I both dread the coming of tomorrow, and look forward to it with eager anticipation.
Tomorrow I start graduate school.
All week I have doubted and second-guessed my decision to give up my full-time job and return to school. Every day I have asked myself - Am I smart enough? What if I fail? What if I can't cut it?
What if it derails my recovery?
I am so scared of change. Oh, I like to sound brave. I like to talk like I can do anything, that I'm tough and smart and ready to take on the world.
But inside I'm a scared little girl.
And any change - including a positive step toward a better future - elicits in me a deep, strong desire to stop eating, to go back to that low, low weight, to diminish myself, to hide until I don't have to do anything but wail and cry and storm about.
Let others move forward and challenge themselves. Let me stay safe.
That's what anorexia was - is - for me. Safety. I stay a certain weight, I'm safe. I go over that weight, I'm lost, everything's lost, I feel threatened beyond belief and the world violently shakes.
Tomorrow I will walk out of my front door, get into my car and drive to the university. For I continue to choose life and growth above death and anorexia, in spite of how painful it is.
It would be so easy to give up. But as my doctor told me the other day, I am a fighter. So I will fight the anxiety and fear, and I will do the best I can in graduate school.
And hopefully, I will thrive.
1 comment:
You can do it, Angela! What an exciting change for you.
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