Today I am free

Today I am free. Free to love and laugh and rediscover all that life has to offer.

Free to live. It hasn't always been this way.

Achieving freedom has been hard work. It has meant eating and gaining weight, and sticking with the process no matter how mentally or physically uncomfortable it has felt. It is still hard work. It means feeling emotions I haven't felt in years. It means really feeling, instead of being numb from starvation. There are days I am down on my knees, praying to God to take away the pain I am feeling. There are other days that I feel as if I can achieve anything I want. No two days are alike, and it certainly hasn't been boring.

However, it has been rewarding. I will never again go back to that half-life state called anorexia nervosa.

I am free.

Free from weighing myself everyday. Free from being afraid of every bite I put into my mouth. Free to think and write and learn.

I think I realized I was free on Friday, when first I joked with Dr. S, making him laugh, and then I took a handful of M&Ms out of the office jar and ate them. I didn't carefully count the candies. I didn't think about grabbing a handful. I just did it because I wanted some nibbles of chocolate. That was the first time. And I didn't berate myself afterward, or try to figure out the calorie count or want to get rid of them. It was only M&Ms. So what?

My soul relishes this freedom, and I will never give it up for the prison of anorexia.

Lately I notice I often refer to anorexia as a prison, and myself as having been imprisoned by anorexia. I look back and realize that is exactly how it felt. I was in a prison; a dark, dank, and dirty box. Locked away from love and life. Unable to think clearly. Anxiety often made me feel as if I was going to explode. Now I can look at what is making me anxious, and calmly tell myself that everything is going to be okay.

I still have much work to do, including figuring out why I developed anorexia in the first place. I'm not sure if I will completely answer that question, and perhaps it isn't that important.

I also hope it isn't too late to repair my marriage, and have a joyful and loving relationship with my husband. He is still in Florida, and I miss him like crazy. I want to share this newfound sense of freedom with him, to laugh together and reconnect. I want us to love each other, and do fun and exciting things together that we have missed out on because of my illness. We are both hopeful, although I still have no idea what will happen and that sometimes causes me anxiety.

This I know: we both still love each other and miss each other. We both are trying. We both have fears to work through, and we are doing that. We talk often, and my heart just sort of melts every time I hear his voice. (I almost feel like a teenager falling in love, or like someone who is just being awoken by the handsome prince!)

Did I say we both still love each other? :)  In the end, I believe anorexia can't kill that love.

Believe and it will be true...

I am free.