Enough

Enough.

It is hard in today’s culture to know what is Enough. What is Enough to eat? What is Enough not to eat? What is Enough weight? What is Enough weightlessness. What is Enough of Me? What is too much? Too much Me?

I remember a day when I baked a pie. Because I had eaten what was left of the first pie. And the second. I had thrown it all up.  So I could eat more, to feel full Enough. But I felt Not Enough. So, I ate more. I was ashamed. Too much. Not Enough. I had to bake a third pie and eat two more slices to be sure it looked “right” Enough. So that he would not notice. And when he came home, hungry, wanting… he ate a piece of pie. And then he ate another and said “I’ve had Enough.” I watched him eat, trying to see, hear, feel what is Enough. What is Full Enough. What is not yet Enough.

In those days, I weighed myself three times, four times, five times, every hour. Not Enough. I couldn’t lose Enough. I couldn’t nudge the needle down one more pound so that it would be Enough. So that I would be Enough. I would sit on the edge of the bathtub, sobbing, exhausted, heart pounding. Purging, purging, trying to get it all back up, trying to get Enough back up so that I could know Enough.

It can take a long time to figure out Enough. When the body has had no sense of what it knows, when the lines have been unclear for too long, when the numbers don’t add up, when the emptiness is Too Much, it is hard to know, hard to find the way back.

Magazines and TV, Instagram and facebook, feed us pictures that mislead our minds, and so we mislead our bodies. Our bodies scream Enough, Enough, but we flail our arms and pinch our flesh and scream Not Enough, Not Enough in one big voice that hurts.

Is life Enough? Is living a fearless, foodfull, healthy life Not Enough? Are you Enough? Am I Enough? Are any of us Not Enough? Would you tell your baby he or she is Not Enough? Can you look in the mirror and tell yourself, with love, I am Enough?

Speak it. Know it.

I am Enough.