One in Eight

It was May of 2005 in Wickenburg Arizona and a therapist was talking to the group. "1 in 8 will die from this disease," he said. "Look around the room. Two of you won't be here in a few years"

I hate that he was right.

This is one of those weeks where I've felt completely helpless. Sometimes I have to take a step back and remember that this isn't a normal thing someone in their 20's go through. I spent about five years pretty consistently in different treatment centers and hospitals and the number of people I've met is in the hundreds. People that I consider my closest friends are scattered across the country. Usually the only way to know that they're okay if listening for the little changes in their voice on the phone when they're lying or their texts getting less frequent.

I asked my therapist today at what point and how many years out will I stop getting the phone calls that someone I know lost their battle with this disease. She gave me the answer I knew in my heart but was hoping she wouldn't confirm. Never.

Tears start running down my face as I type that sentence. It's scary to know that people you love are dying and you can't do anything about it. It's not a situation that you can understand unless you've lived it. Unless you've gotten your fifth phone call from ICU and gone to bed praying this time will be a wake up call for them.

It's not even fair for me to say that. In March of 2008 I was the girl laying in the ICU with doctors saying they didn't know my chances. I remember being angry when I finally woke up and realized that I was still alive and hadn't succeeded. I guess that's what makes it so frustrating. Knowing what it feels to be on the brink of death and come out the other side with a reason to smile.

And while this past week, month and even past few years have felt like a string of bad news I have to remember the good. Remember that I've ssen people who were barely alive when we met graduate college, get married, and start families of their own. I have to remember that I can't control who will die next. The only thing I can do is keep fighting and hope those still struggling can see that it is possible to find a reason to live. 

Something Worth Fighting For

I’ve always had a hard time looking into the future. It scares me to think about what life will be like three months from now much less three years. It’s always been safer to view my future self as in a casket rather than in life.

A few years ago that was a very big possibility. These days as I see small glimpses of what life can be it terrifies me. It’s scary to view a future for myself and not be able to achieve it. It’s scary to work towards something only to have my eating disorder come back in and take everything away.

It’s no secret that I’ve been struggling on and off for the last year or so. Ending up in the hospital as recently as a few months ago. Wanting things to be different but never really setting a bottom line and making it not an option to go back. Too scared not to have my only coping mechanism to fall back on. It’s funny that while I’ve been in the midst of feeling like I’m in limbo God has slowly shifted things in my life.

I’ve been able to open up to my friends in a way that I never have before. To let them know what’s really going on. The good, bad, and the ugly and having them remind me that they aren’t going to run away when things get hard. I’ve begun to set up plans for being done with school and leaving Oklahoma. And as recently as last week I had an internship kind of fall into my lap that I love and makes me feel so fulfilled.

As corny as it sounds, these things give me something to keep fighting for. Something to make myself wake up each day and eat three meals for, and something to look forward to. I can’t say that I have visions and goals for the next ten years but I’m slowly beginning to see a future for myself other than six feet below the ground.

"Don't cry over lost years and forgetfulness. The tales tell what they can. The rest is for us to learn"

I always get reminiscent around my birthday. Another year older reminds me of the years lost. It reminds me that I spent ages 16-22 in treatment centers and hospitals consumed with my eating disorder. It reminds me of all the milestones in life I missed out on. Of no high school graduations, 21^st birthday parties, and going on to college from my parents house. Nothing about my life was normal and I want more than anything to go back and change that. But I can’t.

At my birthday party last night a friend reminded me about this time exactly a year ago. How she remembers telling me I was getting too skinny again and how I couldn’t celebrate the joy of another year because I was in my eating disorder then immediately back in a treatment center. Two weeks after my 24^th birthday I was admitted to treatment. I’ve lost count as to what number this was. I wish I could say that I got myself back on track there and spent the rest of the year enjoying life and doing the things that I love but I can’t. I spent the entire last year obsessed with my weight, reverting back to behaviors I hadn’t done in years, and pushing everyone in my life away. This is something that I am just now coming to terms with. Admitting that I wasted yet another year of my life.

