Technical difficulties
*TW: ED, MH*
Long time no write. I’m attempting to break my longer-than-anticipated bout of silence by going full transparency mode because it feels stupid to do anything else.
I’ve been going back and forth about the idea of completely exposing myself online while also wanting to aid in taking away stigmas around mental health. In this case, I know (hope?) that sacrificing my privacy has the potential to help others.
This has been briefly and evasively touched on in the past, but to be blunt, I have been in recovery from an eating disorder since early June. While recovery is a daunting enough task on its own, it has brought up with it feelings of depression and anxiety that I wasn’t fully aware I was feeling.
I initially viewed my times in the depths of my eating disorder as the hardest I’ve been through, but recovery has proven to be just as if not more difficult.
This isn’t to say that it isn’t worth it, because it without a doubt is. I am miles stronger than I was previously, and I remind myself every day that regardless of what my brain is telling me, it can only get better from here. I’d just anticipated that once I made the decision to recover it would be smooth sailing all the way through, that the hardest part of it all would have been admitting I needed help in the first place, but that could not be less true. A major part of recovery has been looking at my thoughts and feelings under a microscope and getting to the root of my behaviors, which will, in turn, help me to challenge and change them (not without the help of my I’m-not-religious-but-had-to-have-been-God-sent recovery team). Looking at these thoughts and feelings has given the opportunity for all of my anxieties and negative emotions, specifically about myself, to come up to the surface, so many of which I had so deeply ingrained in me that I was oblivious to the way they sneakily became part of my day to day thought patterns.
Any strides that I have made thus far come with natural highs and lows. My physical habits pertaining to eating are better than they were previously, but I am nowhere near the place I need to and want to be.
At my lowest points throughout this process, my biggest struggles have been pertaining to my motivation. As in, I have none of it. Just the thought of doing anything that will require slight brainpower sends me into a tailspin, as I am already presumably using up any brainpower I have to fight the ED. I’ve recently been ruminating on the wonderful fact that we are living on a rock floating through space (thanks TikTok), which has been a difficult mindset for me to break from. Since it currently looks like the world is about to end at any moment, what exactly is the point of taking a shower, writing a new blog post, or running an errand?
But as I sit at my desk with an almost completed draft in front of me for the first time in two months, I realize that these little tasks keep my brain busy from the intrusive patterns that more easily permeate when I am sitting on my couch mindlessly scrolling through Twitter. While the initial push to even open up Medium in the first place was reminiscent of trying to give a strep test to a toddler, I now feel a wave of freshness and vigor that replaced the rigid, dark cloud that was brewing over my head for the majority of this day (and the last few weeks).
I don’t really know what the point of this was. I am certainly not looking for pity, and this was not to be seen simply as an excuse for my lack of posting. I just felt it was necessary to share. I mean this in the least pretentious way possible, but I believe in transparency in the writer/reader relationship. Simply put, I’ve been going through it, and you deserve to know. The more I talk about my things, the more (again, hopefully) others will be able to talk about theirs. And if this helped you in any way, cool! Tell me about it — or don’t! And if you didn’t feel any which way about this, also cool! You are not required to keep this information in your brain bank file cabinet, and I would not blame you for just erasing it completely.
This isn’t me promising consistency, but I am promising a good hard try at getting more thoughts and words out there. There is definitely more to come, but there is also no way I’m currently putting myself on a hard deadline.
Resources:
NEDA Eating Disorder Helpline:
- Chat: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/help-support/contact-helpline
- Call/Text: (800) 931–2237
SAMHSA National Helpline: 1–800–662-HELP (4357)
NAMI Helpline: 1–800–950-NAMI (6264)
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1–800–273–8255
