I’m a myriad of feelings, a ball of confusion, trapped within a body that in its best moments seems foreign, but most times only disgusts me. I was talking to my therapist this week about my body image, but I knew at the time that all it sounded like was that I was unsatisfied with the way I look. She tells me that this is the part of the eating disorder that is the most difficult to get past, and I know that until I can work through this, I'm at high risk for a relapse. I sent her an e-mail yesterday, because I had a panic attack while getting dressed in the morning. This is what I wrote~
”I want someone to understand, but I don’t even understand why I feel so miserable in my body. It isn’t even about what it looks like as much as it is about how it feels, and I can’t get away."
Her reply~ ”What does your body represent that you want to get away from?”
I thought about her question for most of yesterday, and what I came up with is shame. My body represents shame, and the more there is of me, the more shame I feel. No, scratch that…it isn’t even about the size of my body, it is about feeling. I'm feeling so much more than I ever have. I’m not as disconnected from my body anymore, because that is what the restriction of food allowed. My therapist called me last night, to see how I was doing, and I told her what I came up with, and she said that made perfect sense, and that we would start working on those feelings of shame. It isn't like we have never talked about shame before. We have talked about how I blame myself for being raped, and that shame is deeply ingrained. What I want to get away from is the rape, and the trapped feelings that I had during the rape have carried over and onto my body. There is still so much work to be done, and it seems like an endless task at times, but I can do this. I want so much to be free.
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