I realized something today. I realized something very deep and important to me. Something that could potentially change everything for me. It scares the living daylights out of me to think about letting it in, and yet I look at it with such longing and need for it that I don't know how to not let it in. Today I realized who I am and why I feel like I have been chasing my tail for so long.

My whole life I always knew I wanted to be a mother. I wanted so badly for my children to know and feel all the love and patience and total adoration I had to give them. I knew I wanted to stay at home with them and be that mom that could give her children the gift of herself while they were young and impressionable. There were also things about being a stay at home mom that I didn't realize were part of the package. The isolation, the housework, the redundancy, days of whining, cranky, thankless children, worrying, sleep deprivation, etc. I didn't realize the days of the awesome payoffs of being a stay at home mom were often very few and far between.

I had a really hard time dealing with becoming a mother. Somewhere between the trauma that was my first childbirth experience, the hellish recovery, the postpartum depression, and feeling like nobody really understood what I was going through, I became anorexic.

When my daughter was about 11 months old I was finally able to admit that I had a problem and seek treatment. I did pretty well with it and by the time she was 2 and a half and I became pregnant again I felt like I was in a good place to have a healthy pregnancy and did everything I could to make sure that happened. And it did. My son was born healthy and happy and I was hopeful that this crappy part of my past was behind me.

I was wrong. Anorexia came back with a vengeance. I was a little quicker to get help this time but it was a harder fight. I felt like I was never going to be normal again. I felt pretty hopeless and everything I did in treatment at first was for my kids and my husband. Making sure I did it for them was the only way I could keep going. I had no self esteem and could not really fathom doing it for myself. There were some pretty dark times but, for the sake of my kids, I persisted. I was told that it would eventually get better. That you had to do the work before you could see the rewards.

Slowly the rewards started to trickle in. Every small step was celebrated. I really believed that if I kept going and got better that I could put this all behind me. That I could be ok and I could put this all behind me. It's been 3 years now and I came SO CLOSE. And then once again anorexia has come knocking on the door and I answered. But this time I couldn't understand WHY. I have worked so hard to move past this part of my life and it keeps coming back. WHY?!?!? I have learned to cope with things that I thought were a problem. One might come up once in a while but I'm pretty good at beating those things back. So then WHY is this happening again???

Then this morning as I was going through my list of stresses and what potential good could come of those things, something hit me like a ton of bricks. None of these things is REALLY the problem. None of these things is what keeps me on this endless cycle that makes me feel like I'm chasing my tail.  It is the fact that I've been trying to find myself, when all along I know who I am but can't be that person. I was raised to not be that person. It was engrained in me when I was growing up that the minute you have a family you cease to exist. From that point on you live for your children and do only what is best for them regardless of what you do or don't want.

And I really think that is why Ed (eating disorder) stepped in. To cope with the fact that in a day I went from a person to a care vessel that doesn't mean anything to anyone. Or at least that's the way I saw it and largely still do.

The problem with this revelation is that I don't know if there IS any way to fix it. Just time. Once the kids are grown up maybe I can regain a little bit of myself. I dunno. If there is ANYTHING left by then. I've been encouraged to do things for myself before and never have followed through. I think that is why. Because I truly believe that it's not acceptable for me to do that. But I tell people I will try just to appease them. And for a minute it makes me feel better to think of the possibility.

that's all I've got for now.
TTFN