I have never quite understood the phrase 'identity crisis'. What the heck does that mean? How does someone not know who they are? Grey's Anatomy did a pretty decent job at portraying someone going through a MAJOR identity crisis with, ohh shoot what's her name, the girl Kurev (spelling?) makes a name up for and then falls in love with REBECCA, right? Well, basically she had her face smashed in by pillar and gets a new face (that she gets to choose) and then gets a little tripped out when she starts remembering things and well um, she isn't actually her!
My face has yet to be smashed in by a pillar and I pray it never does but I think I can officially say I am having a crisis involving who I am, who I see myself as and how others perceive me. Honestly, I have never put deep thought into this subject, more like I would dismiss it because it was something I didn't want to deal with. Whelp. Now, it is time to deal. Because there are two identities that are tugging at me to pick them. To give them the rose if you want to relate this to The Bachelor. Side note, I hate The Bachelor, it's stupid. But these two men are:
A.) Pryde (the name of my negativity and bad thoughts)
B.) God
Pryde has had control of my identity for oh lets just say a long time. And the sad thing is the majority of that time I had zero realization that I could lose my identity to a mental illness. Well, you can. I'm comfortable with Pryde, with my eating habits, his words and thoughts that pass through my mind each day and the crap he makes me believe. When you get stuck in a rut of doing the same habit over and over again (good or bad habit) it becomes your comfort zone. For some when stress is present you turn to drinking, some to smoking or drugs and others to exercising, food, boys, sex etc. Turning to these things become easy for you. You know they will always be there. For me, I will always be able to restrict my eating, or binge and restrict or live off of coffee but I can get a false sense of energy and fullness but can these things truly bring me joy? That would be a negative.
I have turned to dealing with my problems and emotions to food for so long that I now view myself as the girl with the eating disorder, that is who I am. That is how people view me and what people know me for. The girl that drinks coffee like it's going out of style or the girl that is "never hungry". Who will I be when I don't struggle with food anymore? How will people view me and react to the "new" Caitlan. The Caitlan with maybe a tad bit more weight on her body and the Caitlan who maybe wants to meet over dinner verses coffee. How do I react to their reactions? It's a scary thing please believe me. How do I deal with my emotions, stress and problems if my comfort zone no longer exists? Where do those emotions go? Who is the Caitlan without the eating disorder? I don't even know who she is because I haven't seen her in so long. My counselor told me last week that she is seeing small glimpses of the true Caitlan, so I'm in there somewhere but I just exactly know how to deal with her.
As for God, I want my identity in Him. I want someone to look at me and see Jesus Christ, not a girl who is lacking energy and body fat. I want to be thinking about Jesus all the time, I want Him and His Word to be my comfort zone my rock and my go to person, not food. The sad thing is.....
...it's several hours later and I don't feel like finishing this post. I just hit a bad wall. :(
1 comment:
It's funny. I've found as I've lost the ED identity, I've actually cared less about how people see me. Oh, I still care, but there's no longer this desire to fit in some sort of box where you can be defined by two or three sentences. Instead of having one or two major things that define me, I have many smaller things. Yes, I feel a little less.... "special" and more ordinary, but the positives in my life now outweigh the little twinges of regret for losing the specialness that still hit me now and then.
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