Relationship

Last night I went to an AA meeting with a few girls from the program. The topic was relationship, and made for a very insightful meeting. After dinner, we saw a late movie, just a chick flick really. Behind all the sex and cussing and cute comic dialogue the message I gleaned was this: If you're afraid of being hurt, try not to fall in love. Because love and relationships in general require feeling, and that includes pain.
After the movie, before which I drank far too much coffee, I was at home trying unsuccessfully to sleep. I had one of those 3 am epiphanies or something, at least my mind managed to connect the movie to AA and all I have begun to learn the past six or so years I've had or tried not to have an eating disorder. I realised that a relationship of any kind, with anyone, is a reflection of my relationship with myself. This could be why I'm not very good at them. For so long I've avoided, run from, hated myself. I really couldn't, and still sometimes can't, stand being me. Sometimes I'll avoid being friends with a certain person because they remind me so much of those parts of myself I dislike. This actually happened recently at the Capri. Sometimes someone reminds me of my own pain and I start acting codependent, wanting to save them. Other relationships are shallow, surfacy, what-are-you-doing-lately sorts, and I never get to know the actual person. We only talk about what we have in common or the simple easy topics because at least for my part, I'm afraid to reveal myself any more deeply. I have had very few deep relationships, in which each party feels and shares their inner world with the other. I have very rarely been truly known or truly known anyone. So perhaps it's no wonder that the movie left me, as is typical, feeling depressed and love-hungry and pessimistic. Whenever is love going to show up in my life like that?
Until I begin to have that deep knowing relationship with myself, I don't think any real love is possible. Until I allow myself to accept my flaws, how could I recognise and still accept the flaws in another person? Until I face my own hurts, what possible empathy or help can I offer to a fellow hurting human?
This was a depressing realisation at first, given that I don't really love or accept myself, and don't even know myself terribly well. I hardly know how to begin. The possibility of love, romantic or otherwise, felt very far off. But I think now that there must be hope, because of God. He doesn't have my flaws-- he can do what I can't. He can accept my broken, messed up, rebel heart and love it anyway. He knows me deeply and doesn't draw himself away or become codependent. He just loves, because he is love. He loves with all the range of feelings from anger to joy to pain, and doesn't stop loving for any one of them. So gradually, as I am loved and known, I can practice relationship with a perfect yet perfectly emotional being. As this happens, maybe I can begin to have that relationship with myself. And perhaps, if I let it, the deep relationships with other humans will be possible.

Shopping

I went clothes shopping yesterday. For a normal person this can be stressful and depending on how the clothes look, even depressing. For me, with a newly acquired healthy body, it was devastating. Imagine not knowing exactly how much your body has grown in six weeks, and being confronted with a full length mirror in a dressing room, stripped down to your underwear with every new bulge hanging out for the mirror to mock. Then imagine not knowing what size clothes to pick, being used to the old body, and trying on item after item that was simply too tight in front of that same mirror. I haven't felt the same since.
I confess I have spent a lot of time critiquing myself in the mirror since I went shopping. Even when I'm not in front of the mirror I am hyper-aware of the flesh that wasn't there before, the way it clings to me in the most awkward of places, places I am horribly self-conscious about. To be honest, I miss my old, sick body. I'm not used to this one, and right now there are a lot of things I hate about it. I miss lying in bed, starving from having restricted all day or binged and purged, and feeling the flatness of my belly, the way the hipbones jut out, the fist size gap between my thighs. I felt uncomfortable then, but the thinness of my body comforted me. But even then, I wasn't enough. I could always be thinner, starve better, do better at work, relationships, money handling, you name it. I was always inadequate. I used to say I'd always be unhappy, so I might as well be skinny and unhappy than fat and unhappy.
It's hard to stay in recovery with such thoughts. I try to turn them around, now, but they always come back. The last thing I wanted to do after the shopping day was eat my lunch. I wanted badly to slip into my eating disorder. It promised to take the pain away, and make me skinny again. I know it's a complete lie, but tantalizing nonetheless. I forget all the horrible consequences the eating disorder brings, and I romanticize it and mourn its loss. But I know in my heart that going back is not what I want. It's only that it's going to take a while to get used to being healthy. Til then, maybe I don't need too many new clothes.

