For those following my blog, I talked about the first affirmation in the book On the Path: Affirmations for Adults Recovering From Childhood Sexual Abuse. The thoughts I am having tonight about this affirmation relates to this topic in a different kind of way. As an adult, I mentioned in my last post on this, I have been overly protective of my body, not letting anyone touch it, ruining my relationships. But I had another thought tonight. Sometimes I don’t treat my body the way it deserves to be treated. I have an eating disorder that spiraled downward 11 months ago after my dad passed away. Well, two nights ago, I took something that almost took my life. I took something called Ipecac that induces vomiting. Instead of it making me throw up, it poisoned me. My heart was racing so fast, I was sure I was going to have a heart attack, I became very weak and lethargic that I could barely move. I waited and waited for it to make me throw up until I finally tried to make it to the bathroom and make myself throw up just to get it out of me. As hard as I tried to make myself throw up, I couldn’t and tried to make it back to my bed when I became so dizzy that I fell down and almost passed out. It literally was poisoning me. I remembered I had activated charcoal in the medication closet, and managed to make it there and take some, and then went back to bed.

This whole time I was praying, “God don’t let me die. I am sorry.” Over and over. Within 10 minutes of taking the charcoal, I was feeling better. I had terrible diarrhea the rest of the night, and didn’t get any sleep because of it, but I knew at least that I wasn’t going to die. The next day I felt terrible. I was still very weak and could barely get out of bed the whole day. I couldn’t eat anything without feeling like I was going to throw up and I even had a hard time keeping water down. The whole day I realized that I had finally hit rock bottom with my ED and realized just how bad it had gotten. It was a wake-up call. Now I have started trying to eat again, and lose weight a healthier way. I think this was what pushed me into wanting to get better. It’s sad it almost cost me my life in order to get to this point, but tonight I was again thinking about this affirmation.

I realized yes, my body belongs to me, but instead of my abuser abusing it, now I was abusing it. I was treating my body terrible and had become my own abuser. I don’t think this affirmation means to tell us these things or show us these things, but I just had these thoughts when rereading that affirmation. I don’t think believing that my body is my own means that I can do whatever I want to do with it or should do whatever I want to do with it. I almost killed it, and this affirmation shouldn’t give me the permission to do that.

This was a wake-up call. One that I unfortunately needed to have in order to start me on a path of recovery. I can’t say this has cured my ED. I know I will still have good days and bad days, but at least now I realize that I don’t want to die, and in order to prevent that, I need to try. Anyway, these were my thoughts tonight on this affirmation. I have four more days to think on this affirmation until I move on to week two with a different affirmation. Like I said in my first blog, I will keep writing my thoughts with this one if I have any new ones. If I don’t, I will share my thoughts on the second affirmation in four days.

Kelly