Last night I had a very hard time with dinner and I couldn’t finish and had to boost. When the staff member was talking to me about it afterward, she asked me what kind of thoughts were going through my head during dinner. They were standard Kyle-lies, things like “I don’t deserve to eat” and “I’m too fat for food.” She told me to give her counter thoughts to the thoughts I was having like we had practiced before. I couldn’t. I could not say the counter thoughts out loud. I couldn’t get them to come out.
This, after a bit, made me really angry. It made me remember the wheel of abuse we discussed in group and how my eating disorder felt, in that moment, truly oppressive. Something about that made me really angry. And I don’t get angry.
After dinner, we had art therapy. The art therapist asked me what I felt I needed to work on and I scared her by telling her I wanted to kill something. I worked with paint, which normally scares me because I have no experience with paint and I don’t like to get messy. I painted the above 3 panels.
I painted the middle panel first. That is the death scene. There’s an explosion of blood. That panel, while simple, was intense to paint. In that scene, I killed my eating disorder. I murdered Kyle. But that son of a bitch had it coming.
The first panel represents my eating disorder. It’s dark and oppressive with words that represent my eating disorder.
The last panel is my life after the death of Kyle. It’s bright and hopeful and, yes, there’s a residual effect of his role in my life, but most of my life is filled with what I want to fill it with.
a2eternity 