The Truth About My Body

A couple days ago, I posted this picture and the following message on my Facebook page: 

"For the first summer in years, I am at a healthy weight and today, I was able to feel confident and attractive in a bathing suit for the first time in years, which is huge. I am not fully comfortable with posting this photo for my friends to see, but tonight I am saying "Screw you!" to my eating disorder and all the lies that tell me I am not attractive or good enough. This is me (and my favorite, most supportive brother) and this is my body. My body is perfect and beautiful and awesome because it is healthy and it keeps me alive. 

Sarah: 1

Eating disorder: 0"

My anxiety was crazy high when I posted this because, well, I am not happy with how my body looks. It would be a lie to say that my body image has miraculously switched from feeling like shit about how I look to loving every inch of my skin. I do not. 

Earlier that day, I had felt attractive and even sexy in my bathing suit. I felt so good about myself. And then I saw this picture and began to critique every flaw I saw. I took a picture from almost five years ago and sat for hours comparing my eating disordered body to this photo, almost crying because the difference is so unreal to me. But I took a chance and posted it to Facebook... 

The support I received was unbelievable. 

"You go, girl! You are gorgeous, inside and out, and a true inspiration!" 

"I am crying reading this Sarah- I had such a horrible body image day and your beautiful words have really touched me! I am am SO SO SO proud of you!!" 

"You are an inspiration to everyone including myself who struggles with image. I love you, my pretty friend!"

"You are a doll, Sarah. And you do look beautiful. Really proud of you to step out, for we all need to think more like you do. Hugs."

"So very proud of you missy!! You ARE beautiful in every single way! You are on the right path. Xoxo"

"I loved reading this post Sarah! It's a great picture! THANK YOU for posting it! I'm sure that posting this will help you and it will help others struggling with the same issue. You are a Beautiful, Brave, AND Intelligent woman."

"Confidence = beauty! You are both! Stay strong Sarah, you are amazing!"

"You are such an inspiration in so many levels! Proud of you for coming this far, and knowing you will go further! you look wonderful!"

"Your message is beautiful. You are beautiful. And most importantly, you're confident! Love everything about you, my dear! You inspire me every day." 

"Hell yeah! You are beautiful, Sarah. The voice of that eating disorder is a lie. It does not exist. You are Sarah and you are a soldier. Very inspiring!"

These are just a few of the comments I received from friends and family. No matter how many times I read it, I still can't believe it. I have amazing and supportive friends and family, who bless me every day with their love for me and encourage me on my journey. I still am completely blown away by this. 

But I wasn't feeling better... Until one comment hit a nerve. 

"You deserve all of this and all of the confidence and positivity you are receiving. I love you girl."

In my mind, I don't deserve any of this love and support because I am not enough for it. I am not deserving of it. I disappoint people, I screw things up daily, I don't perform as well as I should. I'm finding it really is true that "We accept the love we think we deserve." I struggle to accept it because I am not yet sure I deserve it. 

This is okay. I am allowed to struggle with this. 

I read in a book once that "The truth doesn't have to be known, or believed, to be true," and that line has stuck with me because of the inherent rightness that exists in it. I don't have to believe I deserve any of this love, positivity, and confidence for it to be true that I do deserve it. I don't have to believe the words of my friends and family for them to be true. 

But I know the truth. 

The truth is that my body is healthy. 
The truth is that my family and friends are proud of me. 
The truth is that they think I am beautiful and an inspiration. 
The truth is that my weight and shape in no way affect whether I am beautiful or not. 
The truth is that my weight and shape in no way determine who I am as a person. 
The truth is that I have worked hard to get myself back to a healthy weight. 
The truth is that I deserve all of the love and encouragement and positivity given to me by my loved ones. 
The truth is that I deserve to be confident about my body because it is freaking beautiful how it is now--healthy. 

Maybe one day I will believe all of this as truth. But for now, I am glad I have supportive and loving family and friends to speak truth into my life. 

