How To Love

      I decided to turn this blog into more of a recovery story. The good, the bad, the ugly. Recovery is a winding road not a straight and narrow like most people seem to believe. There are a lot of big triumphs and a lot of set backs, we learn from them. My hope is to educate some, and let others know that they are not alone. My goal is to be transparent, I in no way want want to show recovery in the light of perfection because its the farthest from that. I think its one of the most beautiful imperfections. I want to share triumphs and struggles, breakthroughs and setbacks. It may be sometimes uplifting and sometimes sort of uncomfortable.
      I chose the title how to love for many reasons. The most silly because i love the cover that Demi Lovato does (if you haven't heard it stop reading this and go to youtube), the more real because of the many meanings it has for me and what i want for this. How to love myself, how to love others, how to love the way God loves, the way he loves me and you. Its something that is so beautiful to me while being something that i struggle with on a daily basis.
      The first post in the blog is gonna be my story. Kinda short and sweet and i may go back and retell things every now and then cause I'm constantly thinking of new things since my mind never stops. so here it is my story in a nutshell.

      I really don’t remember a time in my life that I didn’t feel like I wasn’t good enough. Even from the time I was in kindergarten it was about getting that gold star. The whole “see I’m a good girl, I’m perfect, you don’t have to worry about me because I’m a good kid.” I was an only child so I had no one to compare myself to but me. So began the constant game with myself to be better, but it was never good enough.

            My home situation did not make any of this better. I had a over-protective, controlling, manipulative father who terrified me. My mother put all of her effort into making the money for our family and keeping my dad happy so he wouldn’t lash out at either of us. While I was worried about making myself seem perfect my dad was concerned with appearing to the outside world that we as a family were perfect, not living in fear and miserable.

            In the mist of this my most prized “possession” was my weight and the fact that everyone always praised me for how “tiny” I was. I learned from a very young age that being thin was “good”. Of course with my need to be perfect and good, being thin was the way to do it. It was something that I had that no one could take away from me. My dad couldn’t scream it away, he couldn’t hit it away, it was all mine.

            As I got older and started to form my own thoughts and opinions about the world and my place in it my dad freaked out. I was starting to become harder to control and manipulate. His little girl was growing up and he didn’t like that one bit. With this he became more possessive and tried to isolate my mom, the only semi healthy person in my life, so that I was easier to control.

            At around age twelve was when my depression and anxiety peaked. I would isolate, come home from school and lock myself in my room with my homework and not come out till my mom came home. My dad didn’t always like my friends so I just didn’t have them. I was constantly anxious and walked on eggshells, not knowing what kind of mood my dad would be in that day. It was becoming harder and harder to be that perfect little girl that I had been striving to be.

            When I hit puberty and naturally started getting a womanly figure and wasn’t what I perceived to be a stick like figure, I freaked. The one thing I held so near and dear was disappearing, the thing that I put all my worth in was making me in my eyes, worthless. I fell into an even greater depression and began cutting to ease my anxiety and pain I was feeling on the inside. I still had all of these thoughts of not being good enough and feeling lonely, and being truly convinced that, that was as good as life was going to get. That this was “normal” this was how family’s were, dads were dominant and you fall out of love by the time you have kids because that just what happens.

            One day after my mom and dad got into it pretty bad my mom was in the office crying and I asked my mom “why are we still here?” It still blows my mind that such a loaded question came out of my twelve year old mouth. She asked me what I meant and I said “were miserable so why do we stay here with him?” she told me she was trying to wait till I was eighteen to file for divorce because she didn’t want to put me through all of that. I told her this was hurting me worse and we need to leave.

            We set a date to leave right after Christmas. So the week of my thirteenth birthday we packed our stuff into trash bags so he wouldn’t  be suspicious of something going on and checked into a hotel and he was served with papers. The divorce was a long drawn out process with courts and family therapists.  There was a calm that came for a short while after that. I remember finally feeling safe. It was a weird quiet feeling that with my personality only brought on anxiety of what was going to come next, this was too good to be true because life isn’t like this, it isn’t good.

            I started high school where I gave my heart and my body to the wrong guys that only confirmed in my mind that I wasn’t good enough. That I would never be good enough. My mom married and amazing guy with really dysfunctional children who stirred up more chaos in my life. This confirmed that life isn’t good and good is short lived so you have to work every single day to be good enough.  I thought back to the short lived times where I did feel good enough. All of those memories included me being thin so at age fourteen I decided I would be thin again. I didn’t care how I would get there I just would there was no other option.

            I began restricting my food and found that it actually calmed my anxiety. It was also something that was also never good enough. My five pound weight goals would drop five more every time they were reached. In the beginning when your body is starving you actually feel great. Your body does all it can to conserve your energy so I was full of energy and girls in high school commented “I hate you your so small” which was only confirmation to me that what I was doing was working.

            I went in and out of this from the time that I was fourteen to eighteen it had become a part of me. My own little secret that no one could take away from me. It was my best friend and my worst enemy. It praised me for losing and shamed me if I didn’t telling me how horrible of a person I was.  I was so ashamed of it but couldn’t stop it. I was lying to everyone telling them I had already eaten, or I didn’t feel well, taking pain killers to sleep through the hunger, and smoking cigarettes at seventeen because I heard it curbs your appetite.

            The day came when I couldn’t hide it anymore I was at home and I collapsed and had a seizure. My mom was terrified and carted me off to a neurologist to see what was wrong, when I knew full well what was wrong. I had a moment of what I then called weakness but now my lifeline, and I told my mom that I hadn’t been eating. So started the psychological tests, the poking the prodding, the EKGs. A month before my nineteenth birthday I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa.

            Two days after Christmas in 2006 I entered treatment for the first time. I was assigned a therapist, a dietitian, and a psychiatrist. They worked with me on weight restoration to get my brain working properly. Then they began to work with me on all of the traumas that I have dealt with in my life. They monitored my weight and my meal plan to ensure that I was staying healthy. They gave me the tools I needed to deal with my emotions in a non-destructive way. They showed me love and compassion and called me out on my crap when they needed to. I came out with a whole new outlook on life and myself.

            I would love to say that after that I fully recovered and never dealt with it again but that just is not reality. Statistics say it takes on average seven years to recover from an eating disorder depending on how long it has been active. The average number of stays in a treatment center is three. Over six years I have been in treatment on three separate occasions, each time working on different issues and different traumas in my life. I really do cherish this time, the good the bad and the ugly. I have learned so much about myself and the world.

            I became a Christian in 2008 and looked at my recovery in a whole new way. In the way that I have a savior who loves me unconditionally when unconditional love didn’t exist in my world. I met and married my amazing husband who has to be some kind of superhuman for loving and caring for someone with this illness in the way that he does for me. I also discovered what I feel my purpose to be. To help those with eating disorders in any way that I can. Whether it be to educate others so we don’t continue to put this “vain” label on people with eating disorders because it is a real mental illness with the highest mortality rate of any other mental illness, or just being there to talk to.