Conversations With Claudia/ How Writing Has Saved Me

I started a blog on myspace almost a year ago, titled Conversations With Claudia, and this was my first post.


Who is Claudia? She is not my friend, but she has been a part of my life for a very long time. She is the voice of my eating disorder. A voice that over time, has crowded out my own thoughts and beliefs. I'm hoping that someday I will leave her behind.
I have an amazing therapist and also a nutritionist who thought it would be a good idea to give my eating disorder a seperate identity from myself. It would be a way to delineate between my own voice and the voice of the eating disorder. I'm finally beginning to see how often Claudia talks to me. She is bossy, demanding, snide, snotty, and degrading. She is also the one with the control most of the time, but I know that needs to change if I am to survive.
I remember the first time she spoke to me. I was seven years old, sitting in church, and looking down at my thighs as I sat in the pew. "Your legs are so fat,"! She said.
Why did she choose that moment to begin her torment? I'm not really sure. My mom, grandma, and two aunts were constantly dieting and discussing their weight. I'm sure that their conversations wormed their way into what I began to also believe about myself.
Being raped at the age of eleven was the real beginning of my self loathing and hatred. A secret that I held inside, suffocating my voice, and letting the shame eat me alive. Puberty began soon after, and with it, the ultimate betrayal of my own body.
I'm hoping that writing down some of the conversations that I have with Claudia will help me to find my own voice, and hopefully, someday, my voice will be louder than hers.


It feels wonderful to read this again, just to see how far I have come. Is my voice louder than the voice of Claudia's? Yes, I think it is, and damn, it feels good! I believe that the writing saved me. I began writing blogs, writing poetry, writing in my journal, writing my thoughts in e-mails to my therapist. I couldn't seem to stop writing, and more than that, I felt such a strong desire to share what I had written. First with my therapist, who encouraged me with compliments on the poetry that I would share with her. I created a website with my poems, www.poetrypoem.com/4angel , and then I started blogging; Sharing with strangers about things that I had kept secret for most of my life. Through writing, I found the freedom to unlock the silence, and begin the process of healing.