Sorry for not posting a lot this past week, I’ve been having a really tough time and a lot of struggles. I don’t even know how to explain a lot of it, but there have just been a lot of doubts about my recovery and honestly about my relationship. Nothings wrong with my relationship, don’t get me wrong, we’ve just been together for about a year now and the fear of “hes going to get sick and tired of me, I annoy him, I’m too much” has been very real. Yes those thoughts aren’t substantiated and he knows I struggles and tells me he loves me every day, but it’s still a source of anxiety for me.
What I find myself doing to cope with that is pulling away a bit and sort of teaching myself to live without him. Thats healthy to a degree of course, none of us should be totally reliant on another person or relationship. Other people are human and no one will ever be realistically able to perfectly meet all of our needs, and its totally unrealistic and unfair to expect that of someone. However, I think I’ve been almost damaging the relationship by shutting down and freezing him out to try and protect myself. We have an open line of communication about this, which is amazing. He is my absolute antithesis and is so stable and consistent. When I run around in circles waving my armsover my head and babbling about this that or the other, he sits there waiting for me to calm down and then gives me a hug and tells me its ok. He is so grounding.
Something else that has thrown me off this week is I’ve been going to an ED group and we have some new members. Without breaching any kind of confidentiality, we have a few members who have been struggling with their EDs for 30-50+ years.
I’ll let you stop and think about that for a sec.
50 years taken by ED.
I felt so much emotional pain after that meeting, and feel so much sadness going forward and getting to know these women further and deeper. One of them could only say that if we learned anything from her, let it be a warning not to waste our lives like she has.
I feel so resolute. I would rather feel painfully fat every day of my life and still LIVE than to have that much regret. Every ounce of energy put towards my recovery is worth it. Because if we don’t fight it, it will never go away and it will consume everything we are. It will be our whole lives, devoted to worshipping this disorder. That thought brings me so much sadness and so much hurt for those who have struggled for years. I have struggled for 10 years and it feels like an eternity. I cant imagine struggling for 30, 40, or 50 years.
I have had so much fear about the future of my recovery and so much doubt. I have fear and doubt about the future of my relationship. I have fear and doubt about what the next 2 years looks like for me and about grad school.
However, let me end this on a positive note. I saw a quote the other night that said something along the lines of “if you are experiencing fear, it means you have something to lose.” That means that for every fear we have a reciprocal blessing!
Fear: I will never recover and will waste years of my life to my disorder. Blessing: I have the potential for a full life ahead of me.
Fear: I will lose my relationship with my boyfriend or somehow alienate him or sabotage what we have. Blessing: I have an amazing relationship that is more than I could ever have dreamed for and that I see a future in with someone who loves me and who I love.
Fear: I will never go to grad school and will be stuck in a monotonous job that does not realize my full potential or dreams. Blessing: I have dreams and know what direction I want my life to take. I acknowledge that I have more to give the world.
See how that works? Try it with some of your fears and see if it changes your perspective at all. If anything, I feel like the fears are still there, but I feel more grounded knowing the source of the fears and more positive that I can focus on maximizing and nurturing those blessings as opposed to frantically trying to avoid feeling the fear. Fear is a natural emotion that we all will experience through our lives and thats ok.
Hope you all have an amazing day!
Sounds Like Somewhere 