I hear a lot of advice about forgiveness. How forgiving someone else is really more for yourself than for them, how toxic it is to hold a grudge against someone, how healing compassion meditations are. But what if the person you need to forgive is yourself? What if the person you feel has let you down the most is you?

I was bulimic from ages 20 to approximately 36. There are so many short and long term consequences from this specific eating disorder, and none of them good. The financial and time-suck consequences alone are severe. To think of how much money and time I pissed away on binge food, gum grafting procedures, doctor’s visits, reflux meds, upper endoscopy procedures, and the possible surgical intervention I’m now considering to tighten my esophageal sphincter makes my stomach churn.

And while all of these tangible ramifications loom large in my mind, there is another intangible, almost sneaky repercussion of years spent as a bulimic that looms even larger. And the word I can best use to describe it is shame.

I no longer have any desire (EVER) to purge any food I eat. Not even when it’s junk food. The thought of it makes me cringe and it’s been many years since I’ve felt that urge. The behavior of bulimia is behind me, but the shame of it still sits inside me. It’s not necessarily the shame I carried while engaging in the eating disorder, which at the time centered around someone finding out (the horror!).

Now, it’s that continued feeling of being wrong on the inside.

That’s a feeling that has carried over. That’s a feeling I’m still working through. It’s the feeling that allowed me to abuse alcohol. It’s the maniacal whisper that told me, “Just go ahead and keep drinking more,” even as my rational self understood I had long since stepped over that invisible threshold between “normal” alcohol use and alcohol abuse. It’s the voice that egged me on and encouraged me to continue to pour that toxin down my throat on a daily basis.

There was a lot of cognitive dissonance going on during the period in which I was drinking pretty heavily, but I was able to ignore it because I’d had years of practice doing so!

People with a drinking problem or an eating disorder or any other substance abuse issue do not engage in the partaking of their drug of choice because they lack a moral compass, they just get so used to abusing themselves that doing so feels like putting on a warm, well worn-in, comfortable sweatshirt. We recreate the patterns of the past because it’s what we know. It’s what’s comfortable. It’s a narrative we understand deep in our subconscious.

When I was 32, I went back to my hometown to visit for my brother’s birthday. At his party (which consisted of a booze bus picking up and dropping off our group at various bars around town), I sought out a particular friend of his (who I’ll call “Nate”) that I thought was very attractive. I knew then that he was in a longtime committed relationship with another of my brother’s very good friends (who was stuck at work and had not yet been able to join up with the party goers). This didn’t stop me from flirting and chatting him up, nor did it stop him from seeking me out before he left the party to get my phone number.

Nate and I kept in touch for months. Long texts and phone calls deepened the “friendship” (one such text message thread got very sexual). Nate was a self-professed recovered alcoholic who moderated his drinking by not keeping alcohol in the house and only consuming it if out with friends. He’d also managed to lose a significant amount of weight due to his having picked up karate (black belt) and managing his relationship with food. Talking to Nate was like talking to a therapist. I shared bits of my life re: food and alcohol with him that I didn’t share with anyone else, and he listened patiently and seemingly with care, offering advice steeped in the wisdom of someone who had been in the battle trenches themselves. At one point, after sharing with him that I’d been married and divorced twice before the age of 30 and that I seemed to almost instinctively torpedo anything that resembled real security and happiness (no, the irony of the situation in which I shared this bit of information is not lost on me), Nate said something I’ve never forgotten. He said, “Well of course you do. You had a chaotic childhood so that’s what you know, that’s what’s comfortable. You’re recreating that chaos because it instinctively feels safer to you than anything your rational mind is telling you will bring true lasting contentment.”

Boom. Mic drop. I’ve never forgotten that. I knew in my bones it was true. It didn’t stop the eating disorder, the steady march towards alcoholism, or the poor choices in men (Nate eventually landed in prison for beating his girlfriend-turned-wife nearly to death in a drunken rage), but it shined a spotlight on my wonky subconscious and the seemingly mysterious forces that drove me to make one poor choice after another.

I had learned very early on in life that I was unimportant. Unspecial. Dispensable is the word that comes to mind. An annoyance, just another mouth to feed in a family of 7 mouths. I also learned that the way to have true worth was to prove yourself worthy through outside accolades: good grades, good behavior, and crucially beauty. My early attempt to antagonize my own self-loathing resulted in a diet, which led to an eating disorder, which led to further self-loathing, which led to alcohol abuse, which led to further self-loathing.

