“I just have to say that, well, if you’d never told me that you have food issues, I’d never guess. You seem like the person I know who is most comfortable in her skin and who seems to have the fewest issues with food.”
A friend of mine said that Saturday night. I almost laughed. Instead I smiled, made a joke about years of practice and pointed out that, when I go out with friends, I never have a meal without a beer (or two or three). She said, “yeah, but that comes off as you like to drink.”
I shook my head, I knew that there was no amount of explaining that I could do, and the reality was that there really wasn’t anything that I needed to explain to anyone. The reality is that the work that I’ve done on my eating disorder recovery shows in the way I interact with others, in the way I can eat and relax and just be.
Still, there’s something pretty strange about it all - something that seems so foreign about being the one who is perceived to be comfortable in her skin:
- most days I don’t know who I am;
- most days I just feel like I’m getting further away from my goals;
- most days I feel weird about the way that my clothing fits;
- most days I’m uncomfortable and uncertain and unsure of what I’m trying to do.
The reality is that, when I talked with another friend on Saturday, we started talking about my goals and what I was doing to reach them. I laughed and said, “I think what I’m realizing is that I don’t always go after what I really want, and I need to figure out how to change that.”
I spend so much time feeling conflicted; sometimes, well, sometimes I think that I enjoy it (or just don’t know how to let it go).
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