This past weekend, my daughter-in-law, Virginia, and I took an incredible four-day trip to Carlton Landing, OK. I have an entire post in the works about the NUMEROUS reasons this trip was so incredible. Spoiler alert – God was ALL UP IN IT.

Today, however, I’m going to jump to the end of the days there. Up until Saturday evening, I couldn’t have even made up something that had been wrong – it was that great. Saturday evening, we were in the pavilion in town square, next to the meeting house, making fresh greenery wreaths with a group of local ladies (no, I’m not making this up). This feeling came over me of just sadness and for everything in me I couldn’t stop it. We walked back to our house and I just couldn’t get past it, the tears were just welling up despite every effort to not “ruin the moment.” I laid down on the couch and tears just rolled out uncontrollably.

While we were having dinner, Virginia asked if I wanted to talk about it. “I don’t know what to say,” I told her. And I didn’t know, I couldn’t put words to it. We got in the hot tub after dinner and I just kept thinking, “what is wrong with me?”

After the hot tub, and as soon as I stepped one foot in the shower – where, oddly, so much self awareness happens – it hit me like a freight train.

Loneliness.

In the year-and-a-half-ish that I saw ML for my eating disorder, we talked about how this was not a linear process. Not even close. In one session, where I was berating myself because I continued to have all this mess swirling in my thoughts, she had me draw a straight line on a piece of paper and then in the middle of it make a tornado shape. “That,” she said, “is how it will look for you during recovery.” SIIIGGHHH. I wanted things to be better. I didn’t want to feel this way anymore – I wanted linear and I was pissed off I didn’t have it.

Currently, during what is the next phase of this process where I am ACTIVELY working on my health with good nutrition and exercise, as well as trying to get the binge eating under control, things are coming out that haven’t yet been addressed. To clarify this, during the time with ML, I was not ACTIVELY working on recovery. I was passively listening, taking it in, trying to understand and connect myself to something that had no name until this time. It took me a hot second to accept and move forward.

Saturday, when I stepped one leg in that shower, it occurred to me that the loneliness piece had never been dealt with. I knew it was there, I knew it hurt, and what had I done with hurt in the past? Shoved it down hard and binged it away. I began to put the pieces of loneliness together with binge eating. They had walked hand-in-hand, step by step, for a long time but until this moment, and with eight-ish weeks under my belt without binge eating, I saw a clear picture of it.

Let me clarify what I mean by lonely. My son and his family live within walking distance, I have great friends, a business where I interact with people all the time, I have lunch dates on the reg, clubs and groups and bible studies and etc. I am in no way alone. At night, however, when I go to my house, the roar of loneliness is surrounding me. I haven’t yet been given my hearts deepest desire to have a partner in crime in this life. Someone that I can care for, pray with and for, love, share life with – and that can do all the same things for me. In this season of life, on this journey, in this year of weird, during the holidays, I feel it on a deep, painful level.

The loneliness that I felt on Saturday night was just that. We were going home the next day and when I got there I would be – alone. Where in the past I would have consumed that hurt away with some absurd food in a just-as-absurd quantity, I now had to face this differently. What I am learning is that all of these moments, handled in new and better ways – well, they are freaking hard. Not linear. Not I’m okay, I’ve got this. Not even close. Each of these new moments that arise catch me off guard and are painful to navigate, creating a desire within me to stay in the safety zone of my people and places.

What I do know, however, that in this safety zone, healing is happening. Each time I walk through these things in a better way, no matter how difficult, will make the next time a little easier, then easier the next. What I also know is that you can get tackled in the safety zone and that was yesterday.

Yesterday yelled at me from the time I woke up, looked on Facebook and saw the most careless of memes. In a very poor quality meme – I mean they should have consulted with me, I could have made that thing look stellar with a little Canva action, but anyway – it said “People swear they fighting demons. When the whole time they’re fighting the consequences of their actions and decisions.”

DANG, I let that make a little hole within me. Yeah, girl, I’m fighting the enemy and some days he tries to devour me, just like it says in the Bible, sister. I got sassy angry, then I consulted my team – yes I have a team and they’re the bomb. They agreed, garbage. But that little hole was there.

Next was lunch with a new friend that is nothing but kind. Going in with that little hole, ED, my enemy, talked to me the entire time. (I’m calling the enemy ED because, as advised in that first book “Life Without ED,” the idea is to separate that sucker from you by giving him his own name and identity – so that’s who the enemy in this journey will be from now on.) I knew this friend was reading my blog so ED taunted me like a beast – “she’s evaluating what you are eating,” he said 100 times. “She thinks you are a hot mess,” he whispered in my ear. Over and over he tried to make me believe that I shouldn’t even be writing this because I had to “face” people who were reading it. ED worked me over and I left lunch unsettled.

I drove around a while, filling myself with my Soul Food playlist, headed home, and then ED began his work again. He used one of my most trusted and caring friends. While this friend and I were talking, ED jumped in to use loneliness to crush my spirit again. In the course of the conversation my friend said to me, “God gave me a spouse because He knew I would take a long walk off a short bridge.” His words jabbed into me like a hot dagger, literally wrecking me at my core. He has never had anything but good intentions for me and I know without doubt he would never say something to hurt me. But it did – it hurt deeply.

Today, I am working through this. I am trying to understand, connect and correct the loneliness and binge eating relationship. And it’s brutal. Last night I was done, had no intention of going to the gym today, toyed with the idea of a binge, and this morning I felt every self destructive thought and wanted to go into full self sabotage mode. Not with just food – actually not with food at all – with anything that would make me feel better. I’m sure you can list the top three in your mind.

BUT, I’m no quitter and I’m NOT quitting. Those replacement comforts will be squashed by making sure I stay in the safety zone right now. I know I won’t have to stay here forever. I know I have something good to give and I also know ED the Enemy wants to take it all away. I believe in my mind, and am waiting for my heart to catch up, that I’m worth more than “feel better” moments that would only temporarily replace the comfort of binge eating and cause more hurt.

I want one day to know and FEEL my validation come from Him alone. That currently sounds like a lofty goal, but I know it’s achievable.

This is my “therapy” song for helping work through those lonely moments. I may or may not bawl EVERY time I hear it, but it’s a tool I’m using to fight this battle so that at some point I see a VICTORY.