Satiated

*The following post contains elements about eating behaviors that could feel triggering.

I have been walking around hungry most of my life. Food was just inches away, yet it did not feel like it was accessible. Not to me. This is true because there was so much more that I wanted. I didn’t just want to reach out for the sake of hoarding. I wanted love to reach out and feed my soul. Love seemed so far away. 

As I write this, I contemplate the words, “I wanted love to reach out and feed my soul.” I realize that I created a love story that would always be there for me in my Eden-fed fantasy. I long to return to Eden where luscious fruit grew on trees and there was no separation from God. Some of that early garden experience stretches into my reality. 

Love comes looking for me in the form of a Father who feels the energy change in the “garden room” we share. He senses that something is wrong. I never have to hide or strive to feel his presence in the form of soggy, chewed up, and spat out food. 

How does this eating-disordered act feed me? How does one tiny cud, ground up over and over, provide sustenance? What good does that do? It is only a taste. A texture on my tongue and between my teeth. Chewing feels mighty, ferocious. It feels like I am tackling my painful childhood. I am biting it to death. Cleaning it out. All of that is a lie. A lie I keep on the end of my tongue as I scavenge. 

I am like the homeless people I pity with fearful disdain. I pick through the debris. My wreckage is found in the refrigerator, then half-eaten, and spewed into the trash. I move into the deeper disdain of self-hatred. I am the lowliest.

I am a woman without an emotional home. 

“How sick are you that you pick food out of your refrigerator only to let it end up in the trash as though it is an emotional receptacle? Those emotions only go out to the dumpster for another hungry soul to parse through,” I reproach.

In my shame, I wonder what a homeless person thinks when they pick through my garbage bag and find wads of food that have been drowned by saliva, pulverized by teeth, but not removed from my psyche. 

God cups his hands in front of me and says, “Here, give it to me. I want it. I want us to look at it. I want us to name what it is. Just like Adam and I named sacred things in the garden, I want to hold this in my bare hands. I want to hold your sin. I cherish your pain, shame and self-loathing; the things you are trying to spit out.”

“It’s true,” God says. “I cannot look upon sin, but my Son can. He will do more than that. He’ll feel it, carry it, and digest it. He knows what you really want when you chew and spit your food. You are not alone. He will grind into every bite.” 

As we stand there at the crossroads of spit or swallow, my Father will ask me which way I want to go. He will not ask me judgmentally, “Why would you do that?” Instead, he will say, “Tell me what this means to you. What do you long for?” 

I fire out the words, ”I want my mother back from the grave. I want her to give me everything she could not give me when she was here. Nourishment and love. I want all that I lost. And I don’t want to gain weight. No one can see what I am going through. No one can know the weight of my pain, and so I lie. My desperate longing for spiritual food must remain hidden.” 

My Father stays near. He sees me and knows every eating-disordered part of me. He sees that I want to release my vile pain. He sits, two cupped hands away. “Spit out the lies, dear one. Let’s walk in truth.” 

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Rebby Fortune lives in a 225 square-foot studio in Phoenix, Arizona. You can trust that she measured every inch of her renovated garage space, and then she filled it with her passion: creative exploration! She discovered you can fit a lot of art work, writing materials, toys that your landlord’s children can play with, and so much more into a tiny little space.