In the October of 2011, I was in the back of an ambulance facing the reality that my heart was slowly stopping. I remember laying there and feeling myself fade away, there was nothing anyone could've done to stop it; it came as easily as sleep does when you've tried so hard to fight it. I remember feeling my heart slow to a standstill, and then darkness. For the first time I felt weightless. I didn't expect death to be so easy, so dignified. There is a certain sadistic irony in the fact that sometimes it takes dying to make you realise how much you've always wanted to live. But it was too late for me to fight, I welcomed it with open arms, and I knew I was home. How strange it was when I found myself still here, still breathing. I knew I had been set free.
People will always tell you that coming close to dying gives you a new found appreciation for life, that is not necessarily true; when you have lived and part of you has died inside, you become resentful. Resentful of the fact that you had a world of- with hindsight- seemingly endless possibilities, and you wasted it trying to find the quickest exit. What happens is your new life- your real life- becomes more refined; all your dreams, all your goals, you become all too aware of just how mundane they were. You start to claim every aspect of your being; all your mistakes, all your failures, you learn to embrace them, because they are some of the only things you will ever truly own in all their entirety. The most awakening thing you will ever learn is that you are the only certain thing you have in your life. You know you are on borrowed time. No one is born into this world knowing what it is to want to die, but some of us are born with a noose around our neck, and our existence is out there just waiting to weigh us down.
The hardest thing you will ever hear is someone say you can never fully recover; I think that those words were my strongest deterrent- if I would spend the rest of my days waiting to have to fight a war I thought I had already won, why would I invest my time in something that would only leave me bankrupt again?. Some people may feel that is the truth for them, but it is not my truth. Although, I would be lying if I said there wasn't harder days, but I can honestly say there is never a day I have truly thought in my heart that going back would be better than where I am now. And to me, that's what recovery is; knowing you have proved you are strong enough to not need to go back, and that fact alone being enough to keep you grounded. It would be easy to let it consume me again, but my belief in myself has become so strong that it cannot be tamed.
People will often ask how you recovered, it is difficult when you do not know yourself. I think I stopped seeing recovery as the ultimate goal, and instead started viewing each meal as a challenge, and merely as a step in the process towards where I needed to be. It still remains a mystery to me as to how I sat with those overwhelming thoughts, it is without a doubt the hardest thing I have ever done. There is no magic cure; it is a struggle, and it is not graceful and it is not pretty, but what it is, is worthwhile. Recovery is a sum of all of those small victories, but it amounts to something so much greater than you'd ever thought.
Those who have not been unfortunate enough to be touched by an eating disorder take forgranted what it is to be able to sit at the dinner table and eat without having to try; They can't understand how someone can reject the one thing that should be instinctual to them. What recovery is is being able to appreciate all of that; to know you can get up each day, and eat without that voice there to tell you that you shouldn't, or that you can't, and to speak and for it to really be you.
It is indisputable that I have gained more than I have lost, now that I am able to say the words that previously seemed impossible- 'I am recovered'. I finished college in 2012 with a better grade than I had anticipated, which proved to me beyond all doubt, that despite it all, the struggle was worth it. I am currently in my second year of a Business and Marketing degree, and with each day coming closer to finding who I really am, and who I have always been. I have three beautiful bunnies who allow me to utilise the time I would've spent obsessing over disordered thoughts and behaviors, in to letting them know they are loved beyond measure. I have a beautiful home that has been filled with memories, and its walls have echoed the sound of much laughter. I have met the man who saves me every single day, who I am lucky enough to be marrying,and just happens to be my best friend. I can't wait to have our own family, because I never thought I would be healthy enough to be in that position, and there are some people in this life that will never get the chance to experience that. Even at twenty, it feels I have already lived one life time, and how very blessed I am to have the chance to do it again, and to do it right.
Recovery is real, and it is out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment