Black Girl Purging

I cannot remember if I ever posted this but last night I felt emotionally overwhelmed and had a strong urge to do this. Thankfully, I was able to ride the wave and not give in. Let me know what you think.

I know usually I talk about relationship issues but I wanted to get a little personal with you all. I want to touch on eating disorders and how I used to suffer from one. It is unusual at first glance to find a black girl with food issues. Or, at least that is what I told myself. Initially, I did not realize I had a problem I just followed my impulse.

It started years ago, I do not handle stress well and I would try to combat it by finding a source of relief a sense of control when I felt out of balance. I would eat to the point of combustion and then when I felt so full I would run to the bathroom and purge. I felt such a relief when I purged it seemed to take the stress away. I would do this in silence and for a while I did not think I was harming myself. I did not realize I had a dangerous food addiction. It brought me such comfort yet made me feel so disgusted with myself.

 Eventually I told my mother of my ritual for I could not do it in secrecy anymore. She brought me a sense of comfort and tried to convince me to stop but I just continued to do it I just would not tell her. I did not have a name for what I was doing and it was not a problem or so I thought. I hated that disgusting feeling when I would eat excessively and then purge instantly. I would always wait till the bathroom was empty so my shameful behavior would not be exposed.

 Recently, I received help for my purging. It finally had a name, it was called binge eating. I will admit when I first discovered I had a problem I was not surrounded by those who look like me and it made me feel so alone. I felt as if I was the only black girl alive doing this nonsense. Yet the woman in me knows that I am not the only one so I need to tell my story to help my love sisters combat this dangerous disease. It is like ignoring the pink elephant in the room. It will not go away and we have to tackle it before it destroys us all.

Now for me it had nothing to do with weight issues it was more of an emotional thing. Mentally, I felt out of control and food is where I thought I could bring some sense of balance back into my life. I was stuck in emotional mind and became of victim of impulse. I am thankful I sought help so this pattern does not continue past me to my daughter. I am better equipped with how to handle things if she were to pick up this same behavior. I pray the cycle begins and ends with me.

Side note: I wrote this blog some years back and never posted it. I was terrified to share it at that time. But now I know why this story needs to be told. I have suffered with binge eating for quite some time. Last night was the first time in years I felt the urge to binge eat. I cooked salmon, fried rice, and corn on the cob. I ate dinner and then all of a sudden emotion poured over me. I felt emotionally overwhelmed from day to day things. I felt out of balanced and wanted to relieve myself hence purging. My boyfriend kept asking what is wrong so I explained to him my issue we went for a drive and stopped at 7-11 I did not get anything because I did not want to give into the urge. I decided to try positive self-talk and I kept using my wise mind. It was a temporary feeling and it would pass just ride it out and I made it through. Now I am feeling that way again so I am writing it out instead of running to purge. I have an issue with control when I feel out of balance food is where I feel I can have control. As I sit hear I want to snack to the point of combustion and then purge. I am speaking out because in our community it is taboo. You don’t hear about black girls purging. I want to combat this feeling. Please if you or anyone you know suffers from an eating disorder please share your thoughts below. Thanks!

Low Self-Esteem Killing Me Softly

Is low self-esteem holding you back from love? Does the formula low self esteem=victim=plaything=permanent side piece seem to be your destiny?

I have suffered from low self-esteem for way too long. I have allowed it to play as my enabler in many facets of my life. I will focus today on how it has impacted me in my dating life.

They always says don’t look for a man he will find you. I have always believed that the man for me will come to me and be heaven sent. So why has hell been reigning over my dating life. Part of it could be I have played the victim role so much I really believe I have been victimized by love. What a farce! My arduous road to love is a direct correlation to my unwillingness to love myself. Sure I look in the mirror occasionally to check my hair and outfit but I never stand there long enough to peer into the very heart of me. I am broken in so many ways. If I look too long I will point out all my flaws and figuratively tear myself apart.

When I was on hiatus from dating I began to do some serious introspection. I actually began to like me and then like always I found a man to help me get off track and lose sight of me. The woman I was beginning to see. I always immerse myself into a man. It is so easy for me to put him on a pedestal and cater to his every need. Thinking somehow I will convince him I am the one not knowing I am showing him I don’t love myself and unworthy of the title I so desperately want to be bestowed. I will lose my identity in him I won’t write, not even journal I am consumed by the thought of being in love. My day revolves around him and how he feels. What a sad state of affairs it truly is.

