Water bucket

Yesterday I ate leftover birthday cake for breakfast.
This seems significant because Chrysalisbreak started out as an eating disorder blog.
I began writing it nearly 2 years ago.
I paced like a caged tiger in front of the computer the first time I posted a link to Facebook.
I was trapped between the lies an eating disorder demands, and the vulnerable truth of freedom.
Any freed prisoner will tell you, it is scary to suddenly hold the reigns of your own life.

"Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."

Mary Wollstonecraft

Ironically, now I will refer it to anyone.  Just last week I scrawled "chrysalisbreak.blogspot.com"
onto a slip of paper and gave it to a fellow writer whom I had just met.
This is how little shame I carry now, as a bulimic woman.
I have been a woman afraid to eat and afraid not to eat.
My entire identity has revolved around how my clothes fit and whether or not I can resist birthday cake.

I started telling the whole truth because I was inspired by one woman.
This woman, as an ammends to herself, wrote her life story.
She wrote about 40 pages.
Mine is certainly going to be longer.  I suppose because I am still alive, and still learning.
But the important part has been to share it.  I share each post on Facebook.
I know Facebook has the potential to suck the life out of my muse as if she were a juiced orange.
However, it can also be a tool to connect.  Were it not for Facebook, my blog would not be read.
Now I usually get about 50 readers within 4 hours of posting a new entry.

At the root of this tree, is simply myself.  I must write.  Since the age of 12 I have been filling journals. Whether you read it or not, I will continue.
However to have you, as a witness, makes it more vulnerable.
It is the difference between singing in the shower and singing on a stage.
There is a heightened awareness and a standard for clarity brought by an audience.

Now I am aspiring to have a bigger audience.  I am compiling a book.
I have no idea how to do this.
All I have are pearls of my soul accumulated into a bucket.
I'm afraid if I go peddling them around, they will be spilled or wasted.
The trick about being an artist is realizing:  my droplets may be only a few, and may never matter to anyone else.  This has to be enough.

All the rest is bonus.  It is a gift to be allowed an audience.  It would be a privilege to publish a book.
The story is out there.  The story of a woman in her mid-30's who just can't quite shake the remnants of shame tethered by an eating disorder.  The story of how she made peace with her humanity and ate cake for breakfast without punishment.  If I get to be the one to tell this story, I would be honored.
What I have learned is that I am not separate, or worse.
My fear manifests in a compulsion to control food and shrink my body.
It is an attempt to shrink my needs.
We all try to hide.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion's roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

Nhat Hanh

The Great Wave - Hokusai - 1830