Lately, I’ve realized that this still small inner voice I have is a the voice of a child. My emotional self is very immature and I don’t mean that in a nasty way. I just mean that because of my upbringing I wasn’t able to mature properly in the emotional way. When things aren’t going my way, I sort of throw a tantrum. When things get tough, I break down and cry. My emotional self is too young to deal with adult things. And boy have I been bombarded with adult things lately.
I thought all this time that I had to try to prove to my husband that I could be a good wife and a good mother, that I could be stable enough to have children. Once I got word that my nutritionist was leaving, I felt the emotional walls start to crumble a little more. I realized this little girl inside might not have been getting the attention and help that she needed by the nutritionist anyways and someone had to step in and do something. So I scrambled. Of course my eating disorder kicked in and was creating all sorts of turmoil and bullying about how bad a job I had been doing.
“Look how fat you’ve gotten”
“Who are you kidding? You can’t do this alone. You suck!”
“You are never going to be able to get rid of this negative voice. You’ll never be able to get better”
But somehow , someway, I had a moment where I was gentle enough with myself. I started an inner dialogue. I started talking to my inner voice as if I was the parent and she was my little girl. I was desperate. If no one was going to help me, I had to do it myself.
I realized that this inner child didn’t know any better. I had spoiled her with junk food and told her it was a reward when she was a good girl. I became my mother and made her believe she really did have to finish everything on her plate, because you know the poor starving children in China or Ethopia or something. I showed her it was okay to skip meals because when we go to family parties we couldn’t say no to all the “food pushers”. I made her believe the lie that if you refuse their food it’s like refusing their love. I realized it’s no wonder this child didn’t want to eat vegetables when mama would just so willingly to give in and give her something sweet. So I gently reasoned with her to have a balanced lunch, the first time in a long time; a peaceful lunch was goobled up. It was nice.
It’s kinda was like a light bulb flickered on a little. I needed to re-parent myself. It wasn’t that my mother was an awful mom; it’s not like she didn’t care. It didn’t matter anyways. I needed to do the hard work of doing this for myself. It was then I realized I didn’t have to prove this to anyone but myself. I needed to convince myself that I could be a good mom; because after all this time I was the one that didn’t believe in me. I had to prove to no one but myself.
Which brings me to today, I was reflecting on the tantrum I had last night over vanilla ice cream. My inner child was so thoroughly ignored yesterday. I had to deal with alot of adult things and I didn’t get a chance to eat properly and take care of us. I also didn’t take the time to cope with the emotions of the day, so when I came home and found out that the ice cream available to me was not what I asked for I had a melt down. So this morning as I was making a well balanced breakfast and finishing up some adult chores, I spoke to my inner child and told her we would have half a banana for breakfast and the other half tonight when mama buys the ice cream we like. And I heard her say “yay” for the first time in a long time. And it made me smile, although outwardly small, from a deep place. I was doing this. I was really getting there. Don’t worry little girl we are gonna get better. I promise!
