Monday, February 24, 2014

"I Had No Idea…"

Hey!  I kinda went missing after posting only the tiniest fraction of my story… sorry!  But I am back, not to go back to my story but just to stop in and say HELLO!  So hi, how are you?  I have been… okay.

Wanna know something?  This week is…

EATING DISORDER AWARENESS WEEK

I thought it seemed appropriate to let you guys know!  I bet you all know someone in your life that has struggled with symptoms of an eating disorder, or even had a full blown eating disorder so do me a favor, wear PURPLE this Wednesday for them.  It's "Wear Purple Wednesday" to show your love and support for those that are dealing with this disease… and hey, if you don't know anyone, do it for me, you know me right?!  


The theme for 2014 if "I had no idea…"
     - did you know that eating disorders are more common than green eyes?
     - did you know that eating disorders are the MOST fatal of any other mental illness?

For more information and awareness click here.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!
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Sunday, February 2, 2014

I can relate...


Let me touch on something I haven’t really talked about on this blog yet. 

My addiction. 

Yes, I hate and love and hate that I can relate to Mr. Wonderful and his sex addiction. 

I mostly hate it. 
And I mostly am so grateful for this knowledge.

Let me try to explain my bipolar emotions on the subject.... 

I can’t imagine how it would be to try to understand addiction without having my own experience with it, with my eating disorder.  I have heard, on more than many occasions, hurting wife’s plead with their husbands to “just stop”… “why can’t you JUST STOP?”… “don’t you love me? don’t you love our children?  don’t you love our family more than you love pornography or sex or your addiction?”  “Yes, yes I do love you and our children and our family more than I love my addiction!” the husband explains.  “Then why don’t you just STOP?” cries the wife. 

Well, lucky me (or is it unlucky me), I haven’t had to completely start at the beginning with the concept of the power of addiction.  So, although I have heard my own pleas at Mr. Wonderful to “just stop” I live in the reality that it isn’t that easy. 

If it was… I would have “just stopped” with my eating disorder behaviors and thoughts years ago.

I have lived with the pain of people judging my struggles.  I have lived with people pleading with me to “just stop”… “if you love your family, if you loved your kids, you would stop being so selfish and STOP… just eat, JUST EAT ALICE!” 

These pleas, these words never rang truer and louder in my head then when I was facing inpatient treatment with potentially months apart from my little family.  Believe me, no one was harder on me than myself.  “Oh Alice,” I would cry, “just eat… you can avoid this whole situation if you just eat… you are so selfish so unbelievably wrapped up in yourself, you are a bad mother, a terrible wife, an incredibly indecent HUMAN BEING, just eat.”…but I couldn’t, I was too far down the path to “just eat”.

Sounds ridiculous huh?  It’s okay, you can say it, I get it, it does sound ridiculous… but, I just couldn’t eat. 

So, I couldn’t think straight, I started randomly passing out, my liver started failing. 

And I had to leave my family.  I could have died.  I really had to leave my family, for 75 days. 
And it was so painful and so awful that I rarely let my mind go back to the day that I drove away with Mr. Wonderful.  I drove away from my home, I drove away from my children, leaving them lost and confused and too young to understand. 

Oh, this brings back so much pain. 

I’m going to take a time-out before proceeding with this post and where I was hoping to go with it. 
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