Hey
I should be sleeping. It's midnight.
I need to make a confession. I have been a very bad Vegan. Tonight I am wired because I gave in, I ate meat. The way that single act has made me feel is mind boggling. I know I should lean in like Kathy Freston suggests. That would allow me these moments of lapse. One small thing though, Kathy Freston doesn't know me. I have never been able to ease into anything. Full boar . . . until I am not interested anymore. Leaning isn't my style. Interesting thing about that is that although as I type, I see that it is true, I had never considered that about myself till this moment. I am still in that pursuit of excellence. I still suffer from the "Mary Poppins complex" I was certain I had given that up. The search for perfection is a fruitless one. Not to mention a painful and disappointing one.
The question then becomes, "How do you get yourself to a place where you can accept yourself as enough?"
I have had Bronchial Pneumonia for 3 months now. Because of the coughing I have been throwing up a great deal. It still comes so easily to me that it is scary. All those feelings that you think you grow out of come flooding back in. In that moment, staring down the bowl you are praying for it to come easily, and as it does, you are praying for it to stop. You are 19 again and you are filled, just for half a split second, with more self loathing than you can possibly hold, and so it flows from you.
I find myself talking myself down from that place more than usual. Let me be clear, this talking myself out of a purge, that is a part of my life. Not daily any more, but regularly just the same. I am in control of it 99.5% of the time, and for me that is recovery. That precipice is a steep, deep, scary one and in a rational place it is easy to talk myself out of it.
Rational place.
So have you met me yet?
Or any sleep disadvantaged, mother, wife and on and on and on. We can all give a litany of reasons why we are not always (or ever) rational. Reality is we just aren't.
So should I be surprised? No, not really. There isn't a bulimic out there that has 100% rational thought. Can't have it both ways my friend.
So here I stand looking at a precipice and trying to figure out what it's all about. It is never what it appears to be. I don't feel like I'm going backwards, I'm just not sure which way forward is. Right at this very moment. I am sure, now that cyber land has my profunity in it's clutches I can sleep and tomorrow will feel like the fresh day I know it to be.
Good night to all my fellow cliff jumpers. Lets stay cliff side tonight.
Beki
I am totally sympathetic. I was never for throwing up, but I was definitely into major restriction and working out insanely. I had never looked so good (by societal standards), but I had never felt so awful. My mom still has this idea about me always being sick because during that year and a half, I WAS always sick. And exhausted. And physically weak. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I've left that ten years behind, the ideas are still there in the background. I don't see it as a cliff though; rather, I feel like I'm walking along the beach, nothing in sight in any direction. Those feelings are like the ocean at night, black and roiling and dangerous. On days when they're closer to the surface of my mind, it feels like the tide is rolling in, slowly and with a painful sense of foreboding, carrying with it a threat that I may have completely forgotten how to swim.
But the tide turns the next day. You're right, every day is a new one to keep fighting, and some days the fight is harder than others. Some days it doesn't feel like you're fighting at all.
I think slipping on the vegan front, on *any* front really, is kind of to be expected. But I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling bad about slipping. I don't like the idea that we're just supposed to love and accept ourselves no matter what. I think that loving yourself means understanding that sometimes we fuck up royally and that we need to work hard not to fuck up again.
If we're all just love and rainbows all the time, no matter what we do, then where is the incentive to change for the better? Telling yourself it's okay to fuck up is different than telling yourself you're not the world's worst person *ever* if you fuck up. There's a balance there that I think it's important to find.