In 2011 I began writing about intuitive eating. I wrote to process and to heal after living with disordered eating for nearly ten years. In many ways, intuitive eating saved me from myself. Most importantly, intuitive eating taught me to listen to myself and to acknowledge a quiet voice that whispered, “You are enough.” I wrote these essays for myself, but knowing how deeply rooted issues of weight are with feelings of identity and belonging, I decided to publish them here in hopes of helping others navigate the road back to oneself. (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5)
Fall 2011
When I was little, my sister was afraid of monsters in her closet. I’m not sure who started this, but every night, my dad or I would spray into her closet from a Pledge can we’d covered in construction paper and labeled “Monster Be Gone.” It actually seemed to work.
Now there are no longer imaginary monsters, just real life struggles and fears. It can be hard to cope when there’s no easy fix, no Pledge can to counteract real feelings of anxiety.
M and I have been having a bit of a rough go at things lately. I’m finally feeling the strain of a job he took three weeks ago, putting him at 55 hours / week plus the class he’s taking. When he’s home he’s exhausted, and understandably so.
When he’s gone I feel lonely and anxious — and not because I’m not making plans with other people, or because I can’t live alone well (I’ve done it quite successfully for almost 3 years). But because when he is gone, something feels unsettled deep within me.
And now I’m feeling anxious. My own monster, my anxiety has reared its ugly head at me and had a tight grip on my stomach all day now. It’s hard to eat, to focus, to do normal every day activities when I’m feeling this way.
I read an article on Sunday that was published in Bitch Magazine in 2010. I stumbled upon it while googling something else and was drawn into its message. It talks about women’s constant quest for self-improvement at all costs (financial, physical and emotional).
For decades, self-help literature and an obsession with wellness have captivated the imaginations of countless liberal Americans. Even now, as some of the hardest economic times in decades pinch our budgets, our spirits, we’re told, can still be rich. Books, blogs, and articles saturated with fantastical wellness schemes for women seem to have multiplied, in fact, featuring journeys (existential or geographical) that offer the sacred for a hefty investment of time, money, or both. There’s no end to the luxurious options a woman has these days—if she’s willing to risk everything for enlightenment. And from Oprah Winfrey and Elizabeth Gilbert to everyday women siphoning their savings to downward dog in Bali, the enlightenment industry has taken on a decidedly feminine sheen.
Source
What struck me most deeply about the article was this quote:
Priv-lit perpetuates several negative assumptions about women and their relationship to money and responsibility. The first is that women can or should be willing to spend extravagantly, leave our families, or abandon our jobs in order to fit ill-defined notions of what it is to be “whole.”
Source
I am no stranger to leaving. I have left jobs, relationships, and states. And I most certainly would have left my study abroad program and returned from the jungles of Ecuador were it not absolutely necessary for my summer graduation. I have left because a voice in my gut has told me it’s not right for me, that it’s no longer a good place to be.
And I’m proud of my decisions. Sure, I may have been overly dramatic on more than one occasion. I may have sought out the thrill of it all, without always thinking through my next move ahead of time. I left a somewhat “important” job in New Mexico only to live with my parents in Iowa and work at a coffee shop for a few months. I might also add that I left 70 degree weather for Iowa in February. Just saying.
Leaving, for me, has been a good choice. But I’m beginning to see that sometimes staying is good too, albeit much harder to do.
When it comes to hard times, when it gets down to the nitty gritty, the time to fight or flight, my choice has always been flight. Sometimes it’s for the best, like getting out of an emotionally destructive relationship. But sometimes it’s draining and unnecessary, like the entire year I felt ridiculously anxious about my freelance position, even though I wasn’t ready to change jobs and should have just relaxed into it.
The majority of my struggles with eating stem from the desire to be somewhere else, to feel something else. When I binge I’m shoving down all of my feelings with food and when I restrict I’m replacing my real concerns with calorie counts and pounds on a scale.
This is what I know: I am wanting right now to run for the hills, to flee, to take flight. I want this anxiety to end, for the knot in the pit of my stomach to untwist itself.
But I also want M. I want his giant hands and lumbering walk and gentleness to even the smallest creatures. (If you’ve ever seen a grown man hold a kitten you know what I mean). I want our future and I want to say the vows of Ruth: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
I want him to welcome our first child and I want to always know that when he tells me the stove is off, it’s truly off.
And so I’ll stay. And I’ll take one day at a time, no more no less. And I’ll nurture my soul and try my hardest to kick this anxiety monster to the curb. And if all else fails, I’ll buy a can of Pledge.