The Mind of Binge Eating Disorder

So, a lot has happened in my life since my last blog post.  I had to leave the church I called home, because of some things that happened that I am not ready to talk about yet.  This has taken a huge toll on me.  Right before we left, I had a partial hysterectomy due to complications taking place after my miscarriage.  So no more children for us.  It feels like loss after loss keeps hitting me. Leaving my church meant losing my youth leader position and losing my kids that I came to love so much.  I feel like I lost my calling and my purpose.  Actually I am not even sure I am called to be a youth pastor.  I was told by someone I had trusted that I was gifted with teens.  When you see this person tell other leaders the same thing then turn around say otherwise behind their back, it is hard to trust their words at all.  So here I am.  No rhyme, reason, or purpose except a mother and wife.  Maybe that's exactly where God wants me to be.

So the point of this post.  I was diagnosed a few years ago with binge eating disorder.  I didn't know that was a thing to be honest.  I go through cycles of starving myself to lose weight, then binging because of my emotions and I'm freaking hungry.  I was at my lowest weight last summer, 164lbs.  I was so proud of myself but also hated myself for being so fat.  You see, it doesn't matter how much weight I lose, I will always be fat.  It started when I was a child.  I grew up with twin sisters who were absolutely gorgeous!  Everywhere we went, they were the stars of the show.  My mom always talked about how beautiful they were.  I remember an instance where we were at the mall and a woman walked up and asked my mom is my sister were models.  She laughed it off and they talked a bit.  The lady looked at me like she just noticed a pile of garbage in the middle of the walkway, then she ended the conversation and walked off.

Food has been my friend and enemy.  I go to food to comfort myself, all the while hating every bite.  I wake up every morning telling myself, "Ok, no sugar today, no carbs, just fruits and veggies.  You're fat and nobody is going to like you when you're fat."  Seriously, every morning... I eat because of my emotions and where they take me.  When this whole life changing thing happened with my church, I started eating my sorrows with every bite I took hoping it would make it go away.  I couldn't exercise for 8 weeks because of my surgery, how convenient.  So in 2 months I put on 35ish pounds.  I hate leaving the house.  I hate how people look at me.  I hate narrating in my mind what I think they're saying about me.  I hate that I can't stop.  No matter how many diets I try, no matter how much I try restricting myself, no matter what I do to try and help myself, I just sabotage every step I take.  I want to stop, but something is keeping me from getting better.

After 8 weeks getting back into an exercise routine again seems kinda pointless.  If I can't control my binge eating, exercise certainly won't help anything.  I hate that I think about food 24/7 and our love/hate relationship.  Food isn't something for me that I subconsciously do because I need to survive.  Food is a disease to me.  I feel like I keep poisoning myself without any hope of getting any better.  This must be how alcoholics and drug addicts feel.  You want to quit, but seriously what's the point.  All it took was for one horrible event to take place to spiral me into oblivion.

My trust in people at this point is very low.  When you go to someone who is in a position to help you and they abuse your trust, they manipulate you, and control you, trusting people just got 100x harder.  My faith in God has heavily faltered.  My faith in the church is suffering tremendously.  We found a church we like, but I don't want to get hurt again.  I feel like I'm in a desert looking all around, but there's absolutely nothing there.  Some days are better than others, but I hate not knowing my future.  I'm a planner at heart and this is killing me.  I had my plans set and knew what I was going to do with my life, now it's all gone.  I just remembered a saying I've heard, God will wreck your plans when He sees that your plans are about to wreck  you....I guess there is hope then.