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 all started in March of 2005. Over the following months I encountered the two following scenarios above. In the fall of that year, I turned to other destructive habits. It was my senior year of college and I wanted nothing less than to escape my home life. I wanted to pretend that I had full control over my life and my decisions. I wanted to act differently than I ever had.

For about six months (thank God only that long), my life revolved around alcohol, parties, and sleeping around. Up until then, I had never really drank and had kept intimacy an act within a serious relationship. I found myself binging less on food and more on a sensation of freedom.

I sought a lack of control with getting so drunk I barely remembered details of the night not just on a rare occasion…or even just weekend nights…but 5 or 6 nights out of the week. Most of these nights ended with me “hanging out” with one of the guys I had “connected” with during that time. It embarrasses me today to remember the lack of respect I had for myself and my body during that time.

I thought it was what I wanted. To say I didn’t care. To say I was happy. Deep down I knew I didn’t feel fulfilled…and when my practicum for teaching began I knew I needed to sober up. Somehow over the months between January and May of 2006, I didn’t find myself struggling as much. I still faced the occasional binge during particular emotional times, but the desires to end my life overwrought even the desire for food. I found solace in dreaming of my suicide instead of hoarding packages of cookies.

One night, my father and I ended up in another particularly grueling argument. It had become the standard occurrence. We enjoyed pushing each others’ buttons in the masochistic games we played, craving to hurt the other’s ego just a wee bit more.

I remember the argument had something to do with the fact my mother had found me writing a suicide note and my dad wondering why. What made me think I had things so bad.  I tried to explain, but the acidity of fear kept the words from coming easily. Yet it didn’t compare to the speechlessness I would feel moments later as my father said even worse words to me than the other set of syllables that have forever stained my heart.

That night, I locked myself in the bathroom. I scrounged for the bottle of hefty pain pills I had hidden away for such a need. My mother had taken it earlier that day. I then was screaming and crying, looking for anything…anything…to help. A razor? A bottle of cold medicine? There had to be something!!!!

I felt so alone and unloved…despite the calls, cries, and banging coming from the other side of the door as my mom and sister shouted for me. Pleaded with me to please come out. Please don’t hurt myself. I somehow could not see the love glaring right at me for the abyss of hatred that pulled me so deeply a few doors down the hall. I just wanted it…life…over. Gone. Done.

I finally came out. Feeling defeated. The way I viewed it, I couldn’t even have success at taking my own life. I remarked about that to my father. Telling him he could find another way I failed. Perhaps that triggered something.

Things with him began to change then. Not too long after that night, he told me “I’m Sorry” for the first and only time I ever heard those words cross his lips. A few nights before my college graduation. I will forever cherish hearing that unrequited, no excuses apology.

source

I moved out about a week later. I met Peter that same time. Over the next months my dad began seeking some help for his own needs and we continued to treat our relationship with more care and caution. Eventually, forgiveness came and a new relationship.

I traveled for a couple months to Europe and led a healthy lifestyle while there – eating fresh foods and walking everywhere.

I returned feeling healthier and happier than ever. I believed I had moved past my demons, but it turns out I hadn’t. In the months that followed, I realized just how much binging still controlled me. It wasn’t just an emotional coping mechanism, but a full fledged addiction.

• Let’s brighten it up in here. What’s something you have overcome? Shout it out with pride in the comments!
• Stay tuned for a giveaway I know you all will be into later today!

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.