StarvingInSearchOfMe

“As we are liberated from our own
fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
–Marianne Williamson

For the entirety of the time I spent sick, I was pushing with as much resistance as possible to avoid having to face the void inside me. But the more I tried to distract myself from the inner work I really needed to be doing, the more intense my fear, pain, shame, and anxiety became, and the crazier I eventually felt. I can acknowledge it now—the reason I refused to face myself is because I was attached to the notion that I was a victim.

On a subconscious level, I’d convinced myself that my eating disorder was a justified response to the society within which I lived. It was a valid reaction to the things I’d experienced in my life. “It’s not my fault I don’t fit in,” I thought. “It’s not my fault I feel like an outcast most of the time. I am entitled to express myself in this way.” I have a right to express myself in this way.” After all, I was angry. I held anger toward myself and toward all the people in my life who couldn’t read my mind or understand what I was feeling. I felt incapable of relating to others due to my social anxiety and sensitivity. I was in fact so desperate to be validated for the years I had spent feeling powerless and invisible through my years in school, that I was attached to the idea that I had to keep fighting to receive the recognition I deserved. Refusing to see my happiness as my own responsibility, I resented other people for all the things I felt I lacked. I distrusted nearly everyone in my life because I didn’t trust myself, and as a result I withdrew violently inward.

As I confessed in the previous chapter, one of my reasons for starving myself was that I wanted to be rescued. I wanted people to feel sorry for me, yet I refused to ask for the help I knew I needed. Instead, I used my body as a pawn in my own passive-aggressive scheme. I figured if I destroyed my body in a way that was visible to others, someone would have to notice and then someone would have to swoop in and save me.

Suffering, as I now see it, is a result of giving in to helplessness. (Some people turn this helplessness into violence against others and some people turn violent against themselves.) It’s fear-based. It’s deciding to hold onto judgment and hatred. Vibrating at a low energy frequency. Resisting change.

An expression I resonate with now is this: Where you place your blame is where you place your power. By placing my blame on the external world, my past, other people, and all the unfair things that had “happened” to me, I gave these people and things the power to control my self-esteem, my self-worth, and my happiness. I created my own prison, never realizing I was holding my own self captive and denying myself the opportunity to heal.

I have since realized that I am responsible for my own happiness, and with this responsibility comes a great deal of power. By no means am I able to prevent myself from experiencing all suffering; suffering is a part of life. But what I can do is liberate myself from needless additional suffering. I can choose each and every day to be kind, compassionate, patient, and forgiving. I can own the decisions I make and resist blaming others. I can entitle myself to feel and witness my emotions without judgment or fear. And I can act to make my life better by taking risks and confronting the things I need to confront. Then as a result of taking good care of myself, I will organically bring more positivity to others.

As a first step to giving up the victim role, I had to actually acknowledge the pain I’ve gone through and entitle myself to it. Metaphorically speaking, I had to get down on my knees, look former versions of myself in the eye, and say, “What you went through was real. And it sucked. I see you, and I’m here for you.” I had to provide the kind of nurturing to myself that I had been waiting for from other people. For my whole life until recently, it’s been difficult for me to admit when I’m hurt. I’ve always had a tendency to undermine my pain and say, “Well, it could be worse. Who am I to complain? I come from a good family and I’m lucky to have both a mother and a father. I’ve never been physically abused, kidnapped, or raped. There are wars going on in the world. I have no right to feel troubled.”

But not all trauma is caused by acute traumatic incidents. Sometimes trauma, like the kind I experienced, can be developmental. For example, the years I spent shaking in my skin feeling anxiety-ridden, excluded, trampled over, oppressed, ashamed, lost, lonely, and silenced in the world has had a profound impact on my emotional development and wellbeing over time. So entitling myself to say, “This happened and it hurt me, and it’s okay to feel this way,” has been a total game-changer.

Another important piece of this is understanding that not every feeling you have is going to seem rational, warranted, or fair to other people, but that doesn’t make those feelings illegitimate. It doesn’t invalidate them or eliminate your need to experience them for what they are. We all live in subjective realities, after all, where our experiences may be magnified or distorted depending on a number of factors. Some of these factors include: age and level of experience (children often have very different emotional reactions to things than adults do, based on their limited life experience); emotional temperament (sensitive people may experience emotions and sensations more vividly than non-sensitive people); and mental health (people who suffer with certain mental health issues may have magnified experiences and magnified reactions to those experiences based on their specifically altered sense of reality).

I accept now that there is light and dark inside of every human being and that the most evolved people are not those who have less darkness, but rather those who have mastered the art of co-existing with their darkness. When one is trying to deny the darkness, escape it, or repress it as I did is when that darkness will cast a black shadow over your entire life. And that shadow can move a person to do all kinds of crazy things. This is why it’s so important we look our demons in the eye and confront them. Whatever has happened to you in the past and whatever cards you have been dealt in this life—maybe it’s not your fault, but it’s still your responsibility to heal your own scars and nurture yourself to become the person you want to be.