Emily has responded to the latest prompt:

“What is something everyone around you seems unbothered by that quietly terrifies you?
and
What does this say about you or them?”

Other than my irrational fear of polystyrene (the sound, the touch, it is horrible) my fear would be never being good enough. A mediocre partner, failing at basic things like preparing meals, not looking after myself, constantly punishing myself for being less than.

When I look in the mirror I see my stomach first, and I assume that is the first thing everyone else sees of me too. I carry my weight like shame.

The echo of childhood is the constant feeling that I need to be on a diet or working on myself, because that is what I was brought up to believe you do. My mum has been on a perpetual diet since my childhood. I have never not known her to be on one.

Now I punish myself with the very thing I was denied – food. It is part habitual, part rebellion, part self-soothing.

In Pete Walker’s book on C-PTSD a client describes dealing with an eating disorder like taking a tiger out of its cage three times a day. Unlike other addictions, you cannot just put it down and walk away. You have to keep engaging with the very thing.

I always feel like I am failing at everything and that I could always be better. I am cursed with perfectionism after growing up in an environment where nothing was ever good enough. I have recently read that you should strive for “good enough.” Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it is wrong. I am still learning what that feels like.

Perhaps what it says about me is that I have spent a lifetime believing my inner critic is the most reliable narrator I have. It is certainly the loudest. I am learning, slowly, that loud is not the same as true.