On The Least Traveled Road To Becoming Whole
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| My 65th birthday photo |
First I'm so excited to be doing what I love so much.
Secondly I also say "what the hell have I gotten myself into".
It's been an outrageously long time since I've been on stage. I kept telling myself that my voice and acting abilities have long gone by the wayside.
I was nervous, a little scared and I did it anyway.
Yes, I not only did it, the result was extremely well received. Ok, I got a roaring standing ovation and was surrounded in the lobby.
The road I needed to travel to get where I am was long as well as dangerously scary.
I had an important choice to make. Do I live the rest of my life just existing or do I actually live this life I've been given.
There was a time when I not only could not get on stage but couldn't face life itself.
How did I get here from from where I began? Why was food the only thing that brought me comfort and solace? It never said no. It never judged me and and called me names. In the world I was living in at the time, it was the only control I had even if it was out of control. Before the eating disorder took hold, I was cutting myself in high school. The stress in my house was so intense that was the only release. I had no idea what cutting was about. All I knew at the time that I felt better after. As some of you have read in past blogs about what I went through I'd still like to mention a few things. (even if you've heard it before).
Indulge me.
I first married at 19. (I think it should be against the law LOL) and I married a strong, very goal oriented man.
The longer we were together, I realized that he was more narcissistic than anything. He'd say barbs like "I'm going to college first because you couldn't ever do anything that would make more money than me". Another inspirational quote: "I couldn't possibly explain this on a level you'd understand".
I felt like nothing I became nothing and I started to eat and started to shop.
I also got to a point where I couldn't even walk on the same side of the street with someone coming in the opposite direction. I'd look into store windows and couldn't go in if no one was shopping. I didn't want the attention on me. The temporary highs of purchases I didn't need or even necessarily want always crashed me down hard.
All the clothes I bought were way too small because I told myself that they'd look good on me when I got thin. I didn't deserve nice things in my miserable self defeating condition.
It wasn't until I got divorced and finally went to college that people were astonished at my natural abilities. I didn't believe them. He actually took credit for making me strong enough to leave! He couldn't even give me credit for that.
I went from student to coach in 6 months. I was not the nothing I'd been told I was my whole life. Every time I went to class, did a play or a recital it reinforced what people were telling me.
So you'd think My eating disorder and shopping would have gotten better. It got worse.
It wasn't until I got a diagnoses as bi-polar 2 in 1994 that things started to make sense.
Part of my binging was I was still craving comfort. Part of my addictions were a form of self medicating. All of that and I lived on junk food. Enormous mounts of junk food. There weren't enough empty refined carbs in the world that eased my suffering.
My eyes were sunken in with very dark circles and my hair was falling out and breaking in big patches. I had very low (to none ) levels of vitamins in my system. My mouth would split at the sides and bleed.
It took years to make peace with the realization that I needed to dig deeper to find the answers I so desperately needed. An overhaul of my psyche so I could develop new ways of thinking and not fall into the same old patterns that never turned out well.
Again, as I've said before, I needed to really research food and nutrition. If you go back to my early blogs, you'll find out exactly how I got healthy...both inside and out. Shopping also lost it's allure. I still enjoy it, but I never get something that doesn't fit well. I also walk around with an item and ask myself if I need it or want it. Sometimes it's both and I take it home. It still feels good, but for the right reasons.
One of my favorite sayings is: If you keep doing the same things over and over, you will always get the same results.
Once the processed meat, chemicals, cheep lard and white flour out of my system is when my mind began to think clearly and my heart started to actually feel, perhaps for the first time in my life.
I then imparted on a different road, one that required a different vocabulary.
Shame, guilt, useless, failure were no longer allowed and if I found myself thinking or saying these words, I corrected them immediately. It took quite awhile for me to believe it.
Just like my eating disorder I had to peel back my feelings to the basics. I had to take these
emotions and find out what was behind it all. It went all the way back to age 5. That's as far as I'm willing to go into it now.
I just wanted to remind you that we are all good. We are not only capable, we all have our own personal genius. If I am comfortable with myself, it doesn't matter what others think.
Saw this the other day:
If you get up in the morning and say it's going to be a great day, it will be.
If at the end of the night you say It was a great day, it was.
At the end of your days you will look back and be able to say IT WAS A GREAT LIFE.
Until next time.
It was a great day.
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