Food Hangover

I've got a hangover. Not the alcohol kind. The kind where you wake up after 4 days of bingeing and look at the state of your apartment, the state of your life. I've got two voicemails on my phone. Both are from my best friend here in Paris wondering where I am. She had a big house-warming party at her new place last night...I'd been looking forward to it for weeks. Unfortunately, when a binge comes, everything else in my life gets put on the back burner. I need to call her back and I don't want to. Not because I don't want to talk to her, but because I am so ashamed. She knows about my eating disorder and she knows that I didn't come to her party because I relapsed, so I guess the silver lining of this is that I don't have to lie. You will probably start to notice a pattern in my posts, which is that most people in my life know about my eating disorder. My boss (I've missed plenty of work because of this), my close friends, my mother and sister, my in-laws (too many events missed, my husband had to tell them the truth), my doctors (very important). I honestly believe it's a good thing I can talk about my problem so freely with others, I think if I had to keep it a secret, the shame and the lies would just overwhelm me. But the flip side is that EVERYONE KNOWS I HAVE AN EATING DISORDER. So it often ends up being a topic of conversation. 


Anyways, back to my hangover. I'm sitting here looking at my apartment; the piles of clothes on every surface, the dishes in the sink, the smell of cat litter needing to be changed. I have a head ache and am slightly nauseous. Right now I'm scared. Scared that I won't make it through the day. The first day after a relapse is both the hardest and most important for me. If I can be abstinent today, tomorrow will be much easier, and the next day even easier. If I get enough momentum going, I can easily go two weeks without a binge. Ok, maybe not easily, but as I am a periodic binger, that's usually how it goes. One to two weeks of normal eating, and then BANG. I forget. And a harmless binge turns into 3-5 days of pure hell until I can summon the strength to stop and start the cycle over. But not this time. This time I am promising myself it will be different. Not just because I have a blog. That doesn't really change much. But because last night when talking to my husband, I realized that this is killing me. That this is killing our marriage. When I think about the massive quantities of pure sugar I am able to ingest these days, it's astonishing that I haven't already contracted (verb?) diabetes. And because of my extremely transitory life these past two years (just got health insurance in France), I haven't been to the dentist in ages. How are my teeth and gums holding up? And how is my digestive system still functioning after all I've put it through? 


My husband can't stand to see me slowly kill myself. It's really starting to weigh on him, and I can see some signs of depression starting to show through. If I can't be abstinent for myself, I need to at least be abstinent for him. Last night I promised him that I would make a commitment once and for all to abstinence. I've been allowing myself to have these bi-weekly "slips", saying that relapses are a part of the healing process. I've been afraid to be too hard on myself, as too much restriction and controlling in the past always led me to a rebellious break in abstinence. So this time, I am going to be kind but firm with myself. No more slips. Not because I'm aiming for perfection, but because I've created an extremely dangerous pattern for myself that needs to be broken once and for all. 


Alright, I'm going to start putting my apartment back in order and give my friend a call before heading out to my OA meeting tonight at 6pm. I need to keep praying and reminding myself that abstinence is worth it and that God will see me through this if I ask for his help.