Reasons to Recover

As I discussed in my last post, at times relapse can be very tempting, and I forget why I am even recovering in the first place. So to help remind myself, here is a list of my reasons to recover.

• So I can be strong. When I'm restricting, heavily depressed, or overly anxious, my body is completely out of whack. I don't exercise, and I feel sluggish, weak and awful. I don't want to feel so uncomfortable in my body. I want to become confident enough to truly invest in my body and in my health. I want to be able to exercise freely without my mind getting in the way. Being strong and muscular makes me more confident, and I want to gain that confidence back. I want to learn to do handstands and arm balances, and really push myself physically. I want to have endurance and flexibility and power. I want to rock climb and hike and swim and explore the outdoors without my body holding me back. I can't do this if I'm restricting, hospitalized, or miserable.
• So I can spend time with others. When I am deep into my insecurities, I can't really be around people. I'm too jealous and self conscious, and my thinking is so disordered that I'm just miserable around other people. I want to be okay with opening myself up to others, and I want to spend time with friends like a normal teenager. I want to go to social events where there is food or a pool without freaking out and feeling horrible. I want to let myself have friends and have fun for once.
• So I can pursue the things I love. I have so many dreams, but when I'm deep into my illnesses, they disappear. I feel hopeless, and believe that I'm not going anywhere in my life. But in reality, there are so many things I want to do! I want to travel the world, exploring and finding beauty and encountering different people and cultures. I want to volunteer in third world countries and help people (especially women) who are less fortunate than myself. I want to work at rape clinics and medical centers and provide people with the care that they need. I want to fight the stigma against mental health, and work towards getting people the care they need no matter where they live in the world. I want to volunteer at psychiatric hospitals and tell people like me that there is hope, that they can get out of there and pursue their dreams. I want to do so much, and in order to do that, I need to recover first.
• To have a family. I want to fall in love, and eventually settle down and have kids. I want a little house on a big property with three dogs, some chickens, and maybe a few goats. I want to bring my children with me to places like Haiti so they can see that there are people in this world that need their help. I want to bring them to Switzerland to gaze in awe at the mountains and Australia to see animals they've only dreamed of. I want to go to my kids' graduation, and hold my grandchildren. I want to spend the majority of my life with someone I love, bound together by marriage. So I need to recover, so I can provide for my family and let myself fall in love.
• For food. I want to be able to love food and nourish myself without guilt and pain. I want to go out to eat at restaurants and go to dinner parties and have dessert and feel comfortable around food. I don't want to stress out before going to an event because I know there's going to be food there. I want to be able to overeat without wanting to hurt myself. I want to be able to under eat without wanting to keep going. I want to have pasta and pizza and ice cream and chocolate and just feel good.
• For confidence. I want to wear a bathing suit someday without hating myself. I want to look in the mirror and smile. I want to approach someone and talk to them without fear. I don't want to dread the summer. I want to wear clothes that make me feel beautiful. I don't want to care about every stretch mark and awkward feature. I want to know what it's like to feel comfortable in my own skin.
• To put positive energy out into the world. I want to be a positive person. I want to be like Rachel Brathen or Jen Converso, spreading light and love throughout the world. I want to make the world a better place. I want to summon a smile in a second, and radiate love and joy in everything I do. I want to run to the hilltops and spin and smile and soak in the sunlight. I want to be so happy that I make others happy just by being around them.
• To be a yoga teacher. Yoga is so important to me, and it's something I want to share with other people. In order to become a yoga teacher, I'll have to keep eating so that I'm strong enough, and I'll need to gain the confidence to be able to be in front of a whole class and feel comfortable. It's a huge recovery goal.
• To love myself. I've spent my entire life consumed with self hatred. I don't even know what self love is, but I'd like to learn. It's got to be better than despising yourself day after day.
• So I can start saying yes to things. I don't want my mental health issues to be holding me back for the rest of my life. I want to be free. I want to say yes to opportunities that come my way, regardless of any anxiety I have towards it. I want to take each day as it comes, and stop living in fear. I want to do things that scare me, overcome my fears, and start living wildly.
• To watch the scars fade.
• To be able to look back and be proud I never gave up. I'm doing a hell of a lot of work right now to try and recover, and someday, when I'm happy and content, I want to look back on these days and thank myself for keeping going and never giving up.
• To share my story. I want to connect to other people struggling with mental illness and share my experience and struggles. I want to help someone else who is where I am now, and show them that recovery is possible, and that things get better.
• To be one year clean of self harm! This is a huge goal, and it's one I'm working hard towards. The longest I've gone is around three months, but I'm determined to kick this addiction to the curb.
• To go to the beach. Someday, I want to go to the beach and enjoy myself. I want to wear a bathing suit -- heck, even a bikini, and not want to cry or run away. I want to sit down and let my fat roll without covering it up with a towel. I want to run and play despite everything that jiggles. I want to lay out and tan because it feels good. I want to let people take pictures of me without running away and covering my face. I don't want to keep dreading the summertime.
• To be independent.
• For ice cream. For cookie butter. For chocolate. For nutella. For cereal! Cereal is a huge trigger for me, and someday I want to eat a bowl of special K red berry and smile.
• To go off my medications. I don't know if I'll ever be off my meds completely, especially since I'm on quite a few. But someday I'd like to go to bed without having to pop nine pills every night.
• So I can compliment myself and actually mean it. So I can accept compliments from others and actually believe it.
• So I can bake/make all sorts of vegan treats and feel good about it. I love baking, and I miss it. I'll still bake every now and again, but it's tainted with guilt and shame. I want to go back to the mindset when I was 8 years old and baking cookies. I want to be excited about what I'm making, and not feel out of control. I want to eat the treats and feel happy, but not go overboard and binge. I want it to be a positive experience.
• To be stronger than my thoughts and urges.
• To beat trichotillomania, and have long hair again.
• To be able to go to college and do well on my own. Right now, I'm right on the path to be able to do okay in college. But I wasn't always like that. Just several months ago I was in such a bad place that if I didn't get better, college would've been out of the question. I want to keep up the good work and eventually gain that independence.
• To feel confident about the future. Although I'm more optimistic than I used to be, often times when I look to the future I see nothing but darkness. I want to get rid of that toxic feeling and see light in the future.

