I drew Kyle

Tonight we had art. I love art, it’s a great chance to process through things. Tonight, I got the idea to try to put a face to my eating disorder. This is what I came up with. It’s a grotesque, oozing, green monster with tendrils that go into my brain and body because it’s trying to control me. However, it has this antenna that has this beautiful butterfly hanging from it. I call the butterfly the beautiful lies my eating disorder tells me. All the things it claims to offer, the safety is seems to hold, the reasons I keep it around. All I can see are those lies hanging in front of my face, I don’t see the ugly monster on my back literally pushing me down (thus why the person is prone). The person is naked because my eating disorder tries to keep me in shame.

I named my eating disorder Kyle. The name is completely arbitrary, it just felt good to give the monster a name.

My song

In group last night, we had to write our song. It had to be our song apart from our eating disorders. We could either write something original, or cut and paste lyrics from a large stack of lyrics. I’m not at all a song writer or poet, and many of the lyrics spoke to me, so I opted to cut and paste. Above is the song I “wrote” (read plagiarized).

The process was hard. It brought up a lot of emotion for me while I was working on it. Then, I had to read it aloud in front of the group (which was pretty large last night) and I had trouble getting through it without tears. I let the tears fall once I finished. It’s very hard for me to be vulnerable. It’s hard for me to be seen. I don’t like the feeling of being seen. The openness of this project overwhelmed me.

Luckily, we had process group right after and I was able to work through what had come up for me and talk through it with the core group (just the two others in my program).

Oh, that reminds me, we get a new person tonight! I’m excited for fresh blood. Each person in our group provides great insight and perspective, so I look forward to gaining even more insight and perspective from a new mind and heart.