full heart, can’t lose
I’m pretty sure we don’t get to choose who we fall for. I sure as hell don’t. I’m sure you’re shocked to hear I’m in the midst of another sad love story. But instead of boring you with the details of my impending heartbreak I want to talk about control.
I’ve spent so long feeling in control of my life. My disorder gives me so much control. My therapist would say it’s a false sense of control but I’m not too focused on the technicalities right now. When I get deep in my disorder, nothing happens unintentionally. My intake is calculated; no calorie enters my body without being strategically planned then recorded. My steps are tracked and every single day I try to increase the steps to “beat” the prior days record. My days are booked, whether its wallowing in self pity, showering, walking to class, walking to burn extra calories, weighing myself, etc. it’s on the schedule and we DO NOT break the schedule. In my disorder, I don’t have to worry about spontaneous social events or activities because the schedule doesn’t include friends and since we don’t break the schedule we don’t have to worry.. and we sure as helllll don’t have time to worry about men.
But welcome to recovered life bitch: a whirlwind of unplanned chaos. In this state of recovery, I have no idea when things will happen. Will I go out last minute on a Thursday night because everyone else is? Will I meet someone totally new and all the sudden have feelings that I never knew I was capable of? LITERALLY ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Oh, and if the possibility of anything happening isn’t enough.. all of these things are happening. There’s no schedule so they start coming and they don’t stop coming.
Losing my sense of control is one of the hardest parts of my life right now. My sense of control has always been the thing I held onto the tightest when things got hard. If I felt like no one liked me, I would get so lost in the thoughts of starving that I couldn’t worry about other people’s opinion. If I had no plans, I would walk all over everywhere to focus on calories and not plans. There’s always been some behavior to control and distract myself. But now, there’s nothing. Well, it feels like there’s nothing.
If I don’t have plans on a Friday night, I’m laying in bed sad. If it feels like no one likes me, I’m laying in bed sad. When the screams of my eating disorder got quieter, the wails of my sadness got louder. Everything is intense now. The intensity of my feelings means I’m searching high and low for ways to calm them. I end up spending more time symptom swapping more than I do recovering. ((recovering from anorexia is more than just eating again!!!))
So what will real recovery look like? It’ll suck. It will be crying alone in bed on a Friday night because my friends didn’t communicate plans well. It will be falling for the wrong person again and again, feeling heartbroken and hopeless. It will be eating and regretting every last calorie, dying wishing I had gone to the gym for thirty more minutes or walked one more mile.
ANDDDDD it will be going out on the weekend making memories I’ll long to relive for the rest of my life. It will be laughing at all the guys I thought I loved only to look at my husband and know that they were preparing me for him the whole time. It will be enjoying food because part of life, happiness, and connection is eating.
So maybe my heart will get broken today or tomorrow or two months from now… but it’s also so full. I’ve never been happy to say any part of my body was full but here I am.
