Tonight, I Hate

If I have learned one thing during my walk with recovery, it's the importance of forgiveness.  Unforgiveness sits within you and eats away at your soul like cancer, so I believe that to forgive is a matter of spiritual life and death.  Over the past several years, I've made it a point to forgive and seek forgiveness often.  It's not always easy, but you grant freedom to both parties when you forgive.

I've forgiven my former step father who vehemently hated me and was not shy to tell me so or show it with his fist.

I've forgiven my nighttime babysitter's son who threatened and frightened me into submission so that he could molest me for years.

I've forgiven my mother for letting both of these individuals into my life.

I've forgiven my oldest brother upon his request for being absent from most of my life up to that time.

I've forgiven the girl that ripped my heart to pieces after our brief but emotional summer fling so many years ago.

I look for opportunities to forgive because of the liberation that comes with it.  It's music to my ears and light to my eyes and love to my soul.  It's so very, very sweet.

But there's one person that I struggle to forgive.  He knows me better than anyone else and understands when he hurts me.  Intimately.  Frighteningly so.

The person I struggle to forgive is myself.

Sometimes, for reasons that may sound foolish to you, I hate myself.  Deeply.  More often than not, it's because of my dysfunctional and skewed relationship with food.

Today was just such a day.

As a person who has struggled with food's allure and control my entire life, especially as I've come to accept and understand this battle as a full-blown addiction, I know my limits.  Just as a recovering alcoholic knows he cannot take even one drink and expect to stay sober, just as a sex addict knows that a single one night stand couldn't possibly be enough, I know that I can't indulge in trigger foods as I will not stop, no matter how strong I believe I am at any given time.  I know that if I succumb to the temptation of even a nibble, a binge is guaranteed to follow that will leave me emotionally sick with guilt and anger and physically sick to my stomach.

I know this I know this I know this I KNOW THIS, yet addiction has a way of blurring reality and blinding you to the truth.  Addiction doesn't give a flying fig about what you know as it's only interested in what you feel, and for me, I always feel like eating.  Notice that I didn't say anything about hunger-- that's physical.  Nope, food addiction is emotional and all about the endorphin-laced high that comes simply from putting food, LOTS of food, into your mouth.  The trick to putting your addiction in its place is to not listen to its siren call, its lies, its pleadings.  You have to be smarter than it is.  You have to be meaner than it is.  You have to be more determined than it is.

And sometimes I'm not.

And that's when I hate myself.

Today, listening to my addiction tell me that they would be for my sons' Easter baskets, I took the only tip I've earned in weeks on my weekend job and bought a bag, a LARGE bag, of malted candy coated robins' eggs.  Then I listened to it tell me to open the bag and smell the eggs.  It told me that one egg wouldn't hurt me.  One tiny egg would be okay.  One little piece of candy couldn't lead me to-- 

OH STUFF IT YOU WUSS AND EAT!

In less than five minutes I had completely consumed that entire bag of robins' egg candies.  In less than five minutes I had inhaled almost a thousand calories of pure carbohydrate poison to a diabetic food addict like me.  In less than five minutes, I had stolen from my sons what would have brought them joy.

What a jerk.

What a big, fat, stupid, arrogant, screwed-up JERK!

Addiction, I can usually turn the tables on you and see you as the positive that finally pushed me into getting healthy.  I can usually ignore you.  I can usually put you in your place, but tonight I hate you.

Tonight, I hate myself for giving in.

Again.

Tomorrow's a new day.  Tomorrow I'll be able to put it all in perspective and know that I'm forgiven by those that matter most (my family and my Lord).  Tomorrow I'll be rational.

But tonight, there's no forgiveness in me.

Tonight, I hate.