It's okay to quit

Three days ago, I was informed by my college that because I am taking medical leave for the rest of this semester that I could not return for Spring semester.  Three days ago, I was incredibly pissed off about it.  And three days ago, I was ready to end treatment, walk away from my health, and go back to school.  

Three days ago, I was ready to quit.

And then I found this post on Psychology Today which gives advice on when it's okay to quit.  The post contains these guidelines on when quitting is okay:

It's okay to quit...
...when you've gathered new information that makes the original plan unworkable;
...when the timing is wrong;
...when you thought you could do more than you can;
...when you're changing directions;
...when to keep going will deplete you of energy you need for something else;
...when you made a mistake;
...when quitting is the most compassionate thing you can do for yourself at the moment.

When I was growing up, my parents taught me not to be a quitter--that if you're going to start something, you better finish it.  You don't quit.  So making the decision to take a medical leave from school this semester--to quit for the rest of the semester--caused a lot of cognitive dissonance.  But reading that article made me think.  And it got me to thinking about my current situation and whether or not it was okay to quit a second time simply because a policy stated that I had to take next semester off from school as well. 

When you've gathered new information that makes the original plan unworkable...
Does not being able to return next semester make my original plan unworkable?  Originally, I planned for taking some time off of school, going through treatment, recovering, and returning to school for spring semester.  Well.  The spring semester thing was a little bit unreasonable.  Recovery from an eating disorder that has taken over six years of my life is not going to happen in two months.  That was an irrational part of my plan.

But now, because I cannot return to school in the spring, does that make taking time off, doing treatment, recovering, and returning to school unworkable?  No.  In fact, it is probably the wiser decision.  Because rushing through treatment and not achieving full recovery before returning back to school will just land me right back here in another year or two.

When the timing is wrong...
The timing for treatment and recovery will never be right.  I will never 'be ready for recovery.'  Actually, the timing is kind of perfect--I have a school willing to work with me, parents here to support me, and no major obligations in the foreseeable future.  The timing, no, is not perfect.  It throws off my four year college plan.  But the timing will never be perfect.  The only things that are wrong with the timing are things that ED wants to get in the way of my recovery. Otherwise, the timing is pretty dang perfect.

When you thought you could do more than you can... 
I'm going to apply this to a couple of different things.  First, finishing this semester at Gettysburg.  It was okay to quit there because I definitely was trying to do more than I was capable of in that situation.  I was in a severe relapse of my anorexia, depression, and anxiety--severe enough that I was not going to class or participating in any outside activities.  Quitting, or taking a medical leave, was exactly the right decision.

Second, quitting at trying to come back in the spring.  One of the reasons that I was given for not being allowed to return is that there is not enough time between now and then for me to show a prolonged period of stability, which is true.  As much as I and many others would like, the recovery process is not short and sweet.  It's not something that I will be able to rush through in a couple of weeks.  Thinking that I can achieve a point of stability and be ready to return in the spring is irrational.  Full recovery takes time.  And I know that if I returned in the spring without having achieved full recovery, although I may be fine for a while, I will eventually relapse.  It's appropriate to quit trying to return before I am ready.

When you're changing directions...
I am changing directions with my life.  I am going from a half-lived life of an eating disorder, regulated by food rules and calorie counting and routine, to a fulfilled life of walking in freedom.  My life is completely changing directions.  So it is okay to quit on school for a while in order to change the direction of my life.

When to keep going will deplete you of energy you need for something else...
Continuing on the path of putting my schooling ahead of my health would literally kill me.  It would allow my body to waste away because of anorexia.  All of the energy spent feeding my eating disorder is better spent absorbing knowledge, taking walks with friends, and living my life.  Continuing on the path of anorexia will deplete me of the energy I need to live.

When you make a mistake...
I did make a mistake.  My mistake was made back in high school when I choose not to buy into treatment and the idea that I had a problem.  My mistake was ignoring all of my team's advice on how to avoid relapse.  My mistake was thinking that I could do this on my own.  And my mistake definitely cost me a lot.  GPA.  Friends.  Experiences.  I made a mistake, so quitting right now is okay.  It is okay to go back, start at the beginning, and work to learn from that mistake so that I will not make it again.

