A difficult state of mind

Tags

balance, discipline, emotions, negative, postaday2012, psychology, self esteem

I don’t what is up with me today. I woke up this morning with a fleeting memory of a bad dream connected with my teenage years involving angst and turmoil. I’m unclear what it was about but it hasn’t led to a good feeling about myself. My hubby and I have had quite a few laughs despite my inner sadness which won’t shake off.

As I was walking the dog, I kept feeling these strong cravings, the sort that involve doing what my best friend and I used to do in high school, go to the corner deli and buy all the potato chip flavors they had, bottles of soda, cupcakes, ring dings, brownies and ding dongs and just pig out. These cravings come and I fight them off because I know that the only thing that I will feel after giving in will be complete and utter disgust at myself. So after I talk myself down from these cravings and responsibly waiting them out, they always die away after a good night’s sleep, I feel better. But before that, it isn’t pleasant because I find myself wishing that I were back in control like I used to be in my anorexic days. I always squash that thought because that is just bad, bad, bad. I would never want to go back to those days. I told my ob/gyn the other day that I was too tired to be a true anorexic. It takes a lot of energy and discipline to do it well. I’m just too tired and I have learned that no matter how much weight you lose, I will never be satisfied. I know because I lived it. I wasn’t satisfied at 110 lbs, or at 105 lbs or at 95 lbs or a even 87 lbs, I still thought that just five more pounds and I would be at the perfect weight. At that time I didn’t realize that there was never to be a perfect weight, it was never skinny enough. That realization is one that I came to when I got back to living with recovery and that took about two decades. Knowing that I will not be satisfied at weights that are unsustainable helps me to not engage in dangerous behavior such as restricting caloric intake or going nuts with the exercise. But it does make me infinitely sad that I will never be happy with what I look like, that I look in the mirror and all that I see is a distorted image of someone, who apparently only resides in my mind, and no matter what others say to me, I never believe them.

The good news is that this mood usually only lasts a day, once I sleep, I will wake up to a better mood, all this sadness probably fueled by hormones (I like to blame my hormones) will be forgotten. I am not joking, this will be forgotten and optimism will be at the helm once more.

My room at age ten

Describe in great detail the room that you slept in when you were ten years old. What was the light like? What were the furnishings? Leave out no detail!

I grew up during the school year on 24th Street in Astoria. The summers were spent with my family in France where we played musical bedrooms every summer. In the States, I shared my room with my little sister. It was a rectangular room with her little bed on the right and my bed on the left for the first few years and then we graduated to bunk beds that were on the right side of the room looking in, the far wall had the only window in the room. That window looked out towards Astoria park, the East River and the Triboro Bridge, now known as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. Our view was spectacular at night, with the lights gleaming from the bridge, they made very pretty images on our walls. Directly across from the bunk beds was my dresser and to the left side of the dresser was my bookcase with all of my Nancy Drew books, Agatha Christie books, Art Linkletter's Encyclopedia series, the Black Stallion series and the Kathryn Kurtz' Camber of Culdi series. Our closet was next to my bookcase and at night I used to have to imagine painting all of the horrible images that would crop up in my imagination coming out of that closet with thick white paint so that I could go to sleep. That closet and its inhabitants used to scare me to no end. The white washing of my imagination did work because it took time to paint all of my mind into a pristine white canvas and I would fall asleep doing it.

That was my room until we moved away at the age of seventeen where I finally got my own room and even though I went away to college, I still kept it because I didn't stay away for long, just a year and I came back home to go to a local college. I really didn't like dormitory life.