Demons

I wanted to share these thoughts, because I think they're intimately linked with my disordered eating (mostly overeating).  I want to transmit these words in a published way so that they feel more real to me and so that I can't try to escape them.  I've said some of this stuff before, but maybe I'll come to a different conclusion this time.  Here I go.

When I was little, I found out that the root of my name was the Latin word for "love" and most baby name books gave my name the meaning "loveable" or "worthy of love."  I thought that was a cruel joke.  I rarely felt loved for as long as I could remember.  You should keep in mind that I was a sensitive kid.  I think I was just born that way.  I think I needed more love and affection than your average kid.  My mother's language of love was to provide for as many of my essential needs as possible, but my mother also struggled with anger issues and there I was, a convenient, helpless target.  The result was that the balance of love and affection seemed skewed when I was growing up.

I don't remember feeling loved in any consistent way that was relevant to my understanding.  There were certainly moments that I can recall being hugged, playing with my mom who was in a goofy mood, and most important of all in my relationship with God, who I was told and believed loved me no matter what.  That last thing is probably what saved me from a much more difficult life.

Anyway, back to my mom's love language.  In the realm of meeting my essential needs, my mother was especially good at feeding me.  We were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but there was always food.  Sometimes the cheap, junky, illogical creations of my childhood still provide me comfort when I'm sick or not feeling like myself.  So, she didn't always tell me she loved me, and she didn't always know how to show it in a way I could understand, but she would always feed me.

One of my favorite memories of my childhood was in the aftermath of a hurricane.  I don't remember what it was called, but I remember that it was bad.  Several trees had been torn from the ground.  The neighborhood was slammed by lashing rains and high winds.  The power was out for a while, and by the time the worst of it had passed, it was dinner time.  Without the use of the stove, dinner that night was Entenmanns' frosted chocolate donuts and Yoohoo.  I remember thinking it was the best dinner ever.

There were people in our lives when I was growing up who helped our little family as best as they could, and frequently this help was in the form of food.  We always walked away from Sunday church meals with leftovers for the week.  Family friends would never let us leave their homes without bags and bags of food.  I was never hungry growing up.

So, here I am, never lacking in one essential area (food) but severely lacking in another (love).  Since food was never a scarcity, it was easy to overindulge in the effort to make up for what I was missing.  I sometimes say that I don't know how I didn't develop another type of eating disorder, like bulimia or anorexia, because I remember one of the first times my mother ever called me fat.  I was eight years old and outgrowing my clothes.  I don't remember being particularly fat back then, but it stuck with me.  Now I think that didn't develop the way I think it should have because it was attention, and I was okay with that sort of attention, or at least I was used to it.

I say all of this not to blame anyone for the way that I turned out, but to name a demon.  In fiction and mythology a demon is often immortal or impossible to fight if you don't know it's name.  Only when you name it can you defeat it, and I think that this is true as a therapeutic principle, too.  The fact of the matter is that I grew up and I became loved in very clear, very fulfilling ways.  I've spent more than three years in the most loving relationship of my life, and in the coming years we will be married and start a family of our own.  Still, old habits die hard.

What I'm trying to say is that what started out as trying to make up for a lack of love remained as a force of habit.  I overeat.  I'm an overeater.  Hello, my name is Amanda and I'm an overeater.  I am addicted to food.  I know my demon.  I name it.  I know how to fight it.  It's going to be a daily struggle, but I'm up for the challenge, because I'm not a helpless, unloved kid any more.  I'm a kick-ass adult overflowing with love.