Pain. I feel pain. Bulimia is pain.

Today I am somber. Well more like down, depressed, humiliated, embarrassed, angry (at myself), disappointed (in myself), ashamed (of myself). Why you might ask? Because I have been failing miserably in my quest to be healthy.

So much so that I have once again neglected to focus on what is truly important which is taking care of myself so I can take care of my family.

In fact I have slipped so bad that I am ashamed to look in the mirror and find the strength to avoid bashing myself or even bashing my head against the mirror to try and knock some flipping sense into me.

I want to scream.

I have spent much of the morning in tears after the one moment that I don't know what it will take for me to let go and move past.

This weekend was amazingly calm and cool with my family. Each morning we were greeted in bed by smiling kids, laughing and cuddling and living in the moment. Our Saturday was completely lazy, other than the brief period of Tyler puking after coughing terribly hard, but we lounged in our pj's all day playing and enjoying each other. We built choo choo tracks all across the living room floor, played candyland and life, watched movies, colored, all things that we seem to be to busy to do any other normal day. It was a good day. Sunday was just as great with more productivity. We got some laundry done, spent time with the in-laws, put up indoor holiday decorations, cleaned a few rooms, and once again we played. It was another good day.

Today, however, is different.

The morning started off the same as it has with the added joy of MiKayla racing into our room shouting, "Mommy! Daddy! It is snowing! Look it snowed!!" You would think this child had never seen snow before with the kind of excitement radiating from her little body. Tyler, wanting to be just like his big sister, quickly followed suit and joined in her excitement. They were singing and playing and it was great. Then Tyler changed his attitude back to the needy, clingy, mommy do this, only mommy, do that. I felt my tension start to rise. Maybe he sensed it, Scott was packing a bag once again to make the quite normal occurring trip to Wyoming. It seems we struggle with the stress of daddy leaving more and more each time and it always brings a struggle to find the balance once he returns that we were so lucky to experience within our family over the weekend.

So we all bundled up and the kids got to play outside in the snow while Scott loaded up the truck and we eventually and reluctantly said our goodbyes. Daddy was off to work and we were off to prepare for our normal Monday duties. The kids were in the living room eating cereal and watching their allowed morning cartoons, i fixed myself a bowl of yogurt with a banana and went into my room to watch my morning news. We were good. Then in the midst of a bite of yogurt I crouched down on something large and HARD. The sound alone inside my head was as shocking and loud as a gun shot bouncing off the walls of an enclosed room. I fished around in my mouth hoping maybe I got a chunk of a bad pecan but was mortified to find I was holding a tooth. Not a piece of a tooth but the amount of a full tooth. I felt around my mouth with my tongue and found the large gaping hole that extended past my gum line (thankfully on the back side) with the outer shell of my tooth hanging down so no one would be able to see the damage I had inflicted on myself with this stupid stupid disease of mine. STUPID. 

I didn't know what to feel nor did I understand how I was feeling. I felt some of the obvious, you know the sick stomach and the upset feeling we all get when something goes bad, but there was something else churning inside me that I had no understanding of. 

I called my dentist and he refused to see me unless I could pay in full since I had a past due balance and my insurance was maxed out. If you know me then you know that we struggle financially and there was no way I could honor his request. I was freaking out. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.  

I was amazed when my husband exceeded my expectations and called a friend explaining our situation. She called her husband, who happens to be a dentist and the kindest most invested dentist I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and they opened their doors to me helping me arrange the best options for my finances. 

Reality did hit me smack in the center of my face though once I was sitting in his office. My tooth was beyond repair. The whole thing is dying. Dying. Because of me. Dying. It has to be extracted in a surgical extraction. So I am going to have no freaking tooth close to the front of my mouth. A big fat hole. At 30 years old. To get an implant will cost close to if not more than 3000 dollars. So in the mean time I am going to have a flipper tooth. You know one of those teeth that attaches to a piece of plastic like a retainer. Take it out when I eat, don't throw it in the trash. Humiliating. FREAKING HUMILIATING!

But this is my doing. My fault. 

The kicker. Insurance will not cover one penny of any of it, this year or next. 

I have spent most of my day, in the office of this nice dentist and out, in utter tears. (Except for the part when my best friend looked at me and said matter of factly, "you really are my ruthless toothless friend!" sending me literally into a laughter that brought me to tears. Explanation of that to come.) But I must admit that I was astonished by the compassion of this dentist and the fact that he looked at me and said he wanted to help me, not only with my teeth, but HELP me. You don't find that every day. I am honored to have found that today. 

So now I am preparing myself for what is to come next week. The extraction. Until then, I am terrified to eat, wondering when the next part of the tooth will break off, or any tooth for that matter. I am constantly feeling the reminder of my F-up with my tongue which makes trying to let it go almost impossible. I can't seem to stop yelling at myself for being so utterly stupid to let it, being the bulimia, get the best of me and giving into the temptations of binging, ultimately leading to purging, knowing I really didn't want it but yet could not stop it. I say it is a control issue but as Kiele pointed out to me, I kinda lost all control and what I think I have control over, I don't. 

I don't have control. 

Right now, in this very moment, I am wanting, more than ANYTHING, to binge and purge. Badly. But I can't. I won't. Partly out of fear, but also because I know it won't help me in any way shape or form. I know it will cause me more pain.

That is what I feel. Pain. Physical. Mental. Emotional. Pain.

How do I stop the pain?