http://michaela-catherine.blogspot.com/2010/10/balancing-act.html
Well this one’s kind of similar. Just coming from the opposite end of the struggle. It’s another piece of writing I’ve done for myself—you can read it or not, like it or not, but this is just a little writing I’ve done to clear my head and make some sense of the many trains of thought that have been running through the Grand Central of my brain. (That may have been a cheesy metaphorical reference. I apologize.) Anyway, this has been something I’ve been meaning to sit down and write about for a while but I’ve kept putting it off because I haven’t wanted to face it. It’s been easier up until now to succumb to the issue, but I’ve now learned that a person can only survive at an extreme for so long before you realize you can’t live solely on what you’re being given there. It’s been a rocky last couple of months in more than one respect and due to high stress and skewed priorities, my central focus was placed around food once again, just this time instead of dwelling on calorie intake and when my next meal would be, I was ignoring what I was actually eating or why and all that mattered was the fact that I had something to eat. All the time. Again, like last time, this hasn’t been going on long enough to really develop into a terribly life-threatening condition, but I’ve gotten an intense enough experience in what it feels like to become heavily reliant on food and binge eat (without the purge afterward) that I know furthering this habit would result in some less-than-ideal repercussions.
It’s not a good feeling, eating bags upon bags of chocolate upon pints of ice cream upon pizza upon fill-in-the-blank, but for some reason it became okay in my mind to do this. Beginning as a way out of stress, these habits spiraled quickly into a struggle with fear; the sadness that came about with the pounds of junk food consumed weekly became a fear of totally reverting back to not eating enough, causing more overeating and more sadness and more fear…I think you get it. It got to the point eventually where I knew I not only didn’t need any of what I was trying to fuel myself with but I knew I had no desire to even eat it, but for some reason I felt the need to have it. So if I didn’t have anything that would satisfy this “need” on-hand off I would go to Duane Reade or Walgreens or the Food Emporium (sometimes more than one at a time…) to restock. (Mark my words, these outings were happening much, much too often.) Sometimes I’d tear into whatever my poison of choice was for the day before I even got home, but I would eat so much so quickly at one time by body temperature would go up and I’d start getting shaky thanks to sugar overload and automatic nervousness. I’d usually try to make sure I was alone so no one would notice the amount I was eating so I was anxious and jumpy and the second a door handle would turn I’d try to hide my dish of whatever I had; I was constantly on edge. Eventually this started effecting my sleep habits and motivation…Few nights’ worth of good sleep equals diminishing motivation and increasing laziness. Dance-wise I’ve been affected as well. Obviously since I haven’t been fueling my body correctly I haven’t been performing at my highest potential, really, all year causing a subconscious drop in confidence. It’s been quite a rollercoaster, mostly on a downhill decline, and as difficult and frustrated as it’s made me, I’ve ridden this ride to the very end.
From this place at the bottom of the hill, I can now leave everything I don’t need and take with me all that I have learned into a whole new light. It’s a really, really great feeling.
If I’m going to have to go through these kinds of phases though (as most dancers do…food is really a very real and prevalent issue that most deal with on some level…I’m not saying all struggle with it per se, but being such a physical and visual field, health and body image are always lingering issues), I’m very thankful to have had them at this point in my life and budding career when I still have a little cushion of time before me to take what I’ve learned from both places and find what’s worked and what hasn’t and mesh them into the balance necessary for a healthy approach to life as a working professional dancer. (“There is a time for everything…”—Ecclesiastes 3.) What’s helped me all along, is knowing that in the grand scheme of things, this period of time is but a small blip on the radar. I’ve known for the last three and a half months (about how long the first phase went on about a year ago) that I will come out of this health funk because really I have no choice, not only from a dancer’s perspective but from a general human being’s perspective. No one can live on bags of chocolate, just as no one can live on sticks of celery. Maybe for a while it works to fulfill whatever kind of need you have, but just as when we rely on anything of this world to fill an emotional void, we’re going to be left empty and unhappy eventually because whatever it is that we’ve become so dependent on will run out. At this point, I don’t think I can eat one more bit of chocolate or sugar for some time. Not only has the taste become unappealing and a tad sickening, I’ve had so much of it over the past few months that it’s lost it’s value. It’s not a treat to me right now and doesn’t make me happy to consume. It will eventually, I’m sure of it (actually, I’m positive of it!) but only when I learn to appreciate small quantities of it again instead of inhaling, literally, a bag meant for 10 people in one or two sittings. Food is no longer to be an energetic focus but a source of sustenance.
As I’m coming out of this 16-month span of living in two wrong extremes, I’m relieved and thankful and blessed to see the incredibly valuable lessons that I apparently needed to learn, and because I’ve been allowed the opportunity to experience a small dose of both ends of an undesirable quandary, I feel so much better equipped to tackle that middle area—the place of balance that contains all the keys and tools I need to dive right into the beautiful dance community—with full force thanks to experiential knowledge. This isn’t a time of my life I plan on moving on from and forgetting, but rather a time I plan on moving forward from with information I didn’t previously have. (“Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings…” Romans 5:3-5.) I do believe that that phase—the time to majorly progress into the field I’ve been called to work—has come :)
