What If Binge Eating Wasn’t Weakness?

What if your “weakness” wasn’t weakness at all?

What if you eat because you have fire — because the rebel inside you knows how to say no to compliance and rules? She may speak in extremes, but maybe that’s the only way she can get through. What if you are not broken, but a fighter refusing to shrink into tiny spaces? What if your “lack of motivation” is really just a refusal to comply with norms that demand we numb out and play small? Maybe your body is shouting until someone finally hears her.

You never would have caught me saying anything like this while I was binge eating. Back then, it was the enemy. I resented it, hated it, cursed it, tried to pry it off my skin. There was no other way to see it.

But I think differently about it now.

I think binge eating was a fire in my soul. And maybe it’s in yours too.

Learning I Wasn’t Weak

For much of my life, I believed I was weak. I was the shy kid who struggled to speak up, who others mistook for timid and un-opinionated. I let them decide who I was. I played the role, convinced myself it was true. Maybe that was part of how I stayed safe.

But I know now:
I am quiet, but I am not without opinions.
I am an introvert, but not without the capacity for connection.
I prefer to stay out of the limelight, but I am not without leadership.
I am a thinker, but I am not weak.

I am not weak.

And my binge eating knew that before I did.

The Voice of Fire

Binge eating kept fighting for me. It kept rallying against the pressure to stay small, to cover my personality with the armor of objectification, to comply with what culture told me made me valuable. It refused to let me believe I had to suppress my needs in order to belong.

It fought with the will of a thousand suns until I was so exhausted from resisting that I finally turned around and asked:

“WHAT? What do you want?”

And once it had my attention, it softened. It said:

I want you to stop fighting yourself.
I want you to stop berating and shaming and hiding.
I want to be free. I want to be okay, just like this.
I want you to stop telling us we’re not okay unless we are x, y, or z.
I want you to believe in exactly who you are instead of what others say you must be.

That voice was me. It had always been me.

Binge eating was the part of my soul that knew I was boxing myself in, demanding better of me in the only language it had. Admittedly, it was a brutal dialect. The byproduct of its methods nearly destroyed me. But it also kept me from disappearing entirely.

And for that, I’m grateful.

I am grateful for the fight. I am grateful I can channel it now into creativity, communication, and self-allyship.