Eating Fear

It’s 2AM. I’m sitting up in my bed, laptop perched on my – what else – lap, racing against my own mind. A four-hundred calorie lump of vanilla yogurt, whole grain pretzels, a Clementine, and two smoked chicken wings sits in my belly. This lump, a mass with yet recognizable parts in this early stage of digestion if I were to chuck it all up (I have experience in these things, so trust me on this), holds me hostage. It’s rather pitiful. I’m afraid of food. Ironically, the chicken had more to fear at one time in its sacrificial life than I ever will if comparisons are to be drawn.


But it’s not the food. We all know that. Eating disorders are about control. Or, truthfully, the lack thereof. Yes, I said ‘eating disorder.’ Because my fear of this post-midnight snack has very little to do with believing it might come alive inside me and rip me open, spilling bile and stomach acid mixed with the blood of my wounds. (Though, now that I put it that way, it is rather gruesome to imagine.) My fear is all about my perceived inability to turn down food at the appropriate times of day or night; my fear is about whether or not that snack I just wolfed down was nutritionally dense and calorically balanced; my fear is whether or not I will manufacture enough time in the following day to exercise it off before I feel the need to eat again. Those are only a few points on a very long list that I try to downplay each and every day. The list began when I was roughly 10 years-old. I quite adding to it a few years back but I have not ceased to run ragged circles around myself in a vain attempt to achieve the unrealistic goals set forth in my very own Declaration of Dependence.

You see, us grown-ups out there living in the real world with its real problems and that real baggage that we often tote around from our real childhoods, we can’t always make sense of it all. Even with our family. Even with our friendships. Even with our hobbies and pleasures. Most assuredly even with our faith. We still struggle. We yet waver though we stand.

For some folks, that baggage is just a light carry-on and it remains so through the course of marriage, kids, school, career, and the myriad milestones which pepper the winding route of this life. For others, however, the baggage begins as an oversized piece with pockets inside and out, bulging at the seams even with the extra-space zipper in the unzipped position. Through marriage and children and the endless stream of challenges they encounter, these bearers of said large baggage tend to add other pieces to the ensemble of varying shapes and sizes and storage capacities. Sometimes, the baggage isn’t even theirs to carry but they can’t bear to see it left on the side of the road as they come upon it.

As the weight of this burden increases, the need for a crutch also increases. At first glance, the crutch appears to be useful, even helpful, but a second look reveals otherwise. The crutch props up the burden and imparts a false sense of ‘you-can-handle-all-of-this-indeterminately.’ Why? Because the crutch allows the illusion of control in a situation where there is absolutely no control.

I’m a 40 year-old woman. I have a 20 year-old daughter; a daughter of 17 years in high school; and a perpetually-in-motion son who hits 15 in August. My dog is a well-kept healthy 14 enjoying her senior status. Our feline, the unexpected Thanksgiving guest of 2007 who never left, has yet to waste one of his nine lives in the roughly 3 years of his prowling and purring. For the past 21 years, I’ve been married to man who has stood beside me through all manner of baggage-building episodes, many of which had nothing to do with our relationship as husband and wife. My septuagenarian mother resides in a neighboring hamlet just a mere half-hour drive away. My prized collection of loved ones, including siblings, relatives, friends, and neighbors, from the past and the present, situated both near and far on the map, sustains me on the best and the worst of days. It’s a two-truck, nice home, treed-and-flowered-yard of a comfortable existence for me these days.

My faith empowers me. I am generally grateful. I am handily helpful.

But I am also falteringly fearful.

I’m no longer sure who I am. I am no longer sure who I once was. I no longer believe it is important to know these things about myself in order to move forward. What I know is this: I need to kick the crutch away from me. I need to trust what my two legs say about the proper load-bearing weight upon my back. I need to open my bags and lighten the contents and give back what was never mine to bear from the beginning.

As for the food? It will digest. I extend my thanks to the chicken. It is ungrateful to regret partaking of it when I’m alive and it died to sustain my life.