The Journey I Am On And More

The journey I am on has no destination. There is not a road map to follow, nor are there any posted signs signaling which direction to head, nor any indication as to how many miles there are to the next stop.  It is a continuous progression of twists and turns, straightaways, and roundabouts. It is the journey of life, and there is no telling where it will take me from one day to the next. There is no way for me to control what is going to happen to me a minute from now let alone the months or years ahead.  No control. The fear of not having control in my life has driven me to insane practices to establish a feeling of control. I have felt at times as though I have achieved control, but it is not really control. In fact, the more I felt like I was in control, the more out of control my life was. My life became unmanageable as my addiction spiraled me into a dark hole. In my attempt to develop the “perfect” life, I created a chaotic, unhealthy lifestyle full of immense pain and despair. I had to admit that I had no power over the disease of addiction, which ultimately meant I had no power over my life. In that sense, I had to give up all control in order to begin my healing process. This was the complete opposite of what I had been taught, which was to “take charge” and “control my own destiny.” Give up control? That is the craziest concept to comprehend for a person with an addiction, especially an eating disorder. After all, if I had more control, then wouldn’t I have been able to make myself better and achieve that perfect life that I believed would set me free? The truth is that my attempt at control had driven me further from the life I desired. I could not make myself better through the use of control. There was no perfect life to be achieved by attempting to maintain control over every aspect of my existence. First, it is impossible for a human to have control over everything, and second, there is no perfection to be obtained. It does not exist. Therefore, through my disease I had been striving for the impossible. From personal experience, I can say that when I realized that I was indeed striving for the impossible, and that I had been killing myself slowly for years, I was furious. The disease had consumed me for so long. It was woven into my daily life into every waking second of every single day. I had worked so hard to listen to the eating disorder voice in my head, and follow its instructions to perfection. I had forgotten to listen to myself- to that true inner voice in my head that was my own- and not that of the eating disorder. I soon lost the ability to distinguish my own voice from that of the eating disorder. The eating disorder voice was so powerful, persistent, and loud that it became easier to listen to it than to fight against it. I believed this eating disorder voice. It told me each day that if I worked harder, set my standards higher, and was stronger that I would achieve perfection. I could do it. However, the harder I tried the further I fell. I found that my falls were getting worse over time, and it was becoming harder to climb out of that dark hole. I was failing, or at least that is what my eating disorder voice told me. Failure was just not an option for me. The eating disorder told me to eat less, exercise more, and do whatever it took to be thin, and I wholeheartedly followed that voice’s instructions.  There was never a point where I was thin enough. The eating disorder was trying to kill me, and I was obediently following its lead. Then, there came a breaking point. My body could not tolerate the abuse any longer. I could not eat less or exercise more. I was exhausted.  There was complete despair at this point. Where had this eating disorder gotten me in life? Nowhere. What I had been doing all these years had been a slow suicide, and deep down inside I wanted to live. The person I had been was in there somewhere, and I was going to come out of hiding with the help of a very knowledgeable and supportive treatment team that created a safe place for me to do the hard work. All I had to do was surrender, and realize that this disease was not who I was, and that I could reclaim my life.  It took me eight years to sink so low that I finally sought out the help I needed. I could not do it on my own, with a single therapist, or with the help of my family. I needed intense help to sort through the core pain that had plagued me for so long. The pain that had caused me to search out a form of relief, and that relief came (temporarily) in the form of an eating disorder. I have said before (in a joking manner in my attempt to add humor to a heavy topic) that I went down the list of possibilities, and that eating disorder was the first choice I deemed acceptable to choose on the list. Drugs? No. Alcohol? No. Sex? No. Eating disorder? Yes!  I had already witnessed the devastation of drugs and alcohol so that is something I never took part in as an adolescent or adult. As for sex, part of my core pain was due to sexual abuse. Being touched by anybody took my breath away (and not in a good way). I do not want to implicate that I consciously chose to develop an eating disorder. It was not a mindful decision, but more of a subconscious one that crept in and took over my life. The eating disorder relieved the surface pain for brief moments unlike anything else in life could do for me at that time. Then, when I wanted it to stop, I found that it had imprisoned me, and I had no key for the handcuffs that bound me so tight.

Parts of my blog will portray clips of my journals and writings throughout my years with an eating disorder. It will show where I have been, and how far I have come in recovery. Recovery is a lifelong process. A process that I no longer fear. It is a journey of self-discovery, and one that has rewards around each corner turned. I hope by sharing some of my experiences that others may feel less alone, and more importantly might be inspired to choose a path of recovery for themselves. Am I in recovery today? Yes. Am I fully recovered? No. I do not believe in full recovery because that would mean an end to the learning process of life.  There is never an end to the learning, and the ability to achieve an even more full, peaceful, and balanced life. It is not a journey to achieve perfection, but rather a journey to see just how much I can learn about myself. Even those that have not suffered from abuse or addiction can benefit from reading this. We all have our own individual paths in life and mental struggles, but we can all relate in some way to each other, and it is through each other that we learn more about our true self.

Nothing is more wondrous than a human being when he begins to discover himself. – Walter Rinder