Progress Is Not Perfection

Tonight I got to hear Renee Yohe, who is the girl whom inspired the movement To Write Love On Her Arms, speak and tell her story. It really resonated with me and as soon as she began speaking I started to cry because everything she said is something that I have felt at one point or another in my life. That we are all doing anything we can to run away from the feelings inside of us rather than face them. Yesterday was the three year anniversary of me entering Castlewood after my final suicide attempt. I started crying in my car today as I was thinking about it, lying in the bed of ICU wondering if my family or friends were going to come see me, if they even cared if I had survived or not. Then getting on a plane the next day to St. Louis, yet another treatment center that I had prematurely deemed hopeless. The three years since then have been full of ups and downs, laughter and heartaches, but I have never experienced this much growth throughout my entire life. I can officially say I have been in recovery for 2 years now from my eating disorder and from self-injury. What I learned from hearing Renee speak tonight is that other people in recovery struggle with this idea that we need to become perfect and have all of our problems be in our past. I felt so relieved when she said she was speaking and giving her story once and felt an emptiness inside because she couldn’t tell anyone she was struggling. I am fortunate that I found the courage to tell someone and I didn’t have to fall too far in my own lapse. I get so caught up in being this role model to others for recovery and think my eating disorder is something in my past that it isn’t bubbling beneath the surface, waiting for me to succumb to it’s deception. I get so caught up in trying to help others, and giving them the tools to beat their own disease, while neglecting my own. For some reason many years ago I decided I was the one who could save everyone else, it didn’t matter if I needed to sacrifice myself along the way. It is something that is still engrained in my mind to this day and I have to remind myself that people look up to someone who is real and has struggles, who talks about what is hard but asks for guidance to work through it. It’s funny how we set such different standards for ourselves than what we expect out of others. How we verbally beat ourselves up day in and day out and don’t think twice about it. This is something I’ve got to work on, allowing myself to feel my emotions without judgments, so I don’t keep wandering this life running away from any feelings that scare me.

So these are my goals from here on out…be kinder to myself, don’t be afraid to tell people what I’m really feeling, and enjoy every day and be willing to take in each lesson God teaches me, and finally remember that I am not invincible.