Change

I'm not very good at change. It's something that brings up almost a visceral reaction in me, something I want to resist with all my energy. I used to think that I was flexible and I was fine going with the flow, but since starting treatment six years ago I have learned that is not the case. Small changes I can make without pain, like alterations to my schedule. External changes, changes in the environment or other people, I can handle. But changes in me? Ouch. Something inside of me screams when changing something about me, the way I think and operate and believe, becomes necessary.
Being in treatment demands change, an abrupt change of the daily addict's routine to a treatment routine, a change from so-called autonomy to following a treatment teams rules and recommendations. Recovering truly from an eating disorder requires even more. I am challenged here to change my very thoughts and beliefs, or at least entertain the idea that they may not be accurate. I am challenged to make long term changes to my schedule, my eating habits, my relationships and my living situation, any one of which may be unhealthy to leave as is and lead me into a relapse.
Case in point, and ever present in my mind, is following a meal plan. I am a self-identified meal plan rebel. I hate that meal plan passionately, and I want to eat when I want and what I want -- indicative of my rebellious lifestyle in general. Which is a problem, given that in my disorder I wanted either nothing at all or a whole grocery bagful and then some. The meal plan keeps me safe and regulated, but I feel so inhibited and controlled by its sensible regularity. I want excitement and thrills out of my eating experience (and I wonder if that's because I didn't allow myself any thrills from any other experience -- talk about ascetic!). But those thrills were unhealthy, and I am beginning reluctantly to accept that I am doomed to follow a meal plan for a while if I want to live a life of recovery. I am simply not capable of feeding myself following my own instincts right now. So every time I go to eat, I eat what is prescribed, and my little rebel whispers in my ear how unhappy it is all the while.
That's just an example, but the point is, it's hard to change, even if it's for the better. I am comfortable in my self-destructive patterns of eating. I am still more comfortable in my negative thinking. I've had it most of my life. But in order to have the rest of my life, I have to change, and as much as I protest and try to buck the saddle of change, God keeps gently laying it back on. A bad metaphor, but it works. Change is painful and uncomfortable, but a necessary part of a recovered life.

Fears

"Fear not."
What a hard command that is for me. I am full of fear, especially now. I may be leaving treatment or stepping down to a lower level of care. I don't know for sure -- I'll find out more tomorrow -- but the uncertainty is driving me crazy. I'm so frightened. I don't feel ready at all. I've slipped several times, the last only a few days ago, and my recovery is fragile. I know what to do to get back on my feet, I know what I need to do to stay in recovery, but what I don't have is the experience of doing it.
I've relapsed so many times now that I don't care to count. I don't want to go back to the miserable eating disorder hell I came from, yet the disorder still has a steely grasp on my mind and heart, and part of me still longs for it. Things were miserable, but so simple with it. I didn't have to face all the spectrum of feelings. I didn't have to face myself, I didn't have to face life, temporarily. So the eating disorder calls me, every day. Binge, purge, restrict, it's ok, it's just one time, no one will catch you. Beat yourself up, call yourself a fat stupid ugly bitch, it's what you are. You don't deserve anything good, you failed piece of crap. Day in and day out, the voice in my head tells me it's gonna get me eventually, that I'm a failure and will never succeed. Not at recovery, not at life. It frightens me how strong the voice is still, and how much I still buy into it.
The other voices, faint in my head but present nonetheless, tell me I'm buying into lies. I am a valuable, precious child of God, redeemed and dearly loved, and with God I can make it in life and recovery. I believe these sometimes. I am afraid to believe them all the time, afraid of what that might mean if I did. Afraid of success, I think, as weird as that sounds. I'm used to and comfortable with failure. No one expects anything of a failure.
So here I am, caught in between the fear of my eating disorder and the fear of living life. Caught between fear of surrender and fear of the prison I already know in the eating disorder. I guess I have a choice to make. For now, I choose to live, and little by little surrender my fears to the only One who can truly handle them. It's hard, and in a few seconds I'll probably try to take them back, because I know them and they're weirdly comfortable. But for now, I just want to rest and let Him handle it. Fear is very tiring.

New Year

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. I only set myself up for failure and disappointment, expecting myself to keep them perfectly when nothing, in reality, is done perfectly. I believe in dreams, goals and hopes... but I hardly know what to hope for or dream of any longer.
The past six years in my eating disorder have been so other than what I thought my life would be. I find myself a little jaded about making any new plans. What if they all come crashing down, just like so many tries before? I get paralysed so often by fear of failure. It's scary for me to put my fragile little wishes for the future out there, knowing that I myself am the one who destroyed them before, knowing that it could happen again. So I hesitate. Dare I dream of a place of my own, school, a real career, travel, even love and friendship and happiness? I want to dream, and I want to be well, but how much is too much to ask? When asked in group what I wanted to be doing this time next year, I froze. I really was afraid to picture it, because what if it weren't that way and I disappointed myself again?
Don't get me wrong. I haven't given up hope by any means. I'm only saying that with a life like I've had these past years, and my recovery so fragile, my hopes and dreams must for now be very small. They have to be achievable, picturable. I hope that I won't purge tonight. I hope that I'll progress in treatment. I hope I can open my Bible a few times this week. Little steps, see, are all I can manage. As they say in AA, one day at a time. Maybe one hour or minute or meal. And maybe that's ok for now. The dreams will come.