There's definitely a lot more reasons than these, but these are a few big reasons to recover. I think maybe I'll make a part II to this that will be shorter, less elaborative reasons. So tell me, what are your reasons to recover? Share them with me in the comments.

Resisting Relapse

I'm really confused.
So for the past week and a half I've been doing really well. And I mean really well. I've been following my meal plan exactly, I haven't been restricting, I haven't been self harming-- I haven't really used any negative problem behaviors. In fact, I've been happy. Truly. I've been experiencing happiness in myself for the first time in years. There have even been moments where I'm starting to feel comfortable in my own skin. Not very comfortable, but glimpses of comfort. I've been working so hard to kick my disorders to the curb, and I've been succeeding. And that truly makes me very happy.

Yet despite all of that, despite the positivity, the joy, the good progress -- I have an urge to relapse. And I mean really relapse - restricting, self harming, everything. It's like my body wants me to collapse, to fall back down, to let misery and disordered thinking take over. But why? Like I said before, things have been nothing but positive lately. So why do I have this desire to destroy everything.

I think it's because I'm so used to the darkness. The light is beautiful, but it hurts my eyes at the moment. It's unnatural to me, it's not normal. My normal is destructive - it's depression, panic attacks, self loathing, nonstop doctor's appointments, hospital visits, relapse, pain. So as this happiness starts to sneak its way into my life, my illnesses, the disordered thinking, the darkness -- it's dying. And it's fighting to try and get its way. It's telling me I haven't suffered enough, that I don't deserve to be happy. It's trying to convince me that if I just collapse, just have one more relapse, then things will be better. It's like I have this weird concept in my brain that I have to suffer a certain amount before I can ever experience true happiness. Especially with my eating disorder. My mind keeps telling me that I'm faking, that I don't truly have an eating disorder, that I haven't experienced enough pain to recover. It shames me for never being underweight and never being sent to an eating disorder residential -- never mind the fact that I've been been in so much pain because of my ed since I was nine years old. It doesn't care that I've spent every pool party wanting to cry, that I've never looked in the mirror and felt happy, that I feel horribly guilty whenever I feel too full - my eating disorder mind doesn't care about all that. It just wants me to lose weight, to obsess over food, and to feel miserable. It wants me hospitalized with a tube up my nose, and there's a sick part of me that agrees with it. That believes that that's my fate, that that's where I deserve to be. And if I'm honest, it's hard to find a part of myself that disagrees. It's hard, because still, after all my hard work, deep down, I don't feel worthy. I don't feel like I'm enough, I don't feel like I deserve love. But I need to tell that part of me to go to hell, because someday I will love myself. Someday I will accept love from others without wondering what's wrong with them. Someday I'll go to a beach without feeling like I want to cry. Someday I'll get upset without automatically wanting to restrict or self harm.

I believe that I will be in recovery for the rest of my life, but I also believe that I can win. That I can learn how to live with my disorders and still be happy. That I can start to realize that not every thought that crosses my mind is law. Someday my distorted thinking will call my name, and I'll ignore it.

And in order to do that, I can't relapse. I need to keep fighting. I can't give in and go back to the darkness, no matter how sickly "comfortable" it is. I need to let those thoughts pass through my mind, and then kindly stick it up my disorder's ass. Because I'm not okay with the idea of me being an adult and still suffering. I want to recover, and I want to be happy. So it's time to take the initiative, and keep going. Sure, part of me wants to restrict, and wants to self harm. But part of me doesn't. And it's time to start listening to the latter.