Six Months

Six months. It has been six months since I last listened to the voices that told me I needed to undo the damages I had done. Six months since I "gave in" to temptation and had to prove I was sorry. Six months of deciding that the eating disorder was not worth its false promises when it pleaded that this would be the last time. Six months free of purging. 

I will not claim to be completely free of all eating disorder behaviors. I think that's a tricky and perfection-craving desire. I have slipped up along the way to this milestone, but the key is, not to the extent of falling victim to the very thing that ended any hope I had of falling short of DSM criteria in the first place. I have not run back to the thing that first hurt me, which would have been the case if I hadn't been doing something right. Because of the way my (and many people's) eating disorder works, if I engage in any behavior enough, the purging (and binging) come back. It's a physiological response that made me believe my mind and body had failed, when really they just wanted to keep me alive. I haven't spent this long free of purging behaviors in the last 3.5 years of treatment/recovery or the last 4 years of this behavior being a pillar for my illness. It feels good. Being able to go to the dining hall on campus. Being able to be within 50ft of a refrigerator and not feeling petrified of getting an inch closer. Being able to eat to discomfort when something is yummy or I have a couple classes back to back and not falling prey to a pit stop. It feels like I took back my power. So that's pretty cool. 

In case you thought that alone brought me here today, you would be mistaken. It also just so happens to be the six month mark from when I last self-harmed! I can't confidently say that that has happened at all in the past 7 years. I've gone 3 or 4 months every few years, maybe even 5 or 6 months, but most of the time this was on accident if it happened. There was never a deliberate abstinence period where I choose sitting through urges over and over; they would just happen to be lower during these chunks of time or it was too complicated to carry it out without being caught being on swim team in high school and all. I see my scars fading and it brings up a complex array of emotions. It's a coping skill even I don't fully understand, because it grants me the ability to both comfort and scare myself at the same time. I don't think I have spent the same time reflecting and grieving self-harm as I have done extensively with the eating disorder on the other hand. 

I feel like it's something I haven't explored so much on this platform either because of the fear that comes with it. How it will be perceived by those who can and those who cannot empathize with such a thing. I don't want to be seen as attention seeking, but ultimately, is that not what I am doing? Not in the negative way that is connotated with such a phrase, but rather a human need to be seen and understood and cared for. Maybe because I want to share how badly it hurt for it to have been (literally) visible on several occasions back in high school with no help offered. This was to the point where someone actually made a sarcastic joke in the nature of "oh my god...Gloria, are you okay???? Did you... cut yourself???" when they saw my arm because it was actual comical that I, of all people, would be struggling with such a thing. It was visible, and no one said anything. No one saw who should have seen. It hurt that no one asked even if I was certain at the time that I didn't want them to. What if they could have saved me from years of pain that I continued in because I wasn't told I could be helped? I thought no one cared to help me. I thought I wasn't worthy of the help because it wasn't bad enough for people to say anything. I hid it too well, and even when I didn't, I hid it with a plenty of reasons for people to not worry. 

I share that because I want to. Because I have held that hurt in long enough. I don't ever share those resentments because I am afraid of hurting someone's feelings or making anyone feel bad, but this disregards the fact that I felt bad. I was a child. It shouldn't have fallen on me to save myself from the pain I was facing, but it did. It took until I was an adult before I could help myself though when there were adults that could have helped before. To clarify, I am not holding anyone to the standard of being able to read my mind. That would not be fair. But there were clues. And I am hurt that no one looked at me long enough to see them. 

And now that I have massively bummed everyone out, let me bring a little light back into ultimately a celebratory post. Of the past six months being without these behaviors, I have spent five of them with my girlfriend, Lauren. When I express the hurt and sadness I have for the girl who was so unseen as a teenager, it's because now I know what it would have felt like. It's like all this time in treatment I have spent learning about "theoretically" what feeling seen and loved would be like with real relationships (not just therapeutic ones) has lead me to this moment. Where I can see and be seen, love and be loved. For now, thats all I will say about that, I want to save it for it's own space and time. Talk about special, beautiful, and full of love, though, to say the least. 

I'll close with this: I didn't think I would make it this far and want to keep going, but I do. I didn't know if I would be able to free myself from the suffocating grip the ED had on me, but I feel like I can finally breathe again. I am still catching my breath. I am still scared to jinx anything, but what is there to jinx? It was ME and MY WILL that got me this far. Not luck, not timing, just my willingness and desire to move the fuck on. So, if it's up to me, there are good things coming. 

Glo