walk down memory lane

So being back at Castlewood has been such an amazing experience. It's been wonderful to see all the people who believed in me and made such an impact on my recovery. But it's been so difficult to see all the girls here who are still struggling with their eating disorders. It made me reminisce to my time here, and although it's sometimes hard to remember how bad those times really were, I was able to find some old therapy assignments on my computer which really took me back to what I was feeling in those months and years.

This is something I wrote April of 2008, the first time I came to Castlewood. I had just gotten here after I had spent a week in ICU after trying to take my own life.

Why am I a lost cause? Mostly because this is the message I get from people in my life. There are those few that say they have hope but they don’t really know the depth of the issue. I don’t have the resources to stay in recovery, I don’t have a plan set up for what to do with my life or a dream of who I want to be, I don’t have a stable system of supportive friends to help me through rough times, and I don’t have a family who is willing to or even understands how to pick me up when I fall. I am so easily swayed by other people and what they think is best for me that I don’t think for my own so I am constantly misguided by others judgments. I don’t have hope for myself, I can’t see myself recovered and living a life other than this and maybe I don’t want to. I am constantly seeing images of other girls trying and failing and this doesn’t make me optimistic for my future. Hearing those statistics, 1 in 8 just makes me so much less hopeful, and especially watching them come true before my very eyes, without really noticing any differences between these girls actions and my own. I feel like so many people have tried to help me and I’ve searched for help and guidance in so many ways but have never gotten what I needed or something that has seemed to work. It works for other girls but for some reason not me. and it’s not that I don’t try, because I truly truly do. Do you think I want to be a lost cause? No. but for right now I can sit here and point to the girls who are going to recover and one of those is not me. too many things hinder my recovery and happiness, and maybe I let some of those things take place and am putting barriers in my way but right now it’s the only way I know how to get compassion or to feel needed by someone or some sense of safety. I feel that I will be dead in a year, not by my body giving out on me, but of my own doing. I know how deeply things effect me and how much I lock those inside and let them expand until I explode. Something that can seem so trivial can make me severely depressed and when I get in this mindset I don’t have the will to live. I need a release from all of this pain, and a real release not just temporary soothing. I’m so compulsive and when a thought pops into my mind I find myself doing outrageous things. Its like I become a different person and someone else takes over me, forcing me to do these self destructing acts. I know I am not invincible. I know that someone won’t be there to save me every single time. Something is going to happen and it is going to set me over the edge, and this time someone won’t be able to stop me, my emotions will get the best of me and I will succumb to my sickness. Experiencing the untimely death I deserve. But hey, maybe people will care or understand or even pay attention when I am gone. I won’t be invisible anymore.

Yes I wrote these words and felt them deeply. I literally had no hope and was praying every day that God would put me out of my misery. It's hard to pinpoint what exactly happened between then and now, but there was something in me that gave me the will to fight. So that's why I'm here in St. Louis, telling these girls that are terrified to eat a meal and have lived their lives in and out of treatment centers and hospitals that I was once in their shoes, and it's possible to have a different life. Recovery is possible for every single person. I remember doctors telling me that I wouldn't live past the age of 21. I am here today a month away from being 23 years old, and for the first time in my life I am happy, healthy, and living a life free of an eating disorder.

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous hand." Isaiah 41:10