Learning to trust yourself after an eating disorder requires some serious mental gymnastics.
What used to 'feel good' was actually destructive.
What used to 'make me happy' was actually killing me. Relationships I desired were based solely off instant gratification without any real connection.
What actually feels good?
What actually makes me happy?
Who do I actually want to connect with?
Being surrounded by and inundated with consumer culture, diet land, and obsession with thinness has worn me out. When I look around, it's all I see.
When I look around, it's yelling at me, "You used to fit this mold! What are you doing here?! You don't fit anymore, look at those thighs... those hips... that stomach. Get back on top, you've completely lost control."
I'm completely and utterly caught up in the chaos, when all I want to be caught up in is my soul. I want to hear the wind and see the colors. I want to reach out to the community and feed the homeless. I want to take care of my body so I have the ability to take care of others. I want to hold strong to who I am and not be so easily influenced by the abject poverty and marginalization of race and class - so much so, that I question my every move of consumption, judging myself harshly along the way. I want to have an answer to all of this - one that is DIFFERENT than my eating disorder. One that is artful in nature, one that is creative rather than destructive, one that sets me up for success, one that practices newfound habits, one that separates me from the corner of people who have caused nothing but harm in my life, one that is goal-driven, one that is a thing of hope.
I'd like to recite the prose of Emily Dickinson that rings so true to me:
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers,
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me."
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