Getting Out Of My Way

The last week has been like a private battle in my mind.  I'm going through some things and I've been keeping it inside like I always do and wondering why I'm still having the same issues.  Pretty stupid I know but I've always been good at getting in my own way.  I'm beginning to realize that despite my best efforts at denial, I really do emotionally eat.  I use food to stuff the feelings away because I don't want to feel them.  Then I feel shameful and angry at myself for eating something I shouldn't, even a small amount, and stop eating regularly because I think I need to make up for it and my whole system gets messed up.  I'm the kind of person that if I forget to take a vitamin for a couple of days I stop taking them all together because I get so hard on myself for failing in the first place.

I don't know why I feel the need to punish myself when I make a mistake, but I do.  I think part of me is trying to keep myself this heavy because I don't think I deserve to be happy and thin. I've been punishing myself for years because I'm unhappy and I feel like I've made poor choices in life.  Instead of trying to correct my mistakes I keep myself  feeling the pain of them every day.  I'm stuck in the moment of failure and I can't seem to get myself out of it.  There are so many things that I want from life that are dependent on me loosing the weight, and I suffer from the want of them daily, but I don't loose the weight.  I just keep getting in the way of myself over and over again and living in that place of pain instead of climbing my way out of it.

Lately I've been having dreams about my dad and that never helps.  He was always so hard on me, harder then I am even.  Nothing I did was ever good enough because I always fell short of perfect.  When I was 12 he left my family for another woman and for the next 7 years I would see him still but it wasn't the same.  When I had my first son he came to the hospital and made amends of sorts and was a part of my son's life til we moved to Germany with the army.  I stayed in contact and when I was home the summer my second son was a baby, 5 years ago, we saw each other regularly. He was living with a new family and wanted my brother and I to get to know some kids we thought would be our step-siblings.  I left for Germany in September and when I sent my Christmas card that year it was returned un-opened.  My brother called and found out that 5 weeks after I left my father went to work and didn't come home.  He moved to North Carolina with a someone he met at work and never came back.  No one has heard from him in five years and I still can't wrap  my head around it.  I wasn't raised by someone who could do that, at least that's what I thought.  I know my father moved out when I was 12 but he didn't stop talking to his entire family, he didn't completely escape his responsibilities as a father, and it wasn't a secret that he was leaving.  My parents marriage had never been stable and frankly we were all relieved that the fighting had stopped, my parents became friends after the divorce was final it was easier on them both not to be living with each other.  

 Why can't I get passed this?  How could the person whom raised me to be a moral, honest, hard working person do something so awful?  Where is my dad?  How do I tell my kids about him when I feel like I don't know who he is?   I know I need to process this and move on, I know these unresolved feelings are helping to keep me stuck but its so crazy that its hard to believe sometimes that's its a fact of my life.  My father could be dead right now and I have no way of knowing.  Every time a number I don't know comes up on my phone I wonder.  I pray about it but I keep it to myself.  I don't know how to explain how I feel about it to people and I don't want to burden people unnecessarily with this either.  So here it is in the blogger universe.  I just needed to say something somehow sorry if it was too personal for people, I'm not looking for sympathy or judgement or answers really, I have faith that I'll get there on my own someday, well I'm trying to.