09.17.07
9:28 p.m.
It made sense to me when I started writing...
I tried to become a vegetarian when I was quite young. My first attempt was at 11, but the idea was quickly shot down by my parents. At 11, you pretty much have to do what your parents tell you to do, and I was forced to eat meat.I tried several times in between, but I was finally successful at thirteen. I think it was a combination of wearing my parents down, and their hatred for one another that resulted in their lack of interest in raising a child.
Anyway, I spent most of my childhood years subsisting on side dishes full of starch, salads containing nothing but iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing, or nothing at all.
I've recently come to the realization that my interest in vegetarianism was not only spawned from my love of animals, but also from the need to hide an eating disorder that I didn't even fully recognize yet. It gave me the perfect reason to avoid most food.
Back then, when I was young (Ha! I feel so old), vegetarianism wasn't really main stream; you couldn't find meat substitutes in regular grocery stores, and Whole Foods certainly wasn't a household name. A lot of the convenience foods available now for vegetarians didn't exist, at least not in my town. I could basically live on salad and side dishes and no one would think twice.
At one point, around 15 I decided to become a vegan. This completely limited my food intake to nothing but fruit and vegetables, and I loved it. However, being 15, stupid and without proper guidance, I became really ill. Who knew people needed certain vitamins minerals to survive?! Certainly not me. So, I went back to being a regular vegetarian.
Anyway, I went way off track with this story. Basically, I'm really used to not eating meat. Except for a short stint of Atkins, I've been a vegetarian for more than 50% of my life. (Try explaining to someone that you went from being a strict vegetarian straight to the Atkins diet. It's fun.) I don't like the taste, texture or thought of eating most meat. I certainly can't eat meat off of a bone, or have seen it come off the bone, or even thought about it coming off the bone. Overall, I'm really a pain in the ass to have over for dinner.
Ok, I've drifted off the point of this whole story, yet again.
The point is, that I think that I'm hiding my eating disorder(s) by my vegetarianism. I just realized this, but after researching it, it seems that it's quite a common practice.
Which lead me to think about how so many people, independently, chose to do the exact same thing to hide their eating disorders. And that maybe, even though I'm crazy, it's not exactly fixable by sheer willpower alone.
I have quite a few medical issues, asthma and allergies being the most distinguishable when I'm not medicated. However, I take medicine to control them because without them my life would be miserable.
This is completely acceptable.
However, when I thought about taking any type of antidepressant to make myself feel better I felt like I would be failing; that I just wasn't strong enough to fix it myself. I felt like the medicine would actually 'fix' me it would just be masking who I truly was.
My logic was completely faulty. I didn't want to take an antidepressant every day of my life, but I was ok with the fact that I have to take other medicines everyday?
After being on Wellbutrin for almost two months, I've changed my logic. I see it as a medication to fix a physical flaw that I have. Nothing more than the asthma medication, allergy medication, or the contacts that I wear everyday.
It's been slow, but I do feel better. I feel like myself again. I'm not so afraid to do things anymore; at one point I was so afraid to even look people in the eye. There are obviously still things that I need to fix, but now I don't feel like it's such an insurmountable task.
Hope is an amazing thing to have, and luckily I finally have it again.
