I have been really trying to think about how I turned out like I am. All of Junior/most of Senior year of college I was a healthy, happy person. I had a strong relationship with God, I was very outgoing and sociable, and I was very health conscious. Both before and after that point I’ve found myself to be very unhealthy and a miserable person. I am quickly angered over the dumbest things, constantly worry about the what ifs and stress over every little decision. I know what happened to bring me to the point of where I am. But how did it all start to begin with?
I mulled this question over many days, particularly asking myself how I first developed such an unhealthy relationship with food. It finally hit me one night as I was taking a shower (don’t all of our bright ideas come from the shower?). When I was a little girl, somewhere around the age of 7 or 8, I remember my dad telling me that my grandma had cancer and wasn’t going to be around for very much longer. I remember watching him leave out the window, with a box of tissues in my hand. I just kept telling my mom that I didn’t want my grandma to die. The next memory I have is of my dad and I at the visitation. It was a couple hours from home, and I remember it just being him and I there for that night, surrounded by extended family and friends of my grandma. When we left it was dark out, probably pretty late. We hadn’t yet ate and my dad swung through a McDonald’s drive through so we could grab something to eat on the way home. We split a 50-piece chicken nugget box. I remember eating my pain away, unaware at such a young age just what I was doing.
That moment started it all. I ate junk food (and still do at times) after any major stressor/heartache. It was comfort, it tasted good. I didn’t know that what I was doing was ultimately hurting myself. I wrangled this addiction in for a while as I found myself getting to know more about God. I developed healthy habits and as a results, became a healthy person. That is, until I experienced heartache at the hands of a boy. I started eating for comfort again, struggling to balance that while a healthy lifestyle. I even managed to shut it down for a brief while.
Fast forward through a major knee surgery (that I thought ended my favorite pastime of running), a wedding, leaving everyone we knew behind to move for my husband’s job, searching for my own job for many months, driving over an hour each way for work, moving into our first home, and having a child. There’s a lot of stuff that happened and here I am on the other side, trying to banish that emotional crutch, rely on my Lord, and develop healthy stress relievers. I am not a perfect person at all, and I never will be. One of the hardest things for me has been trying to find a good balance for all of these new responsibilities. I’m a mom and a breadwinner, with a house and a list of chores a mile long. My time is so limited.
Sometimes all it takes is admitting that there is an issue and how it started. Other times…. It takes a lot of work.
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