The Books That Saved My Life: Entry 1, Life Without Ed

Going toe-to-toe with my eating disorder one last time

This is the first entry of a series where I write about the books that transformed my life and helped me become an entirely new person when my husband died and grief shattered me into fragments. When your person dies, you cannot go back to being who you were before they died, and you can’t go back to being who you were before you met that person; however, I quickly found that the unhealed traumas and issues I’d suffered before I met Sean and before I was swaddled in the cocoon of healthy, loving, and secure marriage, were still there, ready to kick my ass…except now they were kicking my ass while I was grieving, coping as a young widow and single mother and struggling to process and accept the reality that my healthy, handsome 34-year-old husband had actually been made sick by hexavalent chromium exposure at this shop at Keesler AFB and that it had actually ended his life and that the stuff you see happen on the news or in class action lawsuits was our reality, except that the Air Force denied all responsibility or even that the shit happened, which doubled down on my trauma because their denial caused me to question the reality of the situation, of my life, of my entire existence. We are still sifting through the rubble but with clarity and conviction. They are guilty. This did happen. We didn’t die. We are becoming. This is the beginning of my reflection.

The Fallout

My husband died August 5, 2019 at age 34 from cancer. In the year and months and weeks and days leading up to his death, I was in an increasingly, persistent state of random fight or flight trigger response. My central nervous system was in a constant state of hypervigilance, and I was ever-prepared for the inevitable rush to the hospital or major crisis.

When the crisis did invariably occur, like the seizure Sean had on our couch August 3, when I was alone in the house with three children under the age of 6, when I had no idea what was happening, the seconds that were invariably ticking by at their normal pace — one can only assume — slowed down and expanded exponentially. Every nanomoment was happening in slow motion, and I was able to think and react with clarity and precision. I sent a text from my open laptop to his family to come home now. I was able to pull my then 6-year-old from her horror as she watched her dad convulsing and tell her to get my phone from the counter where it was plugged in. I was able to first call my parents who lived around the corner and tell them to get to the house now and then call 911. This all happened within the space of a minute that felt like 20. The event happened in less time it took for you to read this paragraph.

I can — and one day will — write about the other moments when my state of hypervigilance and my fight response and possibly some other personality disorder like undiagnosed ADHD aided me in not only doing the right thing in the most pressurized moments of my life but also intuiting events before they occurred. This was the first time in my life when I was leaning on my knowing, my intuition, my innate God-given wisdom, and every time I trusted my gut, I was completely on point. The vagus nerve thing is real.

The Break

But then Sean died, and my gut health and mental health literally went to crap. I wanted to die. I struggled with suicidal ideation, and it was just by the grace of God that I’d asked my dad to take the loaded guns out of the house the morning of August 3 for reasons completely unrelated to the idea that I might one day want to turn one on myself. In fact, I’d just lost a dear childhood friend to a different form of self-removal (less violent and messy than with a gun), and I couldn’t imagine wanting to end one’s own life.

For months, I struggled with undiagnosed C-PTSD and complex grief. I relapsed on my eating disorder and basically endured drinkorexia, an eating disorder combined with an alcohol use disorder. I was a wreck, a malnourished, underweight, lonely, miserable wreck who ran out of the pseudo enthusiasm to live with purpose for her late husband about a month into the shit.

Most likely, that feeling was the crash from the hypervigilance that I’d held up for so long. We’d had no idea until August 1 that Sean wasn’t going to survive. All of that energy had nowhere to go. It was the ultimate emotional and mental fallout, a total breakdown, and the reality is that after Sean died, I didn’t have time to slow down and process any of it. I had to keep going — plan a funeral, parent my children, move forward somehow. There was also a lot of judgment from people who had no freaking idea what I was going through. There were also predators — men who claimed to be friends and who wanted to “help” but who really just wanted to jack their egos off on the idea that they were somehow being heroic. That, too, is its own story.

I started therapy about two months in. We started with the eating disorder. The book my therapist recommended was Life Without Ed by Jenni Schaefer. It was coauthored by her and her therapist, and while I remember that I found aspects of the book to be kind of annoying, the approach presented was helpful.

