Addiction comes in so very many forms. It can be an OCD-type of obsession, alcohol, food, drugs, gambling, or any number of things or behaviors that affect your thoughts and your day-to-day ability to function.
We go through life living our own unique experience and dealing with each event using our own viewpoint to make decisions. Most of us try to do the best with can with the hand that we are dealt. With that we all have our coping techniques. I went through periods of drinking too much and now can go months or years without a drop of alcohol. My most loyal coping mechanism has always been food.
When I’m happy I eat. When I’m upset I eat. When I’m bored, aggravated, annoyed, tired or really any emotion at all. It’s truly an amazing feat that I am only tickling at 200lbs and not 500.
I’ve been told that overeating is a mechanism adopted by victims of childhood sexual abuse. Being overweight makes us feel safer because we are less attractive. It makes sense in a really dysfuntional kind of way. But, what is addiction other than a dysfunctional coping mechanism.
My father – the person who was the source of most of my abuse – died in the fall of 2014. I don’t miss him. I don’t miss the drunk phone calls telling me what a horrid person I am. I don’t miss the comments telling me that I’m worthless, fat, and that my daughters – his granddaughters – flirt with him or he knows they’ll be having sex soon.
Seriously – what kind of sick person says that kind of shit?
Since his death I’ve been healing. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless. I’m giving myself credit for all that I’ve accomplished, but also the daily steps I take – getting out of bed, telling my children that I believe in them and that they are capable of greatness and, yes, credit for choosing a salad instead of a burger.
His 75th birthday would have been this past Saturday. I wished him a happy birthday in hell and wished him crispiness as he burns.
Perhaps someday I will not take such pleasure in that thought or those wishes, but for now the image makes me smile.
Perhaps my healing will reach a peak when this insane lawsuit my half-sister served me and my brother with is over. See, my father also convinced her that I am worthless, but that she deserves the world. Heaven forbid – in her opinion – my brother share in our father’s estate and certainly I should get nothing.
That pain has been the source of my binge eating lately, but at least I see my self-destruction and understand the cause.
I know I am worthy of all the world has to offer. One day I won’t feel that I need to prove that to others.
Growing Up Addicted 