board”

This past Thursday, I turned 36. It was fantastic. Best birthday ever. Didn’t do much out of the ordinary. Got a few hours of sun. Did some laundry and grocery shopping. Ate like a queen. (But I always eat like a queen.) Got a fancy diamond necklace. (Ok, that was a super-exciting-out-of-the-ordinary-big-deal.) And watched some Walking Dead.

But my birthday brought something to my attention, as I am one who likes to take inventory at times of ending/beginning. I do it at the New Year, too.

I started this blog in a new year. Jan 2, 2012. Because I was tired of being alone. And lonely. And because I had spent my life as a sugar-addicted-binge-eater hiding. Unwilling to take risks with my heart. Terrified of rejection.

That day, a year and a half ago, I knew that I was beautiful. And likable. Smart and funny. And that I was a good person. Honest and honorable. Kind and loving. And working to be more every day. I knew intellectually. But I lived in an old conception of myself.

I was absolutely, positively sure that I was destined to be alone. That I had been fat because I was broken. And that being broken made me unloveable. Or I was unloveable because I was broken. Either way, I more than “knew” that nobody would ever love me. I existed in the reality of it.

And somehow, in January of 2012, I knew that I wanted out of that reality.

So I started writing this blog. To get the demons out. And get the crazy out of my head. And try some new thoughts. And some new actions. And to stop living like I was still the girl I had been. Not just fat. But miserable. And crazy. A liar and a cheater. And incapable of stopping eating.

Because I had stopped eating! And stopped lying! And stopped cheating! I had learned how to live with integrity. How to honor my word. I had learned how to be a person I liked. And loved and respected.

So I started writing this blog to give myself a chance to fall in love. Because I was pretty darn sure that falling in love, (and being in love, and staying in love) was the most important thing to me. That it was what I wanted more than anything else in the whole world. And I thought that saying out loud, all of the thoughts that lived in my head, that I was afraid were true, would prove that they were not monsters under the bed. Just dust bunnies. I thought that this blog could be the flashlight. If I would just have the courage to look.

And it worked. Holy sh*t! It actually worked!

I am madly in love. With a man who is madly in love with me. And I was right. Loving this man, and being loved by him, is the most important thing that I have ever done in my life. It is actually bigger and easier and more special than my fat, food-addicted, miserable past-self could ever have known to wish for.

But this blog is still not over. It’s not done. And I’m not done with it.

I don’t know what comes next. What the next goal is. The next wish. The next dream. But there must be one. Because it never occurred to me to be done. It merely occurred to me that I got exactly what I asked for. Only better. And more quickly than I could have imagined.

So I’ll keep thinking about what I want next. And in the mean time, I will keep writing to you every week. And keep you posted on what it’s like for me to be a woman who lives with eating disorders.