I think today was my turning point.
My binge eating is the worst it’s ever been.
Every day I talk myself into turning over a new leaf, into starting over, into forgetting everything I had previously tried, all in favor of finally “getting it right”.
Do I ever get it right? No.
Do I binge day after day? Yes.
That being said, I am about to graduate uni, and despite wanting to celebrate, I’m finding it hard to find joy given my circumstances.
I stood in a fitting room today, staring at myself in a dress that I thought would look good for the graduation ceremony. My first thoughts were about how horrible I felt, how much I let myself go, how uncomfortable I felt in my own skin. I loved the dress despite the horrors that came with putting it on- so I took it home.
I tried the dress on a second time in front of my own mirror.
I still didn’t love how I looked, in fact, I am the biggest I’ve been in quite some time. Yet this time, after careful scrutiny, I laughed at my own thoughts.
Was how I looked the most important thing in this moment? I am about to graduate with a degree in a topic I love dearly. I am in no way perfect, but how dare I ignore my accomplishments for the sake of feeding into my failures?
How dare I let urges take away from something I love? I am so tired of pushing my interests aside for thoughts about bingeing, and after thinking about how greatly my determination has been affected, I have a newfound desire to make a change.
I don’t know if this time I’ll “get it right”, but I do know that I want to let what lights my fire guide me- not what extinguishes it.
Going forward, I want to remember the following, and I hope anyone who reads this can remember this with me:
- find meaning in what you love, and do not let BED take it from you
-treat binges as urges, not methods of coping. Urges fade, and coping mechanisms can be changed
-you are more than what you eat, and you can change your patterns. If I can try, so can you!
I hope tomorrow will be the start of something new, as ironic as that may sound given my earlier spiel, but I refuse to let what I recognized today go unnoticed.
I refuse to keep giving my life to this disorder when there’s so much out there that keeps me going.
Cheers to new journeys with new outlooks. 🥂