Epiphany (Protecting my Inner Child Against Cheese Puffs)

I had a realization last night that made me cry, and I have been celebrating it ever since.

I have been talking about how I miss Lent, and I need to impose more limits on myself (not that I eat crap now, but it makes even more of a difference after you have cleaned up your system), so I have been thinking more about what I consume and how I feel about it.

Yesterday I was looking for something in a cupboard and I saw a bag of cheese puffs (DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT, AS A GENERAL RULE, KEEP CHEESE PUFFS AT HOME. THESE WERE PURCHASED AS A TREAT FOR L2 AND SHE HAS TO ASK FOR PERMISSION EVERY TIME SHE WANTS TO HAVE SOME). It would have been very easy for me just to reach in and grab a couple and go on about my searching, but I resisted and when I walked away I felt relieved, grateful, moved.

These feelings surprised me and I took time to think about it as I did some laundry (which reminds me, I have a load in the washer!, be right back... OK). I told Loren that I wondered if this is what an alcoholic feels like when s/he is able to walk away from a drink.... relieved, comforted, safe! I explained that it had not been a huge deal, the cheese puffs were not that much of a temptation, but the threat had come instead from the habitualness of it (that word does exist, I looked it up), the danger was in how mindless a gesture poisoning myself has become.

I told him, "as little as it took to walk away, it feels like a lot. It feels comforting... There is a safety in it".

Then, as I took his shirts out to hang them, the answer appeared before me as if written in a book:

As a kid I didn't feel cared for and safe --not that I was abused or that I lacked for a basic necessity, because that was not the case, but I felt insecure most of the time and I had recurring dreams that ranged from anxiety about the first day of school to horrific nightmares about a nuclear war. I also did weird things like save the last little bit of thread that is left on a needle after you saw a button or something (because I might "need it"), and always play the same scenario with Barbies: there was a tornado/earthquake/war/epidemic/tragedy/apocalyptic event coming and the Barbies had to pack up the bare essentials into the Barbie car and lead foot it out of Barbie town before they were victims to it. I used to love repeating the scenario to try to improve my evacuation time-- so somewhere inside me still lives a little girl with a desperate need for security.

In that moment when I saw the cheese puffs and walked away, instead of simply following the mindless reflex of just popping them in my mouth...

my inner little girl felt PROTECTED

I protected her from myself, from the bad habits that hurt us, from the land mines my Ego has planted along our way, from mindlessness, from the sleep walking that leads to waking up in the middle of a nightmare that takes weeks or months to fix.

My inner girl deserves to feel safe and I'm ready to help her.

Blessings to all of you, may you feel safe and peaceful tonight.

PS.

I also thought about my session with the acupressurist and how she said that our body stores extra weight to create a shield in order to protect itself. Has my inner little girl been making herself a fortress in my hips?