You never would have caught me saying anything like this while I was binge eating. I was too busy resenting it, hating it, cursing it, trying to pry it off my skin. Binge eating was my enemy; there was no other way to consider it.
But I think differently about it now.
I think that binge eating was a fire in my soul, and I think it might be in yours, too.
I had always believed myself to be weak. I was the type of kid who found it difficult to speak up, whose shyness had fooled others into thinking I was timid and un-opinionated and meek.
I fooled so many people that I allowed them to fool me right back. I bought into my assigned role and accepted it; perhaps this was part of that weakness. Perhaps it was how I stayed safe. I’m still not sure.
What I know now is that I am quiet but I am not without opinions; I am an introvert but not without the capacity for connection; I am comfortable out of the limelight but not without the potential for leadership; I am a thinker but I am not weak.
I am not weak.
My binge eating knew that. It kept fighting for me. It kept rallying against the pressure I put my body under to stay small. To mask my “boring” personality with the armor of objectification, to comply with what they said made me have value.
It refused to believe that I had to suppress my needs to be whole.
And so, with the will of 1000 suns, it kept challenging me. It pushed and it pushed for decades until I was so exhausted from its pursuit that I finally turned around and said “WHAT??? WHAT DO YOU WANT???”
And once it had my attention, it softened. It said:
“I want you to stop fighting yourself.
I want you to stop berating and shaming and hiding from yourself.
I want to be free.
I want to be okay, just like this.
I want you to stop telling us that we’re not okay unless we are x, y, or z.
And I want you to stop believing that you are weak.
I want you to believe in exactly who you are instead of what people tell you we are, or who we need to be.”
I speak as though in conversation with another force, but that force was me.
Binge eating is the part of our soul that knows we are boxing ourselves in, and is asking us to do better.
Admittedly, it would be nice if it could speak a different language. The byproduct of its approach nearly sabotaged the whole effort.
Nearly.
I suppose it was the only thing it knew would hold my attention long enough for it to keep fighting.
I am grateful to have that kind of fight. I am grateful I can use it now in new ways, to channel it into creativity and communication and self-allyship.
I am grateful for my fire.