But right now I am vowing for this to be different. I’ve started out this semester on a better foot. I am doing things that terrify me and exploring things that I’ve never ever talked about. Life isn’t perfect and it never will be. I will spend the rest of my life fighting this. But as of this year, I am reclaiming the things that I lost. I am reclaiming the parts of my life that people took from me and vowing to no longer let them drive my decisions and behaviors. I can never change the fact that the guy in 10^th grade told me all I am is a beautiful face and I will never be anything more than that. I can never change my assault at age 20 or the people closest to me being a constant judge of how I look. But I can change how they effect me and try my hardest to stop letting them rule my life. I can remind myself that my hatred of this body is not because there is something wrong with it, but because I am constantly telling myself all those things that have been told to me over the years and believing them.

I cannot say this next year will be perfect but I can say that I am ready to reclaim my life.

We Are More Than What We Look Lke

“Need to starve myself so I look like a Victoria’s Secret model. Need to diet so I look good in a bikini for Spring Break. Almost summer, need to start working out so I look good in shorts and a tank top.”

It never ends. Girls constantly publically hating their bodies. Thinking that maybe if they say everything that is physically wrong with them and work to fix it will magically cure everything in their lives.

Well I can tell you it doesn’t. My anorexia didn’t start because I was upset with how I looked but then again it never does. We as a society become obsessed with our appearance, thinking if we focus so much on the things we can control we won’t be upset by the things in our lives in which we have no power in.

Thinking if we look like the girls on magazine covers then guys will like us, or more importantly one day we will wake up and like ourselves.

Why can’t we all just admit that we don’t like the choices we make, the sins we commit and the things about our personality that we would give anything to change. We can’t take back the horrible thing we said to the one we love so instead we focus on changing our bodies and our food intake.

Not everyone develops an eating disorder this way but I did. Desperately needing an escape from the things in my life and finding control any way I can.

What is so frustrating is girls think that just because they’re not in a hospital with a feeding tube it’s okay to talk this way. To publically hate their bodies and transcribe all the ways they are changing it. Putting on Facebook and Instagram their daily diets, current weight on the scale and images of who they want to look like. It makes me so angry, as we have come so far as women in society just to belittle ourselves this way.

As someone recovering from a deadly eating disorder I am not afforded the luxury to partake in these things. I have to fight the images shoved in my face by society daily and remind myself I am more than what I look like.

I just wish others could join along in this. Take a stand against dieting and trying to fit their body into some unattainable mold. Start being kind to themselves and praise the things they do well. Take pride in more than what they look like but for the things they can offer this world.

If we could all start to do this just a little more, we could redefine beauty and maybe change the world and impact others in more ways than we could ever imagine.

The Fence

I’ve been sitting on it for many months now. One foot in each world. One world is the madness of the eating disorder. Using every behavior I possibly can, resorting to actions I haven’t done in years. Letting the depression take over until I feel hopeless and unworthy of life. The other foot is in life. Going to school, being with friends, exploring new things and giving myself grace and compassion.

The problem is I don’t know how to find the gray area in anything. I swing so wildly between the two that it becomes a plastered smile on my face until I can sulk away and use the coping mechanisms I’ve known for so long.

I’ve been lying to myself. Saying I’m in recovery. Saying my using behaviors is only a one-time thing. That this is the last time I will go running until my chest hurts, and this is the last time I will purge until there is nothing left but stomach bile. This is the last time I will go a day without eating. I’m in recovery. I’m fine. I only do these behaviors once every few weeks so it doesn't really count.

The truth is I haven’t been in recovery. And last week my therapist asked me what it would take for me to get off the fence. To stop lingering in between these two worlds, having a foot back in my eating disorder life in case things get too hard.

I’ve thought for many days about my answer. And the only thing I could come up with is I want to want to get off the fence. I’m so scared to jump off the edge and throw myself back into life because I don’t want it to be from a false place. I no longer want to be that poster child for recovery and act like I have no struggles.

All I know is for the past 8 days I’ve eaten three meals a day. It may not sound like a big deal but I haven’t done that since I left treatment for the last time in April. I gave up my diet pills and diuretics and I’m taking it one day at a time. And for the first time in forever I actually feel like I am in control of my life again. And it feels pretty good.

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.