Moments.

     How many of us really pay attention and remember single, significant, life changing moments. I feel like sometimes we are too preoccupied with other things to really actually pay attention. Im sure we remember big moments, graduations, weddings, births of children, but what about the little ones? Do you remember them? Sometimes they are the most amazing moments of your life and sometimes they are the hardest. On my journey i have come to realize that however hard they are they are both equally important. When someone asks the question what started your eating disorder I'm like hmmm "how much time you got?" Its all made up of moments that lead to one great big thing.
     I started thinking about this last week when i was having a hard time, my yearly depression started a little late this year, its usually around Christmas time,so i decided to start reading crazy love again. it was the first snow storm that we experienced here in Portland and couldn't go anywhere, so the hubs and i were gonna go journal in the lobby of our apartment that has huge windows so we could watch the snow. We had to look for his journal since he hadn't used it since we moved here and when he found it he started reading old entries from when he first got it. He had gotten it when we first met and were friends. he started reading me entries talking about how he felt about me from the very beginning, different times we hung out, our first kiss etc.
     All of this got me thinking of all of the moments we've had together, when he told me he had feelings for me, the moment i knew i loved him, the moment i knew he was my future husband, when he proposed, first piece of furniture we bought, first apartment, first fight in that apartment, how blessed we have been and how God has provided for us in everything. These are all things that i don't think about on a regular basis but it sure is a good reminder when I'm having a bad day. To think of all of the things that i have to be grateful for.
     Flash forward to today, i had the whole day off and i was itching to write but i had absolutely no idea what about. I started to think about all of the moments of my eating disorder. The first moment i decided to skip a meal, meals, a day. The moment i decided to hurt myself, take pills, drink, sleep with somebody. As well as the flip side, moment i decided i didn't have to starve myself, i didn't have to hurt myself, take this, sleep with them. The moment i decided i wanted recovery, to become a therapist, work with those with eating disorders, moment i became a Christian, got baptized, met my husband.
     For me everything came around full circle, well maybe not a circle, there were definitely sometimes that it felt like my old self was fighting with my new. Actually what am i talking about that happens every day. Sometimes the old wins, sometimes the new, and sometimes its a mix of the two. All i know is that it has all served a purpose and thinking about it every so often serves a purpose. If i was completely unaware of when i first started restricting i probably wouldn't be able to figure out what purpose restricting was serving me at the time.
     As sad as it is to say my eating disorder and other behaviors did serve a purpose for me for a time. Most of the time it felt like it was protecting me which was of course a lie, but thats how it truly felt. my real life at the time was so scary, messy, dysfunctional, harmful, that my behaviors kept everything, everyone at a distance so i could just be alone and silence my head, that wasn't actually silenced because instead of people yelling my eating disorder was. I of course could never win but in my heart of hearts it felt like it was working. Now that i am able to recognize these moments i am able to learn to cope with them without my behaviors. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. I have a feeling that if i didn't have the moments i may still be stuck, and to me thats the worst place to be i would rather take a few steps back and then forward than to be stagnant.