Hope

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." (Romans 15: 13)

These are words I'm hanging on to at the moment. About 3 years ago, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. No I'm not anorexic, I'm not bulimic, and I'm not skinny and underweight – just the opposite. My diagnosis is that I overeat; I overeat to compensate for all kinds of stuff (I find that 'stuff' is a great word, and covers a whole gamut of meanings). So for the last 2 years I've been working with a psychologist from a clinic in Warwick which deals with people like me – who have eating disorders of all kinds. They aim to sort out the whole person, and work with us to help us find our way through the morass of baggage we all carry with us from the past… and I have 50+ years of past, so there's a lot of baggage to sort through.

So it's taken me this long to get to the point of being able to talk and write about all this. Right now I'm trying to be as cool and clinical as possible, so I don't get carried away into a quagmire of emotions and loose what I'm trying to say.

As I said in my first post, I'm really doing this blog as a form of aide-memoire; I need to chart my travel along this path. I'm told that I've reached a key moment in this walk – but to be honest it doesn't feel that way to me. Right now, I feel like there's two of me – there's the me that really wants to change, that really wants to start eating the right foods, in the right quantities, that will help me initially to lose weight, but in the long term will help me to change, (I'm trying to avoid the word 'normal' here!), to live a life where I'm not hiding behind all these walls I've built around myself – and that's definitely easier said than done. But then there's the me that keeps sabotaging the work, and I suddenly find – without consciously noticing – that I've bought and eaten a ton of chocolate, or a giant-size meal, or whatever it might be. I even asked my psychologist (let's call her 'Mary') if I was developing a split personality, but she was absolutely emphatic that no I'm not; what I'm going through is completely normal. 'Normal' is the very last thing I feel right now. Anyway, I think that's enough for now, I can feel all the emotions welling up, and need to go deal.

God bless you for reading.