A Tree Roach a Day

A few months ago I moved into an adorable new duplex. From the moment I saw it, I fell in love. My imagination quickly suggested to me that this might just be the adult’s version of the popular childhood “treehouse.”

After I moved in, however, it only took a week or so for me to notice that I wasn’t the only occupant who was enjoying a treehouse lifestyle. I had forgotten one very important fact – where there are trees (in Texas at least) there are also tree roaches. Not to mention that EVERYTHING – and I do mean everything – is bigger in Texas.

Today, after roach-proofing my kitchen for the third time, I began contemplating which I was more afraid of – the voice of my eating disorder, or the next tree roach sighting. I realized that the tree roach had a strong insider’s chance of capturing first place. I am just as scared of them now as I was many hundreds of roaches ago when, as a child, I used to find them each morning in our bathtub. The only thing a tree roach loves more than a treehouse is, apparently, a bayou (which ran behind our house for miles.)

Yesterday I had bread for breakfast. Bread for lunch. Bread for dinner. I had protein and greens with my bread, even a few healthy fats, but at each meal’s end all my ED voice was aware of was BREAD. All day long, while having fun with friends and generally giving off the appearance of enjoying myself thoroughly, I was also battling back against an inner voice that suggested I might want to survey myself in that window over there just in case I’d gotten any bigger since breakfast.

Each time it happened, however, I was quickly and easily able to put that voice in its place – thanks to years and years of training. I knew how to make sure the ED voice didn’t spoil my day, or my self-esteem.

But years and years of training have done absolutely NOTHING for my roach phobia. I saw one in my kitchen last night and couldn’t sleep all night long. I remember when the anorexia used to cause the same insomnia. Not any more.

I have come far. I still have ‘bread fears’ and ‘fat fears’ just like every other recovering anorexic I know. But they don’t make me tiptoe like an intruder in my own house, or jump in the night at the slightest eerie rustle.

Today was a bad day for tree roaches. But it was another GOOD day for my recovery.

~ by smcutts on July 13, 2008.