How quickly it happens

I was lying in bed the other night, thinking about how my body reacts to certain things.  I was thinking about how feeling trivialized makes me want to eat.  I thought about a situation where it had happened before (I can't recall what it was now) and BAM! Immediately my brain started with telling me to get out of bed and EAT!  It started listing all the things in my room that I could grab if I would just get up out of this infernal bed and get it. I didn't.  But I was absolutely shocked at how quickly the demons grab onto a stimulus - even a remembered one.  I also realized how much stronger my resolve muscles were getting then, say, a month ago.

I also was extremely hungry and had been since just after dinner.  This never happens.  I am hungry right after every other meal, but generally not in the evenings.  But this night, I was.  Really really hungry.  The kind where it feels like my insides are sticking together.  I knew that I hadn't had any caffeine since 9am - this will make my blood sugar crash and make me hungry.  So, I checked off that idea.  I sat with the hunger for awhile.  Ok, I lie there with the hunger, since physically I hadn't moved.  While allowing myself to be hungry, and calming my mind around it, it occurred to me that I wasn't really hungry.  This was anxiety.  My son had gone camping during the weekend and been bitten by a horse fly.  The bite had gotten infected.  He is prone to bad infections, his friend had had a similarly infected bite last week and wound up in ICU for 2 days.  My friend has been in the hospital since April 3 with cellulitis resulting from a sore on her leg.  All this was piling on my mind, and I was worried.  But I wasn't hungry.  Not really.

Once I realized this, I was ok to go to sleep.

There is always going to be something that challenges us.  How I react to it is within my power to understand.  And that understanding allows me to change.