onceafatgirl

This week I had to drive 10 hours to Chicago to go to jury duty. And I was a wreck. On my way there, my “low tire pressure” warning light came on. And I had a bit of a panic. I want to be clear, this has happened before a few years ago. I keep a mini compressor in my car for just this reason. I have done it myself before on one of my many solo long distance drives. But I was afraid to do it this time, and called my husband to basically see if he would give me permission to not do it. Guess what. He did not. He told me I should do it. For my own peace of mind. So I did it. And it was fine. Quick and easy. 

And then I was distraught that I might get picked for a jury, and be away from my husband and my job for over a week. And have to deal with my food in a kitchen that was not mine. And be away from my routine. I mean actually distraught. I cried. I was miserable and my heart was pounding so hard. I did not get picked. Thank heaven. 

And then on the last stretch of my drive back home to my husband, I was debating if I should get gas or just get home and get it in the morning on my way to the grocery store. I was emotionally exhausted and my butt hurt from the 10 hour drive and knew I had enough gas to get home…until I missed my exit. And then I panicked and got scared that I wouldn’t get to a gas station in time. And I called my husband having a panic attack. I am sure being so stressed out for the previous 2 days didn’t help. He calmed me down and stayed on the phone until I was able to get gas. And the truth is, I should have known that I would find a gas station in plenty of time. But I got scared and I just lost it. 

When I was eating compulsively I was regularly paralyzed. I didn’t do things if they were scary or hard. And because of that, a lot of things didn’t get done. And that, the things not being done, made my life extra stressful. If my homework felt overwhelming, so I didn’t do my homework, I then had to deal with the consequences of not having done my homework. That was stressful. But I could get high on sugar and forget, temporarily, that I was unhappy, or stressed, or overwhelmed. 

But now I have to sit with those feelings. I have to feel overwhelmed. I have to freak out. I have to panic. But in feeling my feelings, I always choose to do something about it. The pain of the anticipation of fear is almost always worse than the thing I am worried about. But if you’ll notice, when I got super scared, I called my husband. I have other people I call too. People I know can talk me through. People who will give good advice and be generous with my fear. 

The bottom line is that I am sensitive. My feelings are vast and deep and unwieldy. Even now as a grown woman. My fear is big. My anxiety is big. But I have tools to deal with them. I have a commitment to living. And I can make friends with this aspect of myself.

I do not want to harden my heart. I don’t even know if I could. I do not want to crawl back into a sugar shell to be inert. I want to feel all of the inconvenient feelings and do all the hard things. Not because I like to. I don’t. But because I love the freedom that comes with the doing. Because the only way to leave those difficult things in the past is to go through them. The things that I avoid never really go away. They hang around like ghosts, haunting me. In a lot of ways, what I had been eating for so long was the ghosts of the things I had left incomplete. 

But my eating is under control now. And there is nothing to numb the fear and the anxiety and the worry. And because the hell of active food addiction is worse than the fear of a difficult situation, I will feel the fear, and the panic. I will cry when I must and make a call and ask for help when I can. And I will also know that 3 times a day, I will be able to turn it all off, and eat a delicious meal within my eating boundaries. And that when I deal with my life, all things are temporary. And this, too, shall pass.

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