Lonely Loneliness

Trying to Figure Things Out

Question:

ma noire~~ I am deeply touched by your thoughts and the honestly encompensed within. I desperately wish I had some great words of wisdom (some important thought) to share with you, but I don’t.   There is this one song that I love.  It’s called Boulder to Birmingham; and the line that is so true and so sad and so tough goes like this….. "well, you really got me this time….and the hardest part is knowing I’ll survive." this is what it means to me:  Bad bad shit happens in your life, and you struggle with it, and you’re scared not only of the bad shit, but also scared of the struggle you will have to face to get over it.  It’s so painful to heal.  Sometimes it hurts more than the cut itself.  But you have to have faith in yourself that you will heal, and that you will prevail in the struggle, and you’ll make it to "the other side."  The hardest part is knowing you’ll have to live through the pain–you can’t fast forward your life to "the good parts"~~  the hardest part is knowing you will survive.  You have to survive ma noir! Love and empowerment, Steff

Response:

(SPOILER) (another very VERY long post) So I’m eating.  I’m past my satiation point.  I know what i’m heading for.  O.K. whats going on. . . . What am i using this food to cope with right now?  I feel alone.  I want to reach out and connect with people. I want to be part of something, society.  But i feel trapped because i’m so fightened to reach out.  I don’t believe i can be anybody’s friend right now.  I don’t feel i have much to offer and know i can’t be around people for long.  I know i can’t be counted on right now.  I want to reach out and be accepted, but feel i can’t give anything in return so expect that i’ll be rejected and so i remain here in my home on my own and crawl out at night when no one can really see me, go for a walk and in complete anonymity, perhaps attend a movie in this big big city. This thought of course makes me sad and i have to quickly remind myself that it is ok to do the poor-me thing and explore where it will take me as opposed to stuffing it back in – yes, accept even such a revolting trait as self pity! Self-acceptance is the only way out cause it leads to self-love and that, to self-care.  I’ll probably repeat this a feew times to try to make it a prominant thought in my reems of thought). O.k so it makes me sad and it also makes me angry.  I feel stuck.   Perhaps it also brings me back to my empty and lonely childhood.  No wonder i’m b/p-ing.  I don’t know how else to cope with these overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, anger.  Its easier to be so busy with food that i don’t have to feel these things. I write this and i feel shifty. Its easier, yes, but also more painful because it ensures my isolation and staying stuck.  Had i learned other ways of coping way back when i was 11 (when the e-d began happening), I wouldn’t be doing this right now.  But no one was there to teach me then and i had to do it on my own and I began feeding myself all those foods that were forbidden in our home.  I didn’t have any money then so i used to actually go into stores and steal this food. Of course, i started to balloon and was shocked at this.  It was slow in happening though because i was such an active child.  Eating this stuff was like saying to the adults of that time:  "yeah, you care about what i eat but you really don’t care about ME, you’re not around to parent me (whatever parenting means) and when i need your protection because some adult is hurting me, you not only don’t do anything about it, YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME!!!  So you don’t really care about me, you just want to control me.  So see if you can!".  And I also was feeling responsible for the abuse i was bearing.  I thought it was because i had acted seductively or something like that.  I was only 10 and a half!  He was 25!!  Who was seducing who? Who was the ADULT?? Throwing up felt like a release from my guilt, my shame for "being seductive".  It was also my punishment as though what he was doing wasn’t punishment enough – but i learned really quickly not to feel a thing. That has taken me years of conscious and persistant hard work to undo and begin to actually be able to feel sexual.  Most of it is now undone, so the work was worth it!  But it still crops up now and then and takes me by surprise and i get frustrated and discouraged because "i thought i was over that".  And only with gentleness, respectful of what i need at those times, be it to back off sexually, or to go really slowly and gently and to say no as soon as it feels emotionally or physically uncomfortable to me without having to explain why . . . Only in this caring manner do i come out of it and become o.k. again and able to participate in healthy sexual activity and even talk about it. So why don’t i apply this technique to b/p-ing? I eat like crazy, i purge, i berate myself for both.  While i purge, i split off because i don’t like what i’m doing – it doesn’t feel good and it doesn’t always come easy and i feel ashamed for what i’m doing and can’t justify this act, so i "leave" in the same way i did during the abuse but hate myself afterwards.  Interesting how the act of purging resembles greatly the sexual abuse of that time. So, should i lay off, quit being so harsh on myself?  Accept that this is my coping skill for now and trust that in time as i show empathy for myself (instead of berating myself) perhaps i’ll start feeling that i really don’t want to do this to myself anymore?  Because, yes, empathy brings self-love and with self-love comes the desire to care for self.   So is my biggest enemy self-beration? (if there is such a word)  Shall i experiment for awhile, make a conscious effort to not ptu myself down for using this coping skill? I’ve been advised to read another book:  "Breaking Free From Compulsive Eating" by Geneen Roth.  A very scary book.  Its been on my shelf for about 8 years and i’ve barely touched it because what it proposed was so scary.  But i feel i’m at a place where i don’t have much options.  I’m dying inside.  This e-d is killing my spark.  I don’t want to be part of the living dead. So now i’m gonna go for a walk and take my two books along with me (Hirschman’s and Roth’s) and head out to a cafe where i can read in a corner sipping tea on my own but at least surrounded by sounds of others, of life.  If this is the only way i can participate in life right now, then let it be so.  It won’t always have to be this way. After all, for now, what is as satisfying, predictable, familiar and as numbing as this food game?  No wonder i don’t want to let it go!  I have nothing to fall back on yet.  And that is what i’m trying to explore and develope with the support of my therapist: I’m trying to establish a connection with a deeper inner strength that i’ve split off from long ago but has shown its existance anyway by the mere fact that I have persevered in this life for as long as i have. No, i can’t do this stuff on my own at this time and thats o.k. I refuse to berate myself for this as well.  All that would do is ensure that i remain stuck and bulimic.   It is not a weakness to reach out for help.  Instead it comforts me as in times of absolute discouragement and frustration, it acts as a reminder of my desire to live, to connect with someone and get over this debilitating thing. Anyone have a positive thought or quote to send me? To try, always, and overcome                         – ma noire – — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:

Response:

Filed under: Overcome loneliness

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