Invitation to All the Binge Eating Me's

 It started in the kitchen of the Seward Park house when I was 15. Peanut butter sandwich after peanut butter sandwich. I wanted to kill myself but I ate instead. 

The cookies. The chips. Brownies. Chocolate. How many iterations of Lori exist with food in their hands, their taste buds numb but unable to stop the hand to mouth repetition. The mindless numbing with food. The escape from emotions that would overrun her?

Come here, peanut butter sandwich Lori. Peanut butter cup Lori. Cheese popcorn and barbecue chips Lori. You with the shortbread and you with the gummy worms. 

Come here please.

I want to thank you.

Thank you for finding a way to keep living. 

Thank you for being brave enough to face the next day.

Your existence has always been an act of resistance and it's time we stop and acknowledge how brave and clever you were/are to find that way to fight.

To find a way to stay.

I exist today because you resisted yesterday. Your choices never revealed themselves to you but they were simple: give up or go on. And even if you chose to go on with a blueberry muffin clenched in your fist, you did it. You kept going.

Last night the weight of what you endured asked for acknowledgement. Instead I receive you, gather you all together and hold you close. It wasn't love that you fought for, it was the hope of peace and safety. Love was always too much to ask for. 

I love you. I exist today because you fought yesterday and I want to give you something now. I want to give you safety. We never had that, did we? I don't want to take anything away from you and I promise from now to death the word diet will be treated like the curse word it is. 

I love you. You wanted to give up. You despaired. But I'm here because you kept going. Chocolate chip cookies cooling in the kitchen and getting up the next day and doing it again.

So many tears. So many bites. And you endured.

I love you. You gave me a life that is safe right now and easier to live. We have love and even a small community of women we trust and care about.

Resistance comes in many forms. Thank you, all of you over all the years, for resisting the call to stop and giving me this life now. You are all loved. You are all appreciated. You are all me and I love us.