Every time I hit rock bottom in love it comes back to the same solution learn to love you. How can someone invest in my stock when I am selling my shares and not investing in the company? No man would invest in me especially when he doesn’t know what’s going on with the company if something is wrong internally, but I know. If I don’t invest, neither would he. I have time and time proven I am an unworthy stock. Now I am saying that for pity, I am saying that because it is true. I cannot gain support for a cause I don’t myself believe in.

So much of who I am is about keeping up appearances and wanting to belong. I want to be accepted it stems from being rejected long ago. I have to deal with my past demons and the entire trauma that I have endured. I have to say I was victimized but I am no longer a victim. Unfortunately, in my case the opposite is true I am a professional victim. Internally, I blame my past for so many things and truth be told I am still living in my past. I am still that insecure girl from all those years ago. I need reassurance that I am beautiful. The men I date see that I am desperate and desiring of their approval and they run with that. In all honesty I cannot blame them for my current state. It is my own fault.

The role of Girl Friday has become cumbersome and emotionally exhausting. Emotionally and physically I morph into the role of Superwoman and my kryptonite is loving me. Sometimes I through pride aside and just do things because I so desperately want to be loved. I sacrifice so much of myself that I am losing vital pieces of me along the way. So how do I counter all of that you ask? I will start blogging again and journaling and do some introspection. Study the craft known as me and learn her well. I have to step back from loving someone else because I am on the brink of self-destruction. Yes that’s where I am headed.

To hell with thinking like a man, time to think like a boss.

Request for my heart….Denied!

My phone has stopped ringing no more calls, texts, or video chats with my chocolate drop. He seems to have just disappeared out of my life. I stop my dating hiatus to get to know him and now he is M.I.A. I wonder aloud if maybe there was something I have somehow been a catalyst for his disappearing act. I did everything he asked and more yet now he is gone. I feel like a foolish girl for opening up my heart to someone who I always thought wanting nothing more than my body. I always knew deep down I was his fantasy girl and I guess the reality of who I am killed his euphoric desires. I should have known it was the beginning of the end when he asked me why I never tired to talk to him when he was the one pursuing me all this time. Even worse than that I thought he was The One. Perish the thought; I thought he was meant for me. But would the man meant for me really ask what the freakiest thing I have done is. Correct me if I am wrong but the man for me would never want to imagine me with another man.

There were so many signs that I chose to ignore. I never trust my own instinct. Sometimes I wonder if I truly know what is best for me. People in my life always say don’t look for him he will find you. Well I am tired of being found by men would mean me no good. Tired of being sidelined and bestowed the title of mistress. I am better than being an entrée on the side. During my hiatus I learned I am more than my body, I have a heart and soul that longed to be respected as well. I learned to respect all three and even while I was choosing to date this man I decided not to have a Plan B so may call it foolish but I did not want to be emotionally vested in more than one man as I have always done in the past. Although, all this time I have been single I would tell potential suitors I was taken. It was easier than explaining my boo was too far away to be here and I was holding him down no matter what. Some told me I was foolish for engaging in a long distance relationship but I did not care what they thought they had someone and I had no one so I was going to pursue it anyway. He has pursued me since adolescence so I thought it best to see this thing through. I had everything riding on this hope and dream that love had finally found me.

I thought wow no man waits this long just to have sex with me. Naïveté definitely set in during this last month. Some men will go through great lengths because the power of the cookie is that strong in their mind. It felt good to not have to hide anything I felt refreshed. I was preparing for him to come and see me. I have known him forever was I infatuated with him or just the thought that love had found me finally after 7 years. I bore everything into him told him things about me wanting to be nothing but honest. He said there is no such thing as moving too fast yet me emotions faster than ever before. I envisioned so much with him and none of it will come to fruition. He admired me intellect but our conversations were purely sexual. I know I should have walked away when his actions screamed at me he just wanted sex. Why did I ignore all the red flags? I rode down a road that said yield, then caution road out ahead, and I went off the cliff and now after getting out of the rubble I wonder how I ended up here again. Damn!

Am I destined to be alone for the rest of my life if I am blessed to be married will it be in old age. Yet I know one thing for certain I have to get my shit together. I lost track of everything and my only focus was him. I had bigger fish to fry and my sole purpose was to convince him I was The One. I am Mrs. Right. Yet all along he already had someone she never left. I was never even thought of as being his girl in his mind. I was just this longtime crush that he never conquered. When he wouldn’t call me for days he would ask when he called how did you sleep? What an arrogant asshole! You love to see me fawning foolishly over you. You love to see a woman like me hurt and downtrodden.