This is why the effects of the wounds of childhood on adulthood are real. For so long I thought all of that was therapeutic BS, that every single person experienced childhood trauma and that, on a scale, my own existed far below what many can claim. It felt entitled for me to acknowledge my trauma and the long term effects it’s carried into my adulthood. Even as I type this I am inwardly cringing.

“Trauma?!”, my mind screams. “You want to talk about trauma?! Go talk to WWII survivors who were drafted at age 18, or a child who was raped by their parent, or one of the billions of people around the world are existing without enough food or running water at this very moment! Stop your sniveling, you whiny baby! Your problems are not real problems. Your trauma was not real trauma.”

And yet, I AM carrying scars from the lesions of childhood. Perspective on my experience in light of what others have gone through does not limit the degree to which my own psyche has been affected by my own traumatic childhood experiences. My experiences, I’ve learned, are still valid. And it’s not just some haphazard attempt at self-love for me to say that. It’s because I have taken a long hard look at myself, at the choices I’ve made. Anyone who has so willingly and thoroughly abused their own body does so because there is faulty software running the program, and that comes through trauma. That comes from having lived through some f*ed up experiences and internalizing a narrative given to you by others in your youth. That it wasn’t as “bad” as others had it in their own lives does not make it any less real. It does not serve me to compare or rate my traumatic childhood experiences.

I abused myself for years. I hated myself for years. I let myself down because I didn’t feel like I was worth fighting for. After all, I’m one of 8 billion people. Unspecial. Unexceptional.

And now, having ceased both bulimia and alcohol abuse, I have realized I still haven’t “solved” that trauma. The years spent berating myself for my choices, only to repeat them, have become deeply entrenched in my psyche. And that’s my current battle. I still spend so much of my day focusing on everything I’m doing wrong. To do so has become so habituated for me that even now, when I’m trying so hard to “do the next right thing”, I engage in mental self flagellation for every perceived failing every day.

I am even using this blog to beat myself up. After years of waffling regarding this project I finally jumped in and am giving it a go, and I’m doing so purely because I hope that sharing my story will help someone else navigate their own. I am do this because the years I spent reading other’s stories and listening to other’s narratives helped me escape from my own self-made substance abuse prison cells. I am free of the behaviors! And it’s glorious. And I did it through reading and listening to others who became free. And now I want to help others free themselves.

Sounds great, right? Not to my subconscious brain! All my instincts are screaming at me that I am not doing enough, that it’s too late, that I’m not a good writer and that I have nothing to offer. It’s telling me that the format of this blog is terrible, that anyone who stumbles upon it will judge it as too unprofessional to be taken seriously, that my life’s stories are too unremarkable to help anyone, that I am wasting my time.

A week ago I knew NOTHING about WordPress. And I am NOT a technical person. I am not nor have I ever been drawn to technology, and WordPress is not easy to learn for a newb like me. I considered using a service to set up the entire blog for me but I wanted the challenge. I am trying my best, and I know I’ll get better with time, but only if I continue to ignore that screaming voice in my head telling me all the things I’m not doing well enough.

Acknowledging that I have some seriously faulty software is the first step for me. It allows me to recognize that self-loathing voice as “other”. I am able to experience it more easily as not me. I am considering giving it a name, so that whenever it starts yelling at me I can say, “Oh that’s just (insert name here). She is throwing yet another hissy fit. It’s best to ignore her tantrums because she’s a crazy biotch.” Secondly, I am going to start listing what I’m doing well each day. The brain is very teachable and just as starting a gratitude journal trains the brain to seek out things for which one is grateful, I am sure starting my Doing Well list (maybe I’ll come up with a better name) will start me actively paying attention to my accomplishments, rather than bigging up my perceived failures.

And this, I’m learning, is the real challenge of my life. And I’m guessing, of many other’s lives. To be gentle with myself. To be patient with myself. To learn to love myself. To not invalidate my own experiences through coldly rationalizing that many others have experienced far worse. What others have experienced does not invalidate what I have experienced. I am carrying a narrative that allows me to engage in self abuse, and that bears weight. That narrative must be addressed.

The first entry on my new Doing Well list will be that I shared blog post.

Love to you.