When quitting is the most compassionate thing you can do for yourself at the moment...
When I first got the idea to write this post, I was thinking about the question, 'Is it okay to quit treatment because I can't come back to school next semester?'  When I started writing, that's what I was thinking.  But I've realized now that in the back of my mind, I've still be stuck on the idea of taking medical leave from, or quitting, school for the rest of this academic year.  In the back of my mind, that was still what a question that I had.  'Is quitting school temporarily the best thing for me?'

It's this part of the philosophy of quitting that strikes me the most.  Yesterday, I got into a car accident on my way to the doctor (everyone was fine--it was just a minor rear-ending because I wasn't paying attention on the off-ramp).  When I went to the doctor, she was concerned that my heart rate was so low after an accident, so she did an EKG, which showed bradycardia.  Basically, my heart is beating a lot slower than normal because it is having to work much harder.  It's a sign, in my case, of malnutrition.  It signals that my body is beginning to eat away at its own organs because its nutritional needs are not being met by actual food.  She told me that I was not allowed to have caffeine, do physical activity, or any other type of stimulant.  She also told me that it's probably best for me that I do not return to school in the spring because recovery takes a long time.

I know the physical complications of anorexia.  And I thought I was fine.  It's so easy to be wrapped up in the disorder and in fighting school policy to not look at what my body needs.  My physical body needs my attention.  My body needs nourishment.  My body needs treatment.  Quitting school for the rest of the year is definitely going to suck.  I'm going to hate not being there and not having my friends around.


But it's like the article said, it is okay to quit if: "Quitting is the most compassionate thing you can do for yourself at the moment."

And right now, for me, it is.

Reality checked

"Do you actually want to recover?"

That's one of the very first questions that my best friend from treatment asked me in our hour and a half conversation Wednesday night when I first began to tell her that I was struggling.  Not what's going on, but "Do you want to recover?"  We talked through a lot on the phone that night.  About what my behaviors have been, what my thoughts are, what my expectations of going home for treatment were.  And she reality checked everything. 

I've been fighting the idea of going home for a few weeks now, mainly because I don't think that things are that bad.  Denial is something that is fairly common among eating disorder patients.  It sounds something like this for me: 

• Everyone diets, so what I'm doing isn't bad. 
• I know what an eating disorder is, and I DO NOT have one. 
• What I’m doing is no big deal. 
• There's nothing wrong with me physically and I'm still very high functioning academically, so obviously, I am not sick. 
• I'm still eating food, so this isn't restricting.
• I'm not thin enough or skinny enough to have an eating disorder.
• I’ll just lose weight until I am X pounds and then I’ll stop.
• I am in complete control, and I could stop if I chose to do so.
• Things aren't as bad as they were in high school, so I'm obviously not relapsing. 

Denial. 

The sicker I became, the more the excuses seemed real and the more my brain believed them.  I went from eating two meals a day to only one to not taking my meds to restricting even more and limiting myself to under X calories a day to throwing up what little I was eating to abusing diet pills to obsessing over weight.  And I still thought that I was fine because I hadn't seen any physical weight loss.  

Then I went home this past weekend and when saying goodbye to a friend's mom who knows about my struggles with ED and depression, she said that I needed to "Stop losing weight."  
"What?"  
"You've lost a lot of weight since I saw you last in September." 

Even in that moment, it was hard to believe her.  The next day, I got dressed for church in an outfit that I had worn less than a month ago.  I couldn't keep my pants up and my shirt was so baggy... ugh.  Unfortunately, I didn't bring a nice belt home because I didn't think that I would need one, since these pants fit a month ago, they were still going to fit.  

Luckily for me, my brother had left a nice belt at home. And at first, I completely freaked out when I realized that was going to be my only option.  My brother has always been skinnier than me.  Always.  So there was absolutely no way that his belt was going to fit me... even at the very last notch.  But I put it on because I was running late for church and had no other options.  I held my breath while I put it on his belt... It didn't just barely fit.  It fit like any of my belts do.  

