Stronger Than Today

“This is the weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and forth in your head, often, about giving it up. It’s hard to understand, when you are sitting there in your chair, having breakfast or whatever, that giving it up is stronger than holding on, that “letting yourself go” could mean you have succeeded rather than failed. You eat your goddamn Cheerios and bicker with the bitch in your head that keeps telling you you’re fat and weak: Shut up, you say, I’m busy, leave me alone. When she leaves you alone, there’s a silence and a solitude that will take some getting used to. You will miss her sometimes...There is, in the end, the letting go.”

~ Marya Hornbacher

Sometimes the feeling of insatiable hunger chokes me, and I do miss the feeling that I could conquer the emptiness. I feel weak for eating, and for being hungry. I hate the hunger. I'm afraid of the hunger, and of needing more than I should have. Tonight I ate dinner, and only hours later, I'm hungry again. It really pisses me off to tell the truth. Eating everytime I'm hungry seems excessive and greedy. I used to be so good at ignoring the grinding of my stomach...of actually enjoying the pain it caused, because I felt I deserved that pain. It blocked out all of the other pain, the memories, and the sadness. Today was one of those days when feeling felt too hard, and I wanted to do everything I knew of to get rid of it. I managed to avoid alcohol because I knew that later the sorrow would knock me over the edge, but there is still my eating disorder...my fall back. Today it is more the intrusive thoughts of wanting to go back, even though I did eat lunch and dinner, and so I worry about tomorrow because right this moment, even though I know I'm hungry, I will not eat, and I'm in the planning stages of not eating tomorrow. And so I ask myself,"What are you avoiding?" "What hurt are you trying to push away?" I come up blank, as if there is a curtain over the truth that I do not want to see. Maybe I will look at it tomorrow, when I'm stronger than today.