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In my first visit to the therapist, she asked me why I was there.  "I have issues with food."  I mean, obviously.  I explained how I had always felt like I was probably a compulsive over-eater, but what brought me to her office was stress.

Last December, when I almost died, it kind of fucked me up.  I mean, I had the typical thoughts about the meaning of life, the purpose of my life, the point of it all.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  Why am I still alive when I should probably be dead?

The health issues that went along with all of that have been ongoing for the past 8 months.   The temporary shit bag.   The sepsis recovery.  When I got out of the hospital, I weighed 181 pounds.  That was the lowest I have weighed since I was probably 16 years old.  But I had dropped 20+ pounds in a matter of 14 days or so.  For the first time in my life, the goal was to gain weight.  Mostly because I looked like a deflated balloon.

I have spent my entire life trying to lose weight since being put on Weight Watchers at the age of 9 by my parents.  Losing weight has always been the goal.  Never would I have thought I would even get to 181, not less that once I got there I would feel like I needed to gain weight.  In hind sight, I probably didn't need to gain weight.  I was just really sick... and looked really sick.

But in my mind, it was an excuse to eat.  I had to take antibiotics three times a day for months.  It was pretty much required to take them with food because they made me throw up otherwise.  Which was another excuse to eat.  Specifically to eat more than I had been, or more than I thought I should be.  And everyone was so concerned about how bad I looked as a sick person, no one said anything about me eating whatever I wanted.

Of course, this came within the confines of someone who is post gastric sleeve surgery.   My stomach is only the size of a banana anyhow.  But it was almost like an excuse in my head for eating that I hadn't had in a while.  After losing enough weight to be healthier (off of pre-diabetes meds, off blood pressure meds, off cholesterol meds, being able to do more without pain, etc)... I had this constant fear that if I ate too much, I would stretch my stomach back out.  Gastric sleeve saved my life.  I didn't want to screw it up.

I found myself working from home, in a room next to the kitchen.  I was eating all day.  I mean, I can't eat that much at any given time, but little bits all day long.  I realized I had reverted into some very old patterns of behavior one day when I noticed that it was 5 pm and I hadn't drunk anything all day.  I was literally not consuming any liquids just so I could eat every hour or so.

That was the point I recognized a problem that I needed to address.  Sitting in her office, my therapist started to ask me a series of questions about eating and my thoughts about food.   And within that first visit, she said the words "binge eating disorder".  I mean, I knew I had issues with food, but to call it this was something I wasn't really anticipating.

She said that a certain personality type typically describes people who later may suffer from binge eating disorder.  Specifically, someone who is a caregiver, unable to say no, low self-esteem, people pleaser.   Something happens (an event or trauma) as a child that makes this person feel like a victim, and they use food to cope and feel better.  Which basically starts a cycle of using food as a coping mechanism.

I have spent the last week or so really thinking about my childhood and what I felt may have been my event... or group of events.  I have also been thinking a lot about my relationship with food as a child.  So far, I don't understand where it came from or what event precipitated this behavior.

My earliest memory of eating this way occurred when I was 3 or 4 years old.  My grandaddy used to buy a jar of maraschino cherries whenever he went to the grocery.  I LOVED them.  I remember that he and nana would put them on the top shelf of the refrigerator door so I wouldn't be able to reach them.

I would sneak into the kitchen, drag the chair over to the refrigerator, get the cherries, and take them to the back room of nana's house.  It was a storage room where the furnace was and for the most part I didn't like it because it was dark and kind of scary.  But I would take my jar of cherries back there and eat them in the dark.  All of them.  And drink the juice.  I have no idea what would make a 4-year-old do that.

Of course, I felt all kinds of guilt afterwards.  Nana and grandaddy would get onto me about eating all of the cherries.  And then, they would buy more when they went to the store.  I know that at least some of my issues with food come from nana.  She was a product of the depression and she loved you by feeding you.  I distinctly remember going to her house as an adult and as soon as you walked through the door she would start offering to make you whatever food she had available.  It was just her way.

But what I don't know is how I made this connection of coping by eating things.  I remember eating the cherries and wanting all of them and not being able to stop eating them until they were gone.  Almost possessively.  Like if they found me with the cherries, they may take them this time and there would never be any more after that.

This is just the earliest example I remember from my childhood of feeling this way about food.  Which is not very common considering most people develop an eating disorder in their teen years.  I am hopeful to get to the bottom of the source of my disordered thinking, but after many days of trying to figure it out, I am at a loss.

My parents separated when I was in kindergarten.  They were divorced when I was in the first grade.  I remember them arguing when we all still lived together.  I don't remember that it was scary or traumatizing, I just know that when he told me they were getting a divorce, I felt relieved that they wouldn't be mad at each other anymore.  I know during the separation, I stayed with nana for a few weeks.  I don't know that I felt any sense of abandonment about it.  I remember her asking me if I wanted her and grandaddy to adopt me.  I told her I already had a mom and dad.

But all of this happened *after* I was already possessive of my cherries.  By the time I was in kindergarten, I was already the fat girl.   I remember nana buying my dress for kindergarten graduation and having to hem it.   The size that fit around my torso was about 6 inches too long.  What was the thing that made this little girl do this?

I kind of have an odd set of beliefs about spirituality and the afterlife.  I do believe in reincarnation.  I sometimes wonder if this particular part of me came as a residual from a previous life.  Was my lesson in this lifetime supposed to be about food?  Was I so poor in a prior life that the abundance of food at nana's house was a temptation I couldn't ignore?  Did I struggle with the same problem in a past life as well?

I think I spent a lot of years blaming things outside of myself for my weight or eating habits.  I ate too much because nana loved me with food.  I liked ice cream and sweets because nana gave them to me when I was upset as a child.  My tumor (only my tumor) made me gain 150 pounds between the ages of 15 and 25.  I need to eat this because my blood sugar is low.  One more piece of pizza won't hurt.  The restaurant gave me this portion, it must be the right amount.  

I cannot blame binge eating disorder for being obese.  Nor whatever trauma or event that happened when I was a kid that triggered it.  I can only move forward with the knowledge that this is a problem for me and I am the only one who can address it.  If there was anything I would change about the course of my life, it would be that my tumor was diagnosed earlier and that I recognized this eating disorder for what it was sooner.