Turquoise And Elephants

'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.

Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present.'

That's where I am at today.  Mid-life crisis?  Existential crisis?  All of the above?  

Two weeks ago I went to see my therapist and we talked a lot about my recent struggles with my eating disorder.  Specifically, I've been eating a bunch of crap I don't need to eat every time my husband is out of the house.  He's been going to more music shows recently, and so I've been left to my own devices in the evenings more often than usual.  I take advantage and binge on food while he's gone and I'm "unsupervised".  

At first, I spoke about it almost as if I was acting out like a child.  Nobody is here to see what I'm eating, so I'm going to eat all of the things that I'm not supposed to have.  There will be no judgment from anyone, because there's nobody home to judge.  The thing is, he doesn't judge what I eat anyhow.

But in talking more about it with my therapist, and thinking more about it on my own, it wasn't really about me taking advantage of being left alone to eat what I wanted.  It was more so some level of anxiety of being by myself.  One could immediately assume I mean that I'm anxious about being without my husband (for whatever reason), but I arrived at the conclusion that it was specifically about me being alone with myself.

Binge eaters eat to numb whatever uncomfortable feelings they are experiencing.  Identifying what is uncomfortable is one of the first steps to not binging anymore.  It could be for a lot of different reasons (or feelings) and it isn't always the same reason over and over.  In the past, I have binged for a lot of feelings that were uncomfortable: grief, loneliness, sadness, failure, etc.  2017 was a year long binge because I had a shit bag and it was my only old faithful coping mechanism for a LOT of feelings about that whole situation.

Driving more to the root of my current binge eating problem, being alone with myself, my therapist asked me, "What is so uncomfortable about you being alone with yourself?"  And the answer that kind of slapped me in the face is that I don't really know who I am, and it is uncomfortable sitting around alone with a stranger: particularly when that stranger is you.

Thinking over the course of my life, I cannot think of a lot of instances where I have done things, or liked things, or been really devoted to certain things, just because I (me) had a passion for them.  If you ask most people what their favorite movies, music, books, general things in life are; they typically have an answer for you.  Even if you asked someone to pick 5 albums, books, movies, etc that define them; they would be able to come up with a list, and maybe just struggle to limit it to five.

The thing is, I can't answer questions like that.  There are periods of my life that I was really in to certain bands or whatever and the root of the reason is that the person I was dating or the friend I was hanging out with was really in to them.  The movies I saw were based on someone else's desire to see them.  The books I read were based on the favorite books of my friends.  Even when I did my Cherry Mary booth, it was because so many people had told me over and over again, "You should do this, you would be good at it."

Maybe that was why it was such a failure; because my heart wasn't really in it.  I mean I worked REALLY hard on all the stuff I made, but it wasn't because it was my passion.  If you show me cute little paintings on pinterest or etsy, I can usually copy whatever it is and make a cute little painting.  But you sit me down in front of a blank canvas and tell me to create something, and my mind is as blank as the canvas in front of me.

I don't feel like I have a passion (a real passion) for anything.  When I have days off from work, and I don't have some sort of outside obligation for things I need to do, I struggle with what to do with myself.  There are lots of things I could be doing, but nothing drives me into any particular direction.

I do not know who I am outside of who I am to other people: my husband's wife, my mother's daughter, nana's granddaughter, my siblings' sister, someone's friend.  I don't think I am alone in feeling this way, I just think most people (particularly women) don't even think about things like this.  As adults, it's easy to get caught in being defined by being someone else's mother, or by your career, but that isn't really who you are; it isn't your passion.

But although I think a lot of women fall into being defined by the roles they play in their lives, families, careers, etc; I still think the majority of them could tell you what their passion is outside of those things if you asked them.  They would still have a favorite book, a favorite album, a favorite game, a favorite hobby, a lot of little things that define who they are.

I know my favorite color is turquoise and I love elephants.  That's all I've got that is just me.  My favorite author for a while was Anne Rice, and it was because of my best friend in college.  I have a lot of tattoos that I got when I was dating a guy who was really into body art.  Don't get me wrong, I love them all and designed most of them myself.  But at the end of the day, it was under his influence.  I hear a song on the radio and I think to myself, "Oh I was super in to that band when I was hanging around XYZ."  Now, my feeling about that music is mostly indifference.  I've created a lot of artwork because other people suggested I should.  I've tried out a lot of things because other people thought I would be good at them.  

The other day, I had a conversation with a coworker about what we would be doing if we didn't work the jobs we have.  Like if money wasn't an issue and we were doing whatever we wanted in the world.  When I asked him, he said he wanted to own and run a golf course.  Didn't skip a beat, it just flowed out of his mouth like it was something he had thought a lot about.  He's 25.  He asked me the same question and my response was, "I have no idea."

I feel like for the longest time, I just wanted to be financially secure.  As long as whatever I was doing paid the bills, I could find self-satisfaction elsewhere.  But what if you don't?  What if you don't even know what would satisfy you because you don't know what you want?  

I also spent a lot of my life defining myself as the fat girl.  And although I still technically fall into the obese section of the BMI chart, if I refer to myself as the fat girl now, I get some strange looks.  I don't want to be that person that is smaller than someone else, referring to myself as fat, and unintentionally making them feel bad about themselves because of it.  I know what that feels like because I have been there before.

The thing is, I don't know who I am if I am not Mary, the fat girl that does what everybody else wants her to do.  It reminds me of one of Tori Amos' lyrics: "She's been everybody else's girl, maybe one day she'll be her own".  (This is ironic because I was super in to Tori Amos because a friend of mine was at one point.)

My therapist gave me a suggestion today for trying to figure out who I am.  She said she wants me to start with this simple question: "If you were an animal: what would you be and why?"  My first thought was wondering what animal all of my friends and family members would say I am.  And there we have the source of the problem right there.  

It's a simple question, but at least it's a place to start.  

My name is Mary.  I like the color turquoise and elephants.  Check back later and maybe I can tell you something more than that.