Full Circle

On this exact day seven years ago I was on my way to Tulsa Oklahoma to check into Laureate. Leaving high school for the third time to enter yet another treatment center. I didn’t want to be there, it was just another place to put on weight until I could get out and starve again. What I didn’t expect was the girls I would meet and the friendships I would form. Granted, we may have treated it like summer camp, but those 6 months are filled with memories and life lessons I will take with me forever.

Fast forward to today, I watched a girl I met on that day seven years ago get married and begin to start a family of her own, while my Laureate roommate from all those years ago sat by my side.

How did we get here? I honestly don’t know. There were different phases of it all. Us wanting to hold onto our eating disorders while our parents tried desperately to keep us alive. Then watching the girls we spent those months with begin to lose their battles, and holding each other’s hands as we attended their funerals. And finally beginning to grow up and figure it out. We stumble and we fall but we’re there to pick each other up and say keep going when the road gets hard.

I can’t put into words how much I needed this weekend to remind me of where I came from and where I’m going. I may only see these girls every few years but they have always been my rock when I needed one.

I can’t wait for more future weddings so I can once again look around and think how did we get here? I may not know the answer but I’m so glad we did.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words

Well the words these pictures say aren’t always true.

You wouldn’t look at these pictures and think this is a girl who is starving herself. This is a girl who is running at 2am and throwing up in the bushes so her roommates don’t know. This is a girl who swallows half a bottle of pills just so she can get a few hours of sleep, but doesn’t care if she stops breathing in the process. You wouldn’t say any of those things, but it’s what is true.

I’ve had quite a few people privately send me a facebook message saying they know we don’t really talk but they also struggle with similar things and my struggle has helped them know they aren’t alone. It made me think about the image I put out to the world, particularly on facebook. I try so hard to make the world think everything is great, that I am happy and living an amazing life, that I no longer struggle with the demons of my past. I tell myself maybe if this is what I put out to the world it will eventually come true.

Well I can tell you the case is quite the opposite. The more you see me smile in public the more I am purging in the bushes in the middle of the night.

I am sharing this with all of you not to have you feel sorry for me or give me some words of advice, believe me I’ve heard them all. But to remind you that what you see isn’t what you always get. That maybe we can all start to tear down our perfectly painted walls and let people see that we’re not perfect. We’re all just trying to get by.

I am currently 11 days behavior free and I can’t tell you right now if I’m going to make it to day 12 or day 112. But I’m waking up each day and putting one foot in front of the other. Because that is all any of us can really do.

Let’s all stop painting a picture for the rest of the world and start to say what’s really going on. An old friend told me once that just because life is messy, doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty awesome.