The Circle of Recovery

Sometimes I will be walking across campus to class or through the local mall, I will see someone who reminds me of myself as I was about a year ago. She is emaciated and often seems hyperactive, as if she can't stop moving and she's running towards somewhere she can never find. She will have a fleeting look of despair in her eyes, and I always wish there was something I could do or say to help her. If I could, I would take her hand and lead her toward a private place where we could talk and I would say, "You can get better. You don't have to live your life of fear and anxiety anymore."

But of course in this world, we don't take strangers by the hand and start talking to them about healing and recovery. That is too bad, because I wish somebody would have taken me by the hand last year and said, "You can recover." Of course, both Dr. S and my husband did say those type of things to me many times. So what makes me think I would have listened to a stranger? But perhaps I would have listened to a stranger who had been through the same things I was feeling. I will never know, just as I can't make that final step to reach out to a total stranger.

However, I did reach out in a way. Last year, I wrote several posts about the dangers of anorexia on a pro-anorexia site. I was completely trashed by the site's author and many of her readers, and I felt that my posts were probably just empty echos into cyperspace. But sometimes a word or two can fall upon the right person and just maybe you can make a difference. I recently found out that my warnings did make a difference to a young woman who had recently had a baby. She had gained weight and was desperate to take it off, and started looking to pro-anorexia sites for tips to lose weight more rapidly. She began to get sucked into the whole mindset of becoming a size 0, and it seemed as if she would soon become trapped into the whole anorexic mindset.

Then she came across my posts, which basically stated that being a size 0 wasn't all it seemed, and that indulging in anorexic behaviors was like playing with fire. I wrote about how anorexia was destroying me mind and soul, and this was even before things really started to fall apart. My posts led her to this blog, and this is what she recently wrote in part: "I think I was borderline of developing a problem, but it was your posts (and) then reading your blog that showed me I was playing a nasty game." She talked with her doctor and started losing weight the healthy way, and a potential crisis was averted.

I've been thinking about this because I have been thinking about all of you who read my blog and have left me encouraging and kind comments when I was at my worst and now that I am getting better. It is like you are the stranger who reached across and took my hand, saying "Yes, you can do it. You can get better."

I want to thank all of you for your support. I have cherished it, and it has made these difficult days just a little easier knowing so many people are praying and hoping for my complete recovery.

I won't let all of you down. I have no desire to return to anorexia. In the past, when I would look at these women, I felt a twinge of envy. Now all I feel is pity. Recovery is almost like I died and was resurrected. I feel like I am becoming a better person, one ready to face the future and is excited about it. It doesn't mean I don't still get anxious or depressed. It means that I face life, deal with it in the best ways I can, and continue to eat no matter what.

And it also means a life of love and joy and happiness, and I pray this includes my husband, David. I believe in the end our love will see us through, and I believe we both have so much hope. I just have to be patient, and patient with recovery as I discover new and exciting things about myself. None of this can be rushed, and I will enjoy all of it; returning to life, reconnecting with my husband and friends, learning and growing in graduate school, everything that I missed for so long.

Freedom...It tastes so sweet, and it has been so long in coming. Perhaps it is sweeter because it has taken me so long to want full recovery, to really work at it like I mean it.

I am going to make it. I just know it.

I am going to be free. And someday, I hope to reach out my hand to someone else and whisper, "You can be free, too."

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.

What recovery meant to me

I wanted to be free.

I wanted to be free of anorexia. Free of the thoughts. Thoughts that taunted me 24/7, telling me I didn't deserve to eat, didn't deserve food or life or happiness or love. Thoughts that told me I am worthless and useless and ugly and that I don't deserve to live.

I sit here, dreaming of what might have been . . .

I wanted to continue with graduate school, learning and writing and exploring new ideas. I wanted to continue to grow as a writer, and planned someday to use my skills to do all sorts of things: advocate for those whose voices have been silenced by society, people with eating disorders and other mental illness, the poor and those who live on the fringes; write children's books and poetry; teach and help others discover the gift of writing within themselves; and just write for the sheer joy of it.

I wanted to heal my marriage of the damage anorexia has caused it, and rediscover the happiness and love that were ours before I got sick.

I wanted to be able to be there for my family and friends; rediscover relationships that didn't always revolve around how sick or how thin I am.

I wanted to go out and eat and not be afraid, spend time going to the movies and concerts and other events without anxiety nipping at my heels.

I wanted to stop the daily weigh-ins and calorie counting. I wanted to sit down at one meal, just one meal, without being afraid of the food. I wanted to eat one piece of food without knowing or caring about how many calories were contained within it.

I wanted to be free.

I wanted to return fully to myself, not be halfway there and never fully recover. I reached out for help, called Renfrew and was ready to give my total self to the program and begin true recovery.

But recovery costs money. I sit here, fully expecting a final no from the insurance company today. I constantly check my cell phone, waiting for it to ring. It would almost have been kinder if the insurance company would have said no this morning instead of drawing out the agony all day.

Do they not realize what this means to me? That I felt this would start me on the path of recovery. I felt that it would save me.

I was supposed to be on the last leg of my journey to Renfrew today, heading toward hope and help and possible recovery. Instead, I am sitting here filled with anxiety and wonder how I will handle that final no. I'm sorry I ever called Renfrew. I'm sorry I ever gave myself that hope.

Everyone says if this doesn't work out there's something else out there? WHAT??? There are no support groups here, the hospital is only a place for stabilization and if my insurance isn't going to cover this - a 30-day day treatment program - it isn't likely it will cover anything else.

To them, I am just a number. That reality was brought home to me Friday when my doctor said not to take this personally. How in the hell am I supposed to take it?

I AM MORE THAN A NUMBER. WE ARE ALL MORE THAN JUST NUMBERS TO BE PLAYED AROUND WITH BY THE INSURANCE COMPANIES. WE ARE HUMANS.

I am a human. I had a life, and I want it back. But I can't do it by myself. I can't handle the thought of getting better, only to have the fear of another relapse haunting my days and nights.

I wanted to be free. But I guess I'm just wasting my time.