In the book, Ed becomes personified as a manifestation completely separate from the self. When you have an eating disorder or alcohol use disorder or any addiction or maladaptive behavior (cutting, for example), that thing becomes like a tumor, something you’re attached to and that you associate as part of you.

In Life Without Ed, you learn that you are not your eating disorder. The practice I took up as part of my therapy was to journal letters to Ed — we had conversations, and it was almost like a breakup where I had to tell Ed to get out of my house, my life, not to call, we couldn’t be friends, etc., and I had to recognize times when Ed was popping up.

Seeing Ed

These are excerpts from my first journal entry to Ed on October 23, 2019:

I just want to say how dare you. Really, how dare you? When the one person to love me unconditionally, who would genuinely want me to be kind to myself and to heal, who prayed for me, is gone, you show yourself like this.

My entire life is exactly where it was when I was 20. Except now I have three kids. And grief. And so much pain that it seems unfathomable that I have to go on. It seems immeasurable. Exhausting. How am I so strong in spirit but so weak against you.

You bitch. You actual bitch. Leave me alone. 19 years.

The reality is that I’ve struggled with body dysmorphia my entire life. I was eight the first time I remember thinking I was fat and being self-conscious about it. I was a perfectly normal and beautiful child, and I would eventually learn that there were other reasons beyond my hypersensitivity for that as well, but suffice to say that I internalized early on that my lovability was based on my ability to be perfect — other people’s ideas of perfect, not mine. I looked outward for validation and love and approval and acceptance and was constantly fearful of not having those things. The irony, was, of course, I was the farthest thing from perfect and lived in a constant state of anxiety, fearful of making mistakes. I do not think this is uncommon especially for women and especially for those who came from little-t trauma backgrounds and who were told that they had nothing to complain about and should more or less STFU and quit acting entitled. I theoretically made myself as small as I could for fear of annoying or bothering anyone else, and with my eating disorder, I literally made myself as small as I could. I digress.

The negative self-talk and self-sabotage were increasingly terrible and terrifying. What’s worse is that I had other voice who were reinforcing that because these people who showed up to “help” had projections of what it should all look like, and I failed to fulfill my role in their ego narrative.

In other words, the expectation for these pseudo heroes was that they’d ride in on white horses* (*penises) and would do literally nothing and I would swoon and be okay and while the act of showing up is important, it’s not an all-healing gesture, nor does it negate the struggle or mean that the work and the struggle isn’t very real. That is not how grief or actual heroism works — real heroes know that there’s actually a ton of work.

The Journal Entry

On January 21, 2020, I have a multi-voice entry in my journal. I am writing my own negative, angry, toxic and hateful thoughts to myself and then my grandmother’s voice. After Ed has his say, my badass, spunky, fiery Democrat grandma who died when I was 14, who was also a bereaved mother and a widow, steps in to tell Ed to f*ck off and to advocate for me. I couldn’t show myself love or forgiveness in my own voice, but I could in hers. And then I respond as me.

Here is what Ed wrote to me:

You. The fattest, ugliest, dumbest, fuck-up of all time. He said it best. You ruin everything. You ruin every good thing that has ever and will ever happen to you.

You lost one of your Venetian earrings. Keep one as a reminder of how much you fucking suck a life. Keep one to remind you of how little your life is worth. The only reason you have to live is because you kids would be hurt if you died, and that is just nature. Anyone else would be a better mom. You are a bad mom. You are a bad person. Every time you try to fix yourself, you fail a little more every time.

(Other people’s) love is conditional. Because you don’t deserve love. You don’t deserve to be loved. You don’t deserve to live. …You should be dead by now. But you won’t die. You keep coming back for more. That’s okay. I like to play with my food before I eat it, too.

Here is what I wrote as my grandmother in return:

Get away from my little girl, Ed.

…I couldn’t protect her last night when she needed me most, but I’m here now. Stop beating her up. She doesn’t need to be your punching back. She needs to be loved.

…She wasn’t drowning last night. Last night was the slip and the plummet. Now comes the drowning part. Let her go, Ed. Give her a chance to swim.

