08/07/2019

I prepared myself to go into recovery with the knowledge that life is far from perfect or predictable-more often than not it’s messy and mercurial. I steadied myself for the unsteady. I thought about forging a new sense of self, juggling recovery commitments with life commitments, and learning to settle into a body that was cared for instead of neglected as I eased my way back into life.

When I found myself in the back of an ambulance trembling from shock with a score of surgeries both behind me and ahead of me I thought I could handle it. I thought I was handling it as gracefully as one could.

As vigilant as I felt I was being to cushion my recovery from any fractures life may inflict it became chipped anyhow.

A health crisis, outside of one brought about by my eating disorder, was not on my radar. When it came screaming into sight at lightning speed I thought I was using the skills I had fought so hard to learn in therapy.

But being in physical pain, I found myself gravitating back towards using the very same ED thoughts and behaviors that had coddled me through my emotional pain. The pain, either one, caused anxiety from my loss of control over the situation and the behaviors gave me immediate release.

That neuro pathway was strong and easy for my brain to tread on without effort. “Conserve the effort for what comes next” was the mentality that sustained me through trauma but had worn a deep byway that my thoughts easily became wedged into now.

My brain dealt with crisis how it’s been conditioned to for my entire life. It pulled my eating disorder back into the control center to calm the chaos because that’s what I’ve relied on for years. And it arguably did its job- on a short term continually more maladaptive way- until it didn’t. Until my eating disorder alone was the glaring chaos.

Now what?

As I draw in deeply and hold onto one of the first breaths I’ve allowed myself in months I find my head wallowing and anguish filling me.

I’m going to choose to exhale it out.

Exhale the bullshit guilt trip my eating disorder holds me hostage with.

I am telling myself as I tell you that there isn’t any shame in learning- even if it comes to us in a less than ideal way.

Relapse is not failure. Learning is cumulative and some lessons take longer to settle. Neurological wiring or rewiring in this case takes repetition and patience I’ve been told.

“Weakness didn’t creep in. Implosion was not happening” I can tell myself objectively as I hold back the finger wagging at my own reflection.

It would be a reach for me to assume that the work I’ve done and the progressive I’ve made in my recovery would be a one-and-done process to erase something so visceral.

Recovery finds me in moments of sluggishness, stagnation, and even regression.  I have to remind myself that what feels like frustrating failure is actually progress- growth at its slowest is still measurable.

I say this not to excuse the difficult place I find myself in now, but to show myself the grace I need to find the strength to stand back up again.