Surviving

Well heres to my new years goal. I'm not quite sure why i hate the word resolution maybe because when i think of it i think of not following through. goals were super helpful in treatment. no matter how small the goal when i accomplished it, it felt as though a little bit of my eating disorder was being chipped away. this year i am going to try to write more. i say it every year, but i suppose even just posting this i have written more than i did last year.

tims at work all day and I've been laying in bed watching indie films all day. i decided it was time to try to write. i feel like the longer i go without writing the harder it seems its going to be to say something. i was on pinterest and came across this quote

" You survived the abuse. You're going to survive the recovery."

i pulled out my journal and wanted to write the old fashioned way with pen and paper. well here goes....

I do believe you "will survive" in the very literal way, you will not die directly from it. but then there comes self destruction. trauma stays imprinted in ever fiber of your being. everything can freak you out. hearing a name spoken in public, a smell, a car, a look on someones face, pretty much anything. i suppose everyone has somewhat of a choice about how they handle, but for me it definitely did not feel that way for me, i wanted to disappear. i wanted to hide, i wanted everything to just go away, but it would not. no matter how much i stuffed it down, it was there knocking, kicking doors down to get in. i had to face it head on and at the time it definitely did not feel like healing. it felt like ripping stitches out one at a time with nothing to numb things out anymore. i often wonder if experiencing the trauma or if the nasty oozing scabs it leaves behind are worse? i honestly don't know. i do know, however that facing it makes it feel better. you can heal. it definitely does not feel like its happening in the moment. in the moment it feels aweful, like the worst self inflicted pain. i came to the realization that maybe self inflicted pain that may lead to healing has to be better than the self inflicting pain that i used for years and almost killed me. i can't say when things got better, but i know when i look back to even three years ago, things are so much better. not perfect, but better. i still get triggered, i still get anxious, but now i live not just survive.