Amy, I’m sorry for what you went through and for what you’re going through. Let it go. Tie each one of your burdens to a balloon. Tie shame. Tie guilt Tie fear. Tie heartache. Tie abandonment. Tie pain. Tie memories. Tie Ed. Tie self-loathing. Tie judgement. Tie criticism. Tie Miss Perfection. Tie them all to a balloon. Now bundle all of the strings together, make a knot so they all stay together. Do you feel lighter yet? Now, tell them all goodbye one by one.

And now I am writing.

Goodbye shame. You can be a healthy emotion in small doses, but you are too much for me.

…Goodbye, guilt. Boy do you ever trip me up. I am tired on the only vacations I take being with you. You want me to believe I have to climb Mt. Everest to get past you. You want me to believe you’re a mountain when you’re really just a nasty mound. I can get over you if I just start moving forward.

Goodbye, fear. I know you want me to think I’ve ruined my life. I know you want me to think I’ve failed. I know it doesn’t. It just means I have the opportunity to truly learn how to be on my own, and there is nothing to be afraid of.

Goodbye, heartache. Oh the grief you cause me. I know you will linger, but I am tying the part of you that makes me feel like breaking right now and letting you float into a space filled with hope for it is mine that is all is not yet still light.

Goodbye, abandonment. It’s about time you left me.

Goodbye, pain. Like the others, I know you have a role to play and that you’ll be back. For now, I want the aspect of you that’s self-inflicted to go. You’ve drilled into my core. Broken bones. Left bruises and scratches. You’ve hurt me. Please stop and go.

Goodbye, memories. You also have a place, and I may think of things, but for now, I think I’d rather not dwell in you. You are too painful. Too raw. Your nerves are too exposed.

Goodbye, Ed. I know as soon as you can, you will be back. I know this was all your fault. Your hands are on my throat. I know that. You want to squeeze the life out of me, but you want to take your time. You want to draw it out to make me suffer. You want to drag me to the gates of Hell, and you want me to believe it’s my fault and that I deserve to be there. Ed, I’m trying this string extra tight around your neck because I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t stand you and everything you try to steal.

Goodbye, self-loathing, criticism, and judgement. Goodbye, Miss Perfection. These demons are always poised to do your bidding, aren’t they (Ed)? You sicced them on me like attack dogs last night and this morning. You’re a witch, but I have something to shut you down. Forgiveness. I know that God forgives me. If God can love and forgive me, then I can love and forgive me. It was a disaster, but I am not the disaster. Letting you and Ed take over is what leads to disaster, so get ready to get tied on.

I am letting go. The strings tickle my palms as I let them slip away. Light illuminates the green, yellow, (?) array and [sic] red as the bundle passes over and obscures the sun. Then they are up and away. I am cast in a white light. It is warm, and I feel clean. Sometimes, we have to get dirty and drug through the mud to see where the light is, and for when we do find the light, it is important to know it when we see it and to trust that regardless of what others perceive, it is always right.

Release & Realization

This was one of my most memorable journaling activities because it helped tremendously. While this wasn’t a magical one-time writing where I stopped being bulimic, I did quickly cease that behavior. I still, for quite a while, struggled with my body image and appreciating and loving my body, but that eventually came around, too.

The journaling activity was pivotal because I really did experience a shift in my attitude toward myself when I let all of those mental and emotional burdens go. I’d been carrying the projections and expectations of other people without even considering what I needed or wanted.

This was around the time that while I was dating the person I’m still seeing, my mother had said to my in-laws (behind my back) that I was dating and she didn’t approve. She didn’t approve because of how it looked, which is beyond shitty. It wasn’t about me at all; it was about how other people saw the situation.

What I’d have said, what I wish she’d have said, was that my MIL would have to ask me but that if I was happy, she was happy. This was one of many immeasurably painful abandonments by a person who I needed; however, it opened the door for me to research enmeshing mothers. It was a catalytic epiphany and something that was extremely hard to accept, but it explained my low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, perfectionism, eating disorder, AUD, identity crisis, and literally every single thing that I thought was me being wrong. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.

It was liberating to realize that it wasn’t my fault, but at the same time, I still had to do the work. I had to heal myself. I had to find myself and then heal the badass bitch who is me.

Stay tuned for the next book and part of my story. Click on the subscribe now link below to get writings from me delivered directly to your inbox.