full

I'm not eager to be at this point in my blog.  This is another one that I have agonized over for days before posting.  This is another one that makes me squirm and makes me feel like I could throw up all at the same time, so be patient with me please!

When I was 19 my parents had been through some counseling with a very dear woman.  My mom one day told me to take her appointment to share something that she felt was important knowledge to this woman.  I agreed and a wonderful counseling relationship began.  I loved (and still do, very much!) this woman.  She validated me.  She explained me to myself when I couldn't understand why I behaved the way I did.  She started and ended each session with prayer.  I dreaded and looked forward to my weekly sessions with her so much that I was a pile of nerves each day I had an appointment.

At some point in our sessions, near the time of "accountability" and "my cry for help"  we started discussing my intense aversion to all things food.  I was suddenly unbelievably uncomfortable talking about food.  I cannot even express how uncomfortable I was but it was more so than any other thing we had talked about.  She helped me to this realization that I really did NOT like.

When I was younger, during the abuse years, I, like most people, had physical symptoms of emotional hurts.  Not only did I feel afraid and dirty, I always had a stomach ache afterward.  I always felt, for the lack of a better word, full.  Not just full, but- like you ate at a smorgasbord and couldn't consume one more bite or you would surely explode- kind of full.  Simply put, that was the only way in my young brain I could physically describe the yuckiness that I felt.

Now fast forward several years to the 19 yr old me.  I DESPISED feeling full and could never understand why until this day.  I just thought it was because for years I had not eaten properly and was not used to feeling full.  I cried for the rest of the day.  I was supposed to lead one of the break off groups at our Bible Study that night.  I couldn't pull myself together enough to do it.  I cried.  I cried some more.  I wept.  I sobbed.  I couldn't talk, I couldn't eat, I couldn't even drink.  All I could do was cry and ache.  I sat with my knees pulled tightly into my chest and I didn't say a  word.  People asked if I was ok, I couldn't answer.  I wasn't and I didn't know how to make it ok.  I didn't know if I'd ever feel ok again in my life at that point.

I was certain, with this newly realized pain, that I could never eat and feel full ever again.  It would just hurt too much.  As I thought about food and how I felt when I ate, I was bombarded with very graphic and painful memories.  I knew that I could never be whole, that I could never feel full without hurting, that I would never be able to run far enough away from those nightmares.  I knew that for my entire life I would remain slave to the thing I thought that moving far away from had saved me from.  I was forever broken and could not be mended. 

I was wrong. God somehow carried me through that night and through the next several days at work where I was simply going through the motions and in a huge depression. I wasn't eating and I knew why I wasn't eating and I didn't want to feel it.  I tried to be numb again, it had once been easy but now was nearly impossible.  I didn't attempt to kill myself again at this point but I dreamed of the relief that death would bring. I dwelled on thoughts of ending my pain but for some reason, this time it was only a dream not an attempted reality. Once again I was so consumed with hurt that I could barely breathe. 

God so graciously carried me through.  I don't even pretend to know how.  I went through the motions for some time.  Work, church, Bible Study, out to eat after Bible Study and then back to work at one of my 3 jobs.  I functioned, kind of, but I didn't live. I truly didn't think I could ever eat enough to be full without severe emotional whiplash.  The next months were less than pretty as I struggled to find worth, to find healing, and to (unsuccessfully) forget the extreme memories that now plagued not only my sleep but my waking hours as well.