An Epiphany

I had a bit of an epiphany last night. It seems like a no-brainer now, but last night it just hit me like a ton of bricks.

I have figured out that my emotional eating in the evening has two parts. For so long I had thought I ate at night because I needed to relax. This past week I've really paid attention to my feelings while I detached myself from my eating.

What I found is that I eat first because I'm tired, and it's a way to wake myself up. And second because I don't want to say "no" in the bedroom to dh. Let me rephrase that. It's not that I don't want to say "no", it's because I desperately want to be allowed to say "no" without having him unload a ton of bricks of guilt on me. Because "no" is something I was never allowed as a child or in the first 10 years or so of our marriage, "no" is like a precious jewel to me. Very hard to come by and something I hold tightly too. I have my reasons. I can't explain them to him.

I want to be allowed to have control over this part of me without being made to feel "bad". When you have not had that, it affects you. Deeply. And the further into IE I get, the more I feel the need to set personal boundaries I have not set. I want to be ok, and I want him to be ok, with my "no's".

We're not there yet.

But.

Back to my epiphany.

Here's the thing. I am beginning to find the courage to say "no" when I mean "no". As I went to bed last night and he left, it occurred to me that the end result is the same whether I eat or not. He leaves and I feel the same amount of guilt. It occurred to me for the first time last night, that I can get to the same end result without eating.

The eating no longer serves any real purpose.

I am truly surprised to realize this. Truly. I had thought that I continued to eat to cover feelings of anxiety. At this point in my journey it's no longer true. I'm not anxious until I walk up those stairs to go to bed. The eating I've been doing is not serving any purpose other than to battle fatigue.

So what if I stopped? What if I just allowed myself to doze off and on? What if I read or did some other activity? Because truthfully? Eating at night has served it's purpose and is no longer useful to me.

What a weird thought after years and years of covering up feelings.

I need to think about this one today.