I told you yesterday about how I fell off my bike again, but what I didn’t tell you is that since that day when I fell off my bike, I hadn’t done anything even remotely athletic. In approximately a week. Unless walking around my neighborhood street festival for an hour last Saturday counts. But it doesn’t.
Why, you ask?
Because I didn’t feel like it.
The short and long of it is that the past 2 weeks in my life have been kind of emotionally crappy. One of my recent blog posts on HBH resulted in an excessive amount of ‘blog life spilling into real life’. Despite the fact that my intended audience for that post was healthy living bloggers, the post elicited many opinions and concerns from my real-life loved ones, and each of them was angry/pissed/concerned for a completely different reason…and none of their concerns had anything at all to do with healthy living. Or blogging.
Anonymous comments from people online and personal attacks from former-friends-turned-haters is one thing. I honestly am not affected by that. However, when my real friends and family are upset with me, it affects me to the core. I don’t cope well, and I have to fix it. Despite my uncanny (and usually unintentional) ability to create controversy and conflict in my real life, I hate it. I am a peacekeeper at heart, and as soon as I realize that I’ve screwed up, I can usually man up.
But I might hang up on you a few times first…so be patient.
My plans last weekend were ruined because of words that I used in that post on HBH, and it really bothered me. Really, really bothered me. I didn’t mean to hurt my loved ones’ feelings through the content of that post, and for that I was very apologetic. I can’t say that I regret anything that I wrote, because I stand behind the theme and content of the post. However, it wasn’t the theme that concerned them. It was the details that were hurtful. I can definitely say that I will be more sensitive to this fact before hitting “publish” from now on. This sensitivity won’t stop me from stating my opinions, but it will definitely stop me from being offensive to my family and loved ones (albeit unintentional).
In the aftermath of all of this unintentional conflict, I felt emotionally drained. In the 3 weeks prior, I had also been working 12-14 hour days and some weekends. Coupled with the blog spillage, it was more than my psyche could handle. The only thing I wanted to do for most of last week and the entire weekend was sit on the futon in front of the TV.
In the past, I would’ve enjoyed my time in front of the TV with multiple snacks, and many trips to the kitchen. This time, I didn’t. I ate my normal meals. Snacks. When I was hungry. Without reckless abandon. I was confused. WHY wasn’t I binging?!
I finally dragged myself out of the house on Sunday to study for a few hours, and then Restaurant Boy met me at Starbucks to chat it out. He’s the best girlfriend that I’ve never had.
I told him that I noticed I wasn’t having the urge to binge.
Geo, I am not sure how to cope. I used to binge when things like this happened. Now, I don’t even have THAT!
The fact is that life after recovering from disordered eating causes me to constantly step outside of the box. Don’t get me wrong…I have definitely used food in the past 4 years since entering treatment for reasons other than nourishment. I’ve used it to calm myself, relieve stress, fight loneliness, to avoid responsibilities and make me less bored. Although it has been less frequent, I’ve done it. However, I can only recall being this upset over something once in the past 4 years, and that was my Grandpa’s death in 2008.
I still keep him close...
But despite the fact that I felt really emotionally damaged, I didn’t binge. I even wanted to binge…but only because it felt like that’s what I “should’ve” done, since that’s what I always did before. Even before I began binging and purging at 15, I binged. I would sit in front of the TV as a child and eat an entire bag of potato chips. I recall loving the feeling of the chewed chips in my mouth.
I almost didn’t type that because it felt creepy, but hey…this is a confessional, right?
I don’t know why I didn’t binge. I guess I just didn’t feel like it. I felt like wallowing. So I wallowed.
For a week.
Yesterday, I made myself snap out of it. I made myself go to the gym. Not honoring my body was not going to help me feel better about anything I wrote or said or did, and treating myself badly certainly wasn’t going to take anything back. I finally made it to the gym last night.
And I did an impromptu mini-triathlon (30 minute swim, 30 minute bike, 1 mile run). By myself. Because I couldn’t wallow any more.
The most difficult part about the entire process?
Putting a sports bra on when I was fresh out of the pool. Can someone please explain to me how this is possible? I nearly injured myself getting the damn thing on. I was about one dislocated shoulder away from asking a complete stranger for help.
Now THAT would’ve been a good story…
