I feel strongly about bringing more awareness to the struggles of binge eating. The “Stuffed With Emptiness” series delves into details and thoughts of significant moments of my past journey. If this topic could be triggering to your own thoughts and experience in any way, please read with caution or wait to visit FFF later.

Catch Up With Previous Stuffed With Emptiness Posts:

• My First Binge
• Pizza In The Car

“I’ve Tried To Love You But I Just Can’t”

It had now been a couple of months since my first and second binges. Over that time I had acquainted myself more with the practice. Funny word, but that is what it felt like. I paid close attention to my habits and perfected my ways to hide my new habit.

I knew the hours to sneak out to the store so I could easily bring my bags of candy and cookies up to my room without anyone knowing. I knew how to quickly and quietly hide the bags in the back of my closet, then lock my door as I devoured them. First over the course of a week, then merely over the course of a day or two.

Binging had clawed its way through to me, wrapped it’s cold, unyielding arms around me, and whispered sweet nothings in my ear – “You are nothing. You need me. Let me soothe you. And then show you just how nothing you truly are to not resist me”. My relationship with binging felt familiar. It felt like the relationship I had with my dad.

Ever since I was twelve, I had felt my father slipping through my fingers. One day, I was playing “tickle monster” with him on the floor, and the next I sat wondering why he hated our family so much to never want to see us.

Why the only communication he shared immediately showed harbored resentment – not keeping the house clean enough or costing him money or not wanting to follow in his footsteps in his business.

Living together again brought our clashing personalities and each of our own issues into a power struggle that only hurt the two of us. The food consoled me. It kept me company. In the momentary surge that came from eating, I no longer felt the surge of hatred pulsing through the house. An underlying energy that others may not have noticed, but that completely controlled both of us.

Then, we got stuck in one room together over the course of a weekend for a wedding. I didn’t sleep well. I was tired. I was irritable. I mentioned my fatigue. My dad made some snide remark, so I pushed buttons back. I let him know that his snoring had kept me up most of the night.

I can’t remember how or what particular arguments ensued, but it quickly escalated. Yet, he kept his voice low…solely because family resided just outside our doors and on the other side of our walls. We couldn’t possibly break the perfect image of himself down. I pointed that out.

He looked at me smugly. Then uttered the words that to this day, despite my forgiveness of him, make me ache with an empty hole:

I grabbed my bags. My sister ran after me. We waited for the ferry to take us off the island of the wedding. It probably would have been safer for my 14 year old sister to drive us the six hours home, as I could not see for the tears shielding my eyes.

I don’t remember what I binged on that night. I simply remember it was one of the only two times I ever ate enough to have my body physically reject the amount of food I put in it. I could never make myself throw up, though I tried, so the fact I got sick without trying makes me know I ate. And I ate a lot.

Perhaps I was trying to heave the bile of those words into the toilet, not the food. Perhaps I hoped to flush them down and away, so they couldn’t stay with me and define me for the years that followed. The words won. For a long time.

Pease note that I have forgiven and mended my relationship with my father. This is simply a reflection on my past, so please show respect. We are both changed people today. Don’t send hate out into the world.

I feel strongly about bringing more awareness to the struggles of binge eating. The “Stuffed With Emptiness” series delves into details and thoughts of significant moments of my journey. If this topic could be triggering to your own thoughts and experience in any way, please read with caution or wait to visit FFF later.

Catch Up With Previous Stuffed With Emptiness Posts:

• My First Binge

THE PIZZA IN THE CAR EPISODE

A little over two weeks had passed since my first binge. I regained the illusion of control over my food and the memories of hiding Pop Tart wrappers in the trash had faded away to the recesses of my mind. I approached a special weekend and only had that on my mind.

I quickly readied myself for the weekend, prideful and, at the same time, ashamed of what I saw in the mirror. I always wanted a body that would impress Bryan*. Would it be enough? Our years of on-again, off-again back and forth weighed on me emotionally and I just wanted to win him over.

This weekend will be my chance. The distance and hectic schedules won’t matter anymore. He will want me enough to make full time for our relationship. I just know this weekend can change everything.

The weekend went as expected – like a shot of heroin into each others’ blood streams – completely wrapped up in each other in an addictive, obsessive way…only to come crashing down to pain at the end.

On my drive home that Sunday afternoon tears welled up in my eyes. I knew our little cat-and-mouse games would return – him only wanting me when I distanced myself. Yet I knew I would continue pouring myself out to him, giving him all the control. The undeniable realization washed over me: I would never reach the point of a priority in his life. The surge of emotions swallowed me whole….and I didn’t want to let them out.

As the natural course of my thoughts played out on the two hour drive home, I thought of what I deemed as my failures of the weekend. A dinner out where I ate a few slices of pizza entrapped my thoughts. I could not shake the image of eating pizza from my mind.

Suddenly, I found myself parked in front of the $5 large cheese pizza carry out place near my house. I ordered quickly, fighting back the tears. I kindly smiled through the anger as I thanked the man for my pizza, then rushed out to my car. I pulled around to a vacant corner of the large shopping center parking lot, peeling my eye’s for my mom’s car since she regularly frequented the area.

I opened the box and pulled a cheesy, greasy, sub-par pizza slice to my lips. I took a bite. A large bite. I kept biting until I could barely fill my mouth anymore. I was almost choking between the sobbing and the chewing. But I couldn’t stop until the entire large pizza had vanished as if into thin air.

I zeroed in on the pizza. I could see nothing else. I could only feel hot grease sliding down my throat, instead of the bile of fear rising up. I could deal with the physical pain of an overfilled stomach, because it helped me avoid the emotional pain of once again not measuring up.

My mind had twisted my actions into a way to show Bryan I didn’t care that he didn’t value me enough. I could do what I wanted and eat an entire large pizza if so desired. Screw trying to please him.

In reality, I too didn’t value myself enough. From that moment on, food became the way to stuff down and hide that painful truth. I was unwanted.

Unlovable. By my father. By my boyfriend. By my friends – or lack thereof. By myself.

I left thinking the weekend would change everything. I was right…just not in the way I had imagined.

Have you ever tried to determine your worth based on someone else?

*name changed