In response to Miriam’s post In the Interest of Full Disclosure.

Wren says –

“Am I self sabotaging, my therapist asks? I don’t know. I am afraid of finally losing the weight? Maybe, I don’t know. Is it a control issues? Fuck yes, I can control what I eat and I can’t control what I eat or don’t eat all a the same time. I am the mobius strip of food control. Yes, I feel expectations from family and friends. I do not feel understood because I do not understand myself.”

I just wanted you to know that your words in that particular passage really resonated with somebody…with me. In fact, if you changed “losing the weight” to “gaining the weight” I could pass it off as something I had written.

I wish I had words of advice or encouragement to give you other than the ones I do, but I just know sometimes I like to be reminded that I am so NOT alone.

You are so NOT alone.

You are also not any one thing by which your disorders may attempt to define you. You are a composite of a million bits and pieces and chunks of very valuable personhood; thoughts and ideas and dreams and fears and memories and impressions and talents and expressions.

You are you, housed by a physical body that does nothing more important than serve as a carrier for your energy; a physical body we have all learned to judge, part and parcel, for no particular rational reason.

We belittle ourselves every time we let our opinions (or others’) of our bodies represent the entirety of our beings, every time we let our exterior determine whether or not our interior is of any value. We belittle our potential; more importantly, we belittle our here and now.

That being said, taking care of that body – and treating it with love and respect- is the only way to fully allow our full beings to be celebrated and to thrive. Abusing the body, with food, with negligence, withholding medication, severs ourselves from, well, ourselves.

Until the disconnect from repeated abuse becomes so severe that we live in our brains and cease to feel in our skin. All that is left is the endless blur of judgment, a barrage of impulses, a capricious whirr of exercises in restraint/denial and complete and utter lack of control.

But you can do this. We all can. And when you can’t – reach out. Ask it, say it, shout it, cry it, write it… someone will hear you.

Because you are so not alone.