This one is dark but honest.

It doesn’t represent all of where I’m at, but I’m giving this experience a voice because it has something to say that feels real to me. I’m nervous that this will cause people I love to worry about me. But I don’t think that’s a good reason to be quiet. I have nothing to hide. (And believing that… feels like healing.)

So here it is.

I’ve been in a relapse. Into a pattern that I haven’t seen since I was 18: Bulimia.

Bulimia… is terrible.

But it’s also true.

It’s my body’s expression of the system that it lives in.

A system which takes, and takes, and takes… a bottomless pit of hunger and greed and self-centeredness which turns any potential beloved being into a source from which to extract and take.

Stuff self to the brim, past full, more, more, hidden, out of sight – no pleasure. Furtive, fearful, planned. Stolen. Stuffed.

And then… hiding the evidence. Flush it “away”. As though there is some magical “away” that can take away the wastes of our overconsumption.

This “away” does not exist. This infinite material source does not exist. We are pulling and taking from a finite living system that needs reciprocity to be healthy and in balance, and giving back partially digested, under-appreciated waste products.

As humans, we know this in our bones. Our bodies are screaming at us, the Earth is screaming at us, yet… that message conflicts with the urgency of our day-to-day lives: the show must go on. So we put cotton in our ears, caffeine and alcohol and factory “food” and pharmaceuticals down our throats to force our bodies to cooperate with a system that is slowly killing us.

We’re choosing a slow death over a confrontation.

Yet… don’t so many of us feel the need for the confrontation? Actually, aren’t some people already fully engaged in it?

Where have I been in that confrontation? Absent? Deaf? Mute? Am I one of the numb ones keeping the system going?

Every day I show up for my job, I feel that this is what I am giving my life force to. To a system that’s protecting – and building on!! – the status quo of modern humanity. To a system that believes the bullshit lie that more progress is what will fix the problems that have been creating by technological advancement!

So the dam broke in my body. Being in the heart of this system is too much for me. My voice doesn’t know what to do – In goes food to stuff it down. I hate what I do. I hate forcing myself through. And I chew on my anger as I chew on these big feelings, and then vomit it all up. Because it’s too much for me. It’s indigestible, just like all the tragedies in the world around me, the byproducts of a human-built system that is slowly killing humans and the Earth, are indigestible.

My body has given up its fertility for now as well, also reflecting the barren spiritual desert it is surrounded by. Reflecting the inevitable death that results from life lived this way.

This pattern in me isn’t sustainable – it will have to shift, and I believe it will. But it’s here for a season and a reason, and it bears wisdom that wants to be spoken and shared. This eating disorder is not a “me” issue. It never was. I’ve connected with too many people who relate to the pain I feel, for me to believe this to just be about “me”.

This is just how the collective disease shows up in me…

Do you know how it shows up in you?

As I contemplate posting this dark piece publicly on my blog, I hear the waves crashing against a moonlit shore out my window, a foghorn calling into the night. I close my eyes and remember: Nothing is too big for Nature. All of this will be washed away one day. All of it. The world we are in is bigger and more powerful than us.

Honesty cleanses. Nature heals.

I still feel hope.

And I do believe that many humans have taken the jump already, have exited the modern systems that are destructive, and are working to build systems that restore. I’ve met some of them! “The better world our hearts know is possible” – I believe that world is already real, and growing!

That’s what I want to be a part of. I’m going to need some help finding my way there. But I feel hope for that, too. It actually makes me smile. One of the sincerest smiles I’ve felt in a while.