I know I know I always say that im going to blog once a
week, twice a month blah blah blah! Well in my defense I was in school. Im
pretty sure my last post was during winter break. My time has been taken up
with work and writing paper after paper and doing math problem after math
problem. Oh yea and tring to not totally neglect my husband who is also now in
school and works 50 hours a week. I pretty much don’t know how he does it. I
also had some work stuff going on and am now at a new store and im actually
soooooo much happier.
Now here I
am sitting in a coffee shop eavesdropping on Tim and his professor go over his
business plan for the residential treatment program we hope to one day open and
run. I’m still in awe at the fact that we are here now in Portland. I’ve never
felt more at home than I do now. Now we have come to the end of our school year
and it is such a good feeling.
We spent
the entire weekend working on papers and projects for finals. Stayed up until
midnight last night and got up at eight this morning. I finally finished
revising my ten-page research paper, printed it out, put it in my folder, and
burst into tears. I hadn’t realized that this was the first time in the past
eight years that I have finished an entire school year of college. Let alone
without failing, I’ve actually gotten straight A’s. I’ve never passed a college
class ever.
I was
sitting on the couch balling my eyes out when I remembered an excerpt from a
book a former therapist used to read at the end of a treatment day.
Particularly one where everyone did a lot of “strong work.” From the Velveteen
Rabbit,
"What
is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near
the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean
having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real
isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that
happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play
with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does
it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes,"
said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you
don't mind being hurt."
"Does
it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by
bit?"
"It
doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It
takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break
easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by
the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop
out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't
matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people
who don't understand."
It made me
realize that this is what being real is. Real is being able to work and go to
school and get good grades. It’s being able to function. Its going through
something at work that causes everything inside of you to want to restrict your
food and be sick so you could take a medical leave and not deal, but not. It’s
standing your ground and advocating for yourself because you believe that you
are worth it. It’s feeling so overwhelmed with your school and work load that
you want to just stay underneath the covers and not go to class, but you put on
your pink sweatpants and go. It’s forcing myself to eat when I’m not hungry
because I know it’s easy for me to just forget to eat when I’m stressed and
just spiral downward.
Being real
is going to hurt its inevitable. I feel like hurt in general is inevitable its
either going to hurt being real or its going to hurt being engulfed in the
flames of an eating disorder. So I choose to hurt in the way that can be turned
into good. I choose to take my experiences with hurt and push through school to
become a therapist. I choose to help people through my hurt.
Just like
the quote says at the end “..you cant be ugly, except to people who don’t
understand.” I have come across so many people who don’t understand. Mostly
just out of ignorance. Out of it not making sense in their head how I can’t
just stop, can’t pray it away, and can’t control it. My disease is not a
choice, but recovery is. People have the choice to love me in spite of
everything. To acknowledge the fact that they 100% do not understand it, but
they will be there anyways. They don’t understand how one day I can eat a piece
of pizza and be fine and another can send me into a tailspin. How I can be
talking and laughing and see someone I perceive to be smaller than me and I
retreat into myself without a word. How I can want to hang out everyday for
months and then all I want to do is stay inside under the covers.
I have had
friends who are just this. I have friends who have watched documentaries, read
books, researched online, still don’t get it and think im like a freakin
unicorn and love and support me anyways. There have also been people who have
chosen to not deal with it, and honestly it’s for the best. If you can’t be
there for me then don’t. Trust me if its completely excruciating being in my
own body sometimes I cant imagine what it’s like dealing with me on the outside
with no inner dialogue to go along with my actions.
Now that I’ve
rambled on for far too long and I’m not actually sure if I made any sense im
not going to go back and read this before I post it because I may become to
critical and edit things that aren’t my truth so oh well here it goes. Once again
I will say now I will have time to write more regularly, but who knows Greys
Anatomy may take up all of my free time and I may let it.
