Lead, Kindly Light

Our lives are long strings comprised of 24-hour segments called todays.  One day is followed by the next, and the next, and the next – and the days keep marching along steadily until all of a sudden, you wake up one day and marvel at how much your life has progressed and the degree to which your circumstances have changed since you last paused long enough to ponder.

Sometimes, when I’m about to fall asleep, my leg twitches.  And these days, at random intervals, my memory twitches without warning, instigated only by a smell, a sight, or a sound.  Unlike the physical twitches, which last for but a brief moment and are inevitably followed by peaceful slumber, these mental twitches trigger a paralyzing response and transport me back to specific moments in the annals of my memory.

Earlier this week, as I walked to the gym, I suddenly thought of the Michelina’s microwave dinners we used to keep stocked in our freezer at home.  I remember the flat fettucini noodles sprinkled with specks of parsley, with a frozen mound of white alfredo sauce.  Nuking that flat box for four minutes produced a warm, semi-creamy/gooey pile of noodles, a 280-calorie snack to tide me over til dinner.  Or, more accurately, a 280-calorie snack to tide me over til my parents came home.  This had nothing to do with hunger.

Now over a decade later, I know what was really going on back then.  I didn’t eat because I had a physical need.  I ate to fill an emotional gap.  Food was my friend, my activity to soothe my emotionally-unfulfilled needs.  I was lonely as a child, without close and dependable friends, and although I always had steady love from my parents, my need for more attention was insatiable.  Getting perfect grades and filling my life with extracurricular activities did not fulfill me either, so I turned to something to which I always had ready access: food.

The habits started really early on — back to those summers as an eight-year-old left at home with my brother as our brave and diligent immigrant parents worked to make a way for our family.  I froze 7-up soda in a cup at 10am, and scraped the ice off as I watched afternoon television around 4pm.  That soda went really well with the daily installation of “Salute Your Shorts.”  Other times, I snacked on the little bags of Doritos or Cheetos that Mom bought at the grocery store for 25 cents each.  Whenever I got bored, or more likely lonely, I would go to the freezer, cupboards, or refrigerator to find something to fill my emotional needs.  Of course I was mismatching and confusing my needs with my wants with my solutions.  But I didn’t know it back then.  I was just self-medicating.

I’ve thought about these things many times during the last few years, when I finally came to understand that aspect of my childhood.  After years of talk therapy, the habits that influence my sometimes-irrational behavior as an adult began to make a lot more sense.  Understanding that was the beginning of a long road of healing for me.  That road has also brought me to and through a number of important milestones: learning more self-acceptance and self-awareness; developing close and lasting friendships; understanding my parents and their countless self-sacrifices for the sake of our family; acknowledging God’s acceptance and love for me as His creation and child; and finally overcoming (for the most part) my eating and food issues.

Even though my mind is very familiar with the rough terrain of loneliness and the means by which my younger self chose to ride over that terrain, it still jars me when I think about it now.  I lookat my younger self with a mix of pity, sorrow, and relief.  Pity, because I’m sorry that was my experience.  Sorrow, because of the lost opportunity for joy during those days.  And finally, relief, because I’m not that person anymore.

Except that I am.  The younger self grew up in one sense, and also grew up in the other sense.  But she’s still here somewhere — just because she grew doesn’t mean that she disappeared.  And sometimes even now I fall back into the same bad habits, the same insecurities, the same loneliness, and the same poor solutions.  On the whole, I’m doing better — much better.  But I’d be in denial if I tried to convince myself or anyone else that I’m completely past my past.