Mirar

First of all I'd like to say that for those of you that read this, I appreciate it more than you could know. Especially the comments. I may not know what to say in response, but I think about it. You should at least know that every single response generates some kind of hope in me. It helps to know that people can analyze my particular situation via my blogs and say that it can be done. Maybe it can. I'll tell you that I've come to recognize my own head space as a complete separation from reality. I'm out of touch with what is real, what people truly think, and what is truly bad and truly good.

For some reason when I get really serious in a blog, the voice in my own head has a British accent. I just noticed. It's kind of funny. So read the rest of this like that :)

I started reading a book about addiction because it reminds me very much of my own situation. It's teaching me a few things that probably should have been obvious, but somehow were not. There are so many cycles when it comes to my behavior. The one I am currently in involves self loathing. I know why I hate myself. I hate myself because I feel like I should be able to get past this, and I can't. I feel like a failure. I also feel like having an addiction to food is the least glamorous thing that you could ever do, and that binging is the most gluttonous and disgusting thing that a person could ever partake in, let alone be a slave to. People react with such revulsion to those that are overweight or graphic images of eating. They seem more disgusted with that than with someone who is addicted to heroin. Seeing a person lying there with a needle in their arm does seem sort of glamorous, sort of Hollywood, sort of cool. There is nothing cool about being addicted to food and using it in the exact same way.

The cycle is this: I am disgusted and shamed by my inability to stop eating. That makes me uncomfortable...sometimes the shame seems bottomless. It is too deep to look in to. It is too painful. This whole bit has gone on for so many years that I also feel like I will never find a way out. Mush that all together, and I feel like I can't breathe. It hurts. So I decide to escape. Escaping is as easy as calling the pizza place. It's as easy as driving to a gas station. And so instead of sitting around looking at this seemingly impenetrable pain, I eat like a madman and send serotonin and dopamine surging through my system, where it'll stay until the food runs out. So I have to make sure that the food never runs out. Which means more money, bigger portions, a never ending parade of food known as a binge. I am a junkie. I get panicky at the thought that the food will run out. I get panicky waiting for the moment when my stomach will be too full to eat any more food and then I'll be left with the after math and no way to deal with it.

I know it's common knowledge that addicts use their addiction to cope with pain. Somehow I just didn't want to see it that way. I just didn't see it. I do now, though. We'll see where that gets us.