Last night we finally made up for the meal plan snafu earlier in the week. I actually remembered to take out the meat for meat loaf. I can’t even remember the last time I made meat loaf. Luckily I remembered the basics. It came out well enough.

Nothing fancy. Simply mix all of the following together:

• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• lotsa black pepper!

Then, top it off an even spread of tomato paste and bake in a 350 oven for 40 minutes. Not the prettiest thing you will eat, but simple and tasty.

We ate ours with some lima beans I heated up with a small bit of butter, salt, and pepper. I feel like this meal was a straight flashback to my childhood! It completely reminded me of my mom’s cooking.

I can for sure say I picked up my mom’s cooking genes. Neither of us are all too creative in the kitchen. Just like mom, I love having staple meals with a few new recipes thrown in for good measure once or twice a week.

I think it’s so funny how growing up so many people say they will never grow up anything like their parents. I know I did! Turns out, it is pretty inevitable. Don’t you think? I know I’m like my parents in many, many ways.

Besides my cooking, I’m also just like mom in a few other ways -

• I have become super emotional and cry easily, especially when it relates to my kids at all.
• I have a cheesier and cheesier sense of humor.
• I have the most ginormous sweet tooth.
• I can’t keep my eyes open in pictures. Say cheese, Mom!

I have also found I’m a lot like my dad too…something I used to want to avoid at ALL costs. Now, I see the good in the man and am thankful for learning these things from him:

• I will go after my dreams and my passions.
• I have good organizational skills.
• I love quotes.
• Forgiveness.

I’m sure there are plenty of others, but these are just things off the top of my head. I won’t lie though. Sometimes I really hope I don’t turn into my parents in some ways. One of my biggest fears is ever having my kids feel second best, like I did for so many years.

You know I now understand where my father came from in his hard work and the anxiety he suffered. Regardless, it makes me fearful of ever caring too much about my passions and things like organization at the sacrifice of my family. We all have our faults. I just hope my faults will err more on the overly mushy, embarrassing side of my mom’s ways.

What are some ways you said you would NEVER be like your parents? How are you like your parents now?

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.