Last month my hosting came up for renewal again.  I toyed with the idea of taking everything offline but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.  I’ve put in a lot of work over the years. A lot of time and money. Since renewing that hosting, my fingers have been itching. I’ve spent hours awake at night with ideas running through my head. As always the fear of failure has kept the words in my head and off the screen. 

I would be kidding myself if I said that I’m writing here now because I have zero fucks to give, that the anxiety of not being enough has diminished. The anxiety is still there, strumming under the surface, forcing it’s way to the surface in new, different ways. I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole with things that cause me anxiety. I pretend they don’t exist, push them down. Conceal it. Don’t feel it.

A new phenomenon has come to the fore in this new landscape of anxiety. I find myself turning to food for comfort. For years my treating professionals believed that I was a comfort eater. You see, fat = comfort eating. If you aren’t eating for comfort then why are you so fat?

Food has never been a source of comfort. I didn’t think of it in comforting terms. It was used a punishment. Whether it was too little or too much, it was about punishing myself. Now I find myself seeking how the food feels rather than how the food tastes. I find myself using food to soothe instead of using it hurt.

However through seeking this comfort I have still found myself seeking punishment. As I sought the comfort, I chastised myself for needing it. I felt weak and vulnerable because I couldn’t stop the cycle. As the physical impacts became apparent, this allowed me to further beat myself up for needing the comfort. I was disgusted and so the cycle continued. I felt shit, so I ate shit, which made me feel shit.

I know that I need to get into the mindset of food being fuel and nothing more. I need to remove the emotions from the food and take back the power. I know that it has power because I have given it power.

I have been so hesitant to talk about this because talking about it out loud, even on a computer screen, means that I am acknowledging it as a problem. I have been telling myself that if I just continue to push it down that it will go away. It became the elephant in the room, the more I tried to ignore it, the bigger it grew.

I want to change it, but I’m scared. I feel so out of control and yet so in control. This anxiety is of my own creation, and while I struggle with this, I can pretend everything else doesn’t exist. It is easier to focus on this small thing, than to focus on the rest.