Well I have picked myself up again and going back to my dating hiatus. My esteem took a serious hit than needs intensive care to repair. I need to stop thinking that a man will complete me the only man with that type of power is God. I have to be a boss in my thinking. I must achieve my goals and set out to accomplish so many things and I will not accomplish shit running behind an unworthy man. Why was he so deserving of my time and attention? Truth is lips never met and our bodies never collided yet my mental was more than receptive to the idea that was him.

So I am single again but I am no longer accepting applications. Not because I am bitter but because I want to be better. I don’t want to rebound I want to regroup. A good friend of mine watched me tear up and comforted me with tough love. Those who know and love me want me to focus on me and nothing else. They see a wounded solider who is allowing herself to be preyed upon but self-serving people. People whose agendas are clear and evident in their actions but foolishly I settle for what I can get. I don’t deserve better at this point because I don’t want better. I just want a warm body next to me.

I am better now that I released all that emotion. I want to call him and call him out for being a coward by ignoring me. I am not mad just disappointed in me for not holding firm to what I knew to be true. He was going to come here and lay with me. That was his only goal.  He never meant to be anything more than a roll in the hay. I was in love with love not him. I was in love with the idea of being in love again.

Why do we allow ourselves to be lead as sheep to the slaughter? Why don’t we fight for so much more? Share your thoughts below.

Please Love Me

Are you aching for someone to love you?

Daily I struggle with learning to love myself. I am learning to look to myself for love. It is the little things I struggle with. Constantly I am looking for acceptance I want so bad for someone to love me so I don’t have to sit down and comfort myself. The other day I was walking around my old high school Trenton High and I was alone with my thoughts it drove me crazy. Today I had a conversation with my sister about feeling left out. Initially, I was frustrated with the situation from the stand point of they exclude me a lot more than they include me in things.

Never did it cross my mind when they include me in things I tend to isolate myself. I have always been awkward in social settings especially family gatherings. As much as I want to belong I am definitely a loner by choice. I am scared to let people in even family. Damn this is hard as hell to write. The tears won’t cease let me take a break.

Let’s resume I just want so badly to be loved that often I neglect myself. When it is just me it is hard to deal with life on life’s terms. Many times I try to escape my thoughts, fears, and insecurities. Even when writing this I am withholding a lot. I do not want you to know that I don’t love me. Although that is what my actions clearly show. My actions say I care more about you and what you think. I do not trust my own instincts, when and if I do I am always questioning myself. It is like I did not go to his house because I do not trust myself around him versus thinking I should have went anyway like how dare I have a noble bone in my body. How dare I stand up for me? Since when do I have rights, especially the right to say no? I always feel I am wrong for saying no to someone. I aim to please everyone but me.

I want to love him more than I want to love me. It keeps coming back to the same point I need to learn to love myself. When I face myself in the mirror my gaze often wavers and I cannot bring to look at me. I find everything wrong with me. I see the other girl everyone else sees. The one they pretend not to notice. The one guys just want to creep with on the low never professing their feeling aloud for the ugly girl. I have so many issues to deal with that I do not know where to begin. In my eyes I am hideous and unworthy of any love. Only God can love me.

It is not even so much about my exterior look it is about the feelings floating inside of me. Sometimes I daydream while looking at a pretty girl and wonder what it would be like to be pretty. How does that feel to be pleasing to the eyes? That is a foreign concept to me. So used to being the sweet, ugly girl in the background.

I know today I am all over but my feelings are all over. I want so badly to be loved but I do not know how to give that love back to myself. The truth be told I don’t want to love me. My flaws overflow so much they are bursting out of me like a dam that has imploded. I don’t want to face me I cannot look in the mirror and say I am beautiful when I know I am ugly. Ugly is a place of comfort for me. Failure lies on the other side of me. Strange bedfellows to most but comforting snuggle bunnies to me. I have come to the conclusion that I do not want to be happy. I don’t want to be loved because to truly love me is to know me and once he knows me he will run away from me. I don’t want success because people will expect greater things of me. I don’t want to disappoint their expectations of me.

As I said before this process is a daily one but even more specific it is a minute by minute effort on my part to learn to fall in love with me.

Have you ever loved someone more than you loved yourself? Are you running away from self-love?

Share your thoughts below.