Eilan's recent post about food and body image issues got me to thinking about my own feelings on the subject. It seems like it should be so easy: eat when you feel hunger, eat in moderation, eat a healthy balanced diet. Yet some of us have a bizarre relationship with food. An unrequited love affair that is never satisfied. A dependence that is very often deadly.

When I was a little girl, food kept me company. Food was the friend who never left me alone in the house to go outside and play tag. As I entered my teen years, food was always there to blunt the pain of always being the third wheel, of never feeling like I measured up (to whose standards, I have no idea). I don't think I ever knew on a conscious level how skewed my behavior was. It took me a long time to figure it out.

I can remember the light bulb moment for me. During many years of my marriage, when I got angry with my husband, I never said a word. I swallowed the anger, along with half a dozen cookies. I remember clearly just such a time when I was mentally screaming at him, I'll show you, you bastard! I'm going to eat half a carton of ice cream! Like it would really hurt him. The only one I was hurting was me. Very self-destructive. I don't often act out that way anymore, but the self-destructive habits remain.

As many of you know I have a list a mile long of health problems. Almost all of them would improve to one degree or another if I weighed less. This fact should be motivation enough to work on this. So why don't I? Good question. I often feel I'm not worth it. It's such an overwhelming task, I just don't see how I can ever do it. I don't know.

Of all my body image issues, the obesity (such an ugly word for an ugly condition) is the one with which I cannot come to terms. I very rarely look in the mirror. I don't like to leave the house. I am less deserving because I am fat. I can deal with the wheelchair, I can deal with the oxygen tank, but the weight I cannot do. No one is harder or more negative about me than I am.

I have the feeling until I deal with the emotional crap, the physical crap will never be resolved. And I'm very much afraid that time is running out.