Becoming a Warrior

This week has certainly been an insightful, albeit incredibly stressful week. I have had several realizations about my past and how strongly they have affected me- in my life and even in the present.

So long ago, I was married to a mentally unstable and abusive person. Growing up, we are warned against the physical aspect and see moments of it on tv or perhaps on a video. But no one ever warns us about the psychological damage or the emotional scars that come with being physically assaulted.

For me, there is so much damage, I have buried most of it and it reveals itself in very little ways,-- as if it is gently attempting to help me heal from it. There is never a week, and barely a day, that has passed from the day I escaped in which I have not experienced some kind of flashback or memory or realized something about my personality that has changed and been affected.

This past week has been quite a doozy. I had these memories and moments of clarity that seemed to pop up several times a day--way more than it's been in a while. This week I discovered that I have an eating disorder and I feel so ashamed and scared and worried, that I have kept silent not wishing to burden my family and friends, but also because I don't want to hear their responses or doubt that it is real. That how I am is actually in fact quite a serious problem and more than me just being a picky eater. I have never felt more alone in my life than I do at this moment. Nor have I ever felt more ashamed than I do now. And yet, I know I have not done anything wrong.

Living with my ex-husband, it became an almost daily ritualistic game with him that I would need to choose who could eat that night-- me or my kids. As if that was ever something I needed to think about. For days, I would be starved or beaten if I ate without his permission or I would be threatened if I did. It only took one time of him throwing my daughter on the bed, before I realized he was quite literally crazy enough to carry out his threats.

But now, my body is so adjusted to going 3 days or more without food, it does not signal when I haven't eaten. And going like this for almost 6 years before I got away, I don't even notice it myself. Eating used to be a joy and stress reliever for me, but now I can barely choke down food when I do finally get hungry enough to eat. One meal a day is more than enough and more difficult to eat than I have ever experienced in my life.

The desire for food is there, but I have no appetite and often it hurts to eat more than once a day. And if I am stressed or struggling emotionally, forget it. That appetite disappears and does not come back for days. When I realized this week, that it was a problem then and has only gotten worse since I left, I knew I had to take steps to get help.

I know that part of that is working with my counselor and a nutrition specialist, which I have appointments with and will gladly attend. The other part is talking about it. What scares me beyond belief, is the idea of voicing this out loud, of talking about how ashamed I feel that as an adult, I let someone control me so much that I have now developed a serious problem in my life. I feel guilty that I wasn't able to immediately fix all of the psychological and emotional damage he inflicted. I even feel ashamed that it still affects my life, all these years later and especially ashamed that I am struggling with something as simple as eating food-- a basic function that even babies can do.

Struggling with everything this week, I have had to take time to myself and unplug from my phone, not answering calls or texts unless its family. I am scared of what my future will now be because I know recovering and changing these habits will not be easy. Re-training myself to do something so easy and basic is humiliating. The whole concept is humiliating in fact. I had resigned to keeping it secret and not telling a soul. I am not sure I can do that though. I know how secrets destroyed my life before and I can't repeat that. I wish that someone had warned me that in leaving an abusive partner means literally learning skills you had all your life and have to actually re-learn. This is the psychological and emotional damage I was referring to earlier, that no one talks of.

In writing this, I actually hope to process what I feel about the situation. I hope to release all the emotions that I have been too fearful to actually share with anyone in my life. It's not that I couldn't, but if I do-- actually when I do, I will have to admit that this time I do not feel much like a strong warrior. Instead, I feel like I am failing at a basic need in life and I cannot even describe the humiliation and shame that has overcome me the past few days as a result.

Tonight I don't want to be strong and fight. I just want to actually feel what I am feeling. Tonight I feel scared and alone, humiliated and ashamed. Tonight, THIS IS ME.