Had I really lost that much weight? No.  I couldn't have.  I don't see it, so obviously it can't be true.  This belt is probably just too big for Jacob, which is why he left it at home instead of taking it with him.  

But it still bothered me.  The whole weekend bothered me--exchanges with my parents, with my friend's mom, with how my clothes fit on Sunday, with my brother's belt.  And when I got back to school on Sunday night, I checked my weight, hoping to ease the dissonance in my mind.  

Numbers don't lie.  They showed that I was X pounds under my "ideal weight range," according to my growth curve (my treatment team at home doesn't use BMI to determine ideal weight ranges because of reasons stated here). 

I started to think that maybe I had a problem.  Maybe I needed to go home and get help... but it wasn't that bad yet.  I was still in control.

Monday night I was attempting to study for an exam and had a major depressive episode.  And Tuesday I ended up talking to Dean Cole and we decided that maybe it would be best for me to go home and get some help.  I called my team on Wednesday, trying to reach Katie, mainly, because I like her best (yes, I have favorites...) but was unsuccessful.  Then Annie called me.  I was scared, and I wanted to talk with her, wanted her to make me feel better and tell me that I was right and didn't need any more help and definitely didn't need to go home.  

She called me out on all of my bullshit.  She told me that I was sick, that I needed help, that I was sicker than I was able to understand.  She told me that my idea of going home for a few days or a week was just complete bullshit--I wasn't going to recover that way.  Maybe I would be able to keep things in check for another month or so, but I was just going to relapse again and again until I spent serious time working towards recovery.  

I gave her every excuse to not work toward recovery, and each time she told me, 'Yeah, I totally get that, but here's why you're wrong...'  I talked to her about school and how I was scared that I wouldn't be able to return next semester if I went home for serious treatment.  Her response was that was good, that I'm not going to recover in college--no one can. That I should take the year off and reach full recovery... Something that terrifies me very, very much.  We talked about maybe going to rehab (different from inpatient), so that I could work intensively on my recovery and not have the added stress of being at home.  (Not to mention that it may increase the likelihood of me being able to return to Gettysburg in the Spring).

She reminded me that I am very much diluting the quality of my life and that since she has recovered, she's been able to enjoy things like pizza multiple times a week and ice cream and all the foods that I am terrified to eat right now.  And now that she's comfortable with her body, she can do all sorts of things she never would have before.  She also reminded me that I am killing myself.  

I hung up the phone with her feeling like someone had just punched me in the face.  But also convinced that whether I recover or not is completely up to me and that I need to put the effort in and work my ass off in treatment so I can get better and get back to my life.

I Will Trust.

Trust.
1a : to place confidence : depend
  b : to be confident : hope
2a : to commit or place in one's care or keeping : entrust
  b : to permit to stay or go or to do something without fear or misgiving
3a : to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of : believe 
  b : to place confidence in : rely on 
  c : to hope or expect confidently 

SYNONYMS
certainty, belief, faith, assurance, confidence, imply a feeling of security, instinctive unquestioning belief in and reliance upon something, conscious trust because of good reasons, definite evidence, or past experience, to have confidence in the outcome of events, absolute confidence and certainty: to feel an assurance of victory

Trust is hard, especially when something is completely out of your hands.  Especially when it's important to you.  And especially when you doubt.

Yesterday, I submitted my application to work on summer staff.  And I was feeling pretty good about it until today.  I'm not really sure what happened, but I suddenly had an anxiety attack. 'What if I don't get hired back?  What if my emotional-ness last summer is going to stop me from returning?  What if I can't go back to my "home?"'

What if, what if, what if...

What ifs are irrelevant.  It isn't in my control anymore.  It's in God's hands, and I'm pretty sure that He knows what He's doing better than I do.  Look at His promises:

Jeremiah 29: 11
' "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord.  "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans to give you hope and a future." '

Romans 8: 28
'We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.'

