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Thursday, May 3, 2012

Hopeless?

I wrote my very first journal entry for therapy just one year ago, on May 27th. I was so full of self-hatred that I could barely move. I spent days just lying on the couch, intermittently sleeping or crying. I got up and pretended to be okay if I absolutely had to - I went in to work a couple of times a week, I managed a Mother’s Day outing, got drunk on my birthday...

I had been dieting fairly successfully for over two years, but once again it was all falling apart. The weight was creeping back up, I couldn’t get interested in counting calories or going back to the gym. It all seemed so useless. And unfair. Besides, no matter what I did or how much weight I lost I was still so ugly, and stupid, and selfish. What did it matter anyway? What did *I* matter, anyway?

And so I go to this therapist and she wants me to talk about myself - no, not just that, to WRITE about myself, about my stupid, selfish feelings. I’m supposed to take a look at these bad things I say to myself and take them back, replace them with things that are good about me.

I had no faith that it would work. But I am a people-pleaser, and I do what I’m told. I wrote the first entry, and the next, and the next, and soon the words were flowing every day and I wanted to write in this journal, I NEEDED to write, to get it out. Sometimes these thoughts are like poison and you have to suck it out, spit them out on the page and take a good hard look at them so that you can heal.

So... the following entry is me, a year ago. How strange and long ago it seems.

Journal Entry #1

I am embarrassed to even keep a journal of this. I don't think that I even like myself enough to sit here and have a conversation with me, and especially not about food, or eating. I hate eating, I hate food, and I hate me.

But I don't want to.

First day of therapy today. Mostly I spilled my guts, said all of the stuff that no one, single person has ever known. I cried a lot. I hate that too. I guess I've gotten soft in my old age, because it's gotten harder NOT to cry in front of other people now.

We set goals:
        • Breathe
        • Move
        • Practice Driving
        • Eat (5-6 small meals per day)
        • Write
I am a mess. I don't think that I created this mess alone, but I certainly helped. Now the mess is too damn big to clean up all alone. Fortunately, I am not alone. At least there's that.

I'm fat. I'm plain. I'm boring. I'm needy. I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm mean. I'm weak. I'm empty. I'm selfish.

I'm smart. I'm funny. I love. I'm a friend. I'm a writer. I'm an auntie. I am loved. I am not alone.

(5/27/2011)

“You think you deserve this pain, but you don’t.”

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