He's totally got this.  He has plans for me!  Does this include summer staff this summer?  I don't know.  But He does. Therefore, I can put my trust solely in the Lord and in His love.  Because He will work all things for good and He will put me where I am supposed to be this summer.  It could be camp, but it could not be camp.  Whatever it is, it is for the glory of God.

Nothing I have is my own.
My talents, my strength, my love... it's all His.
And it's all for His glory.

So I WILL trust in Jesus.  

I refuse to worry.  

I refuse to ask 'What if?' 

I will trust. 

Proverbs 3: 5-6

'Trust in the Lord will all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.' 

What Recovery Looks Like.

"Recovery itself is a very un-glamorous daily process of being willing to fall down again, to break again, to cry again, to get up and try yet again until 'success' manifests as ever-greater sustained healing." 

(Shannon Cutts)

You know, I read something a while ago about how in recovery, you will always come back to the same place again and again.  But that each time, you will know more about how to help yourself when you fall down again and eventually, you'll be able to catch yourself before you go as far down the path, until you are able to completely stop yourself before it happens. 

Well. 

I think I'm learning. 

That's the thing about eating disorders--I don't believe that they ever, truly leave us.  I mean, we recover.  Our weight becomes stable.  Our vitals are good.  We leave residential, day treatment, or weekly treatment to go on to other things like camp or college.  And we get there and things are fine for a while.  

But when you're at camp, you have checkpoints.  

You get your vitals checked. You go home. You have a support system right there with you.

But when you go to college, you're really on your own. 

Until second semester. 

When there is every opportunity to relapse. 

And no matter how much you tell yourself that you won't, you slip.  You don't mean to, of course, but you do.  It's something little, too, like the fact that you don't have classes in the mornings so you don't get up and eat breakfast and your entire meal schedule gets thrown off.  

Once that happens, the thoughts start to resurface: 

"You don't need to eat three meals a day to function."

"Losing a few pounds wouldn't hurt."

And you catch it.

You catch that you're slipping. 

So you make some choices--meal plan, accountability, no secrets, therapy.  

Recovery is something that takes time. 

It's a process. 

And it definitely isn't a straight shot. 

I can think back on all of the times when I've fallen down and struggled and failed at this.  But never have I been able to notice early enough to be proactive before my weight and vitals were dangerous.  I'm struggling. I'm fighting with my ED through all of this. 

But you know what? 

This isn't going to defeat me. 

I will beat this. 

I am stronger. 

Meal plan. Accountability. Therapist. 

All self-initiated. 

This is progress. 

This is what recovery looks like. 

Flight or Invisibility.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin Flight or invisibility?  Pick one.  Why should I have to?  Honestly, there is no reason that I should have to choose between two superpowers.  I am not a superhero and these superpowers could never exist in the real world, so I don’t even need to make an actual decision.  I suppose I could make up something entirely stereotypical about how I would love to fly so that I wouldn't have to walk everywhere or about how I want to be invisible so that I can hide when I don’t want to be seen, but there’s no point.  I don’t want to fly.  I don’t want to be invisible.  I don’t want to have superpowers.  It’s that simple. 

Why?  Look at our culture today.  We spend so much time telling people that they are simply not good enough how they are.  We tell people that they need to be smarter, more talented, skinnier, taller, shorter, whatever it is that we are lacking until all of us believe that we have to be able to do everything for everyone all of the time.  It’s impossible!  We are not superheroes and we never will be.  There’s no reason to wish that we were either, so I don’t.  I am perfectly content with the talents that I have been given—talents that do not, in fact, include being invisible or flying.  I refuse to wish for something that I don’t have, especially if it’s something that I’ll never get, because if I do that, what am I teaching my little cousins, my kids at camp, and all of my younger friends who look toward me as an example? 

Flight or invisibility?  I will take having my own mere human talents over both of those any day.  Besides, who’s to say that normal human talent isn’t a superpower?