True Life Tuesday

You think you know but you have no idea…

A beautiful life hanging on strings.

….What it is really like to be a prisoner, a puppet, and a plaything to an eating disorder monster. People glamourize eating disorders. They believe that they are a choice, a way to lose weight, and a way to have power in your life and achieve your dreams. If you are anorexic, you have will power. If you are bulimic, you can eat anything you want and never gain an ounce. You have no idea…

I remember when I first (and the only time) told my dad that I was struggling with bulimia, he said, “I considered throwing up my thanksgiving dinner. Sometimes I wish I had an eating disorder. It would make losing weight easy.” He seemed extremely relieved. He knew something was “going on” with my health, and finding out that it was something as “harmless” as an eating disorder seemed to make his day. He believed, like most people, that this was a simple phase. That I was worried about my weight like any other girl in college and that I was taking it too far. He believed that it was easy to simply “stop throwing up” and then health would magically be restored. And it seemed that way, when my weight came back, and I was looking much healthier and acting much happier. Better does not equal recovered. You have no idea…

You think the finish line is there. You have no idea.

I suffer from bulimia. I have suffered for over seven years, or since I was nineteen-years-old and the first diet of my life spiraled out of control. I had all of these ideas about recovery:

Recovery is simple.

Once I recover from this huge obstacle, life will be happy and easy.

I can not and will not die from this.

I will know when I am recovered. It will feel like finally making it to shore.

Recovery is not a simple choice to stop behaviors. It is not one, single choice. It is a series of choices that you make every, single day for the rest of your life. There is no end point or magical a-ha! moment in recovery. And as for life being easy…right! Life is life. It is going to feel horrible once you start feeling again.

Imagine a puppet who has been controlled by his master for a long time. The master kept him safe and made his life manageable. The puppet wanted to start living his own life, so he started to cut off the strings one by one. Once the fifth string was severed (puppets have 5 strings), he crumbled to the floor. He had no idea how to use his own arms, legs, and neck. He had been supported by his master for so long that he had forgotten the simple act of walking.

Fallen puppet. Free. No longer a puppet.

This is how recovered feels at first. When you finally cut off each string, you are starting from scratch. You are learning how to walk and live again. You are living for the first time in years, and finally seeing who you really are. Learning to move without strings, learning to be your own master is a simple task of picking yourself off of the ground. You may wish to surrunder to the master when times get hard and your body aces too much from the effort, but you need to push through. You are strong enough. You can be the master.

I can look forward and away from the endless binges, the zombie-trance walks to and from the grocery store, the ritualistic filling and emptying, the disappearing from the world, and te complete shadow of an existence. I can take step by itty bitty step and make progress.

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to my eating disorder self, Murphy, the one that I kicked out of my life back in January, the one I left to bleed out in the bushes in my dream all of those months ago. I would like to share it.

 

Murphy,

Thank you for being what I have needed. You are a reflection of the weakest parts of myself and have made me realize what those parts look like in the mirror. It is not that I hate you. That would be too simple. It is that I have grown accustomed to you and comfortable. Those weak parts are a wall that protects me from everything. If I am not healthy, then I can blame everything else in life on that fact. If I am not succeeding, well, that is because my mind is clouded by you. Easy excuses. Without you, I am learning that life happens. All of the things I have been terrified of happen. And now…I let them happen. I am there to breathe them in and experience them. You know what? They feel horrible sometimes. Thank you for protecting me from the pain for such a long time. You kept me unscratched and safe.

I yearn for the pain and the scratches now. I want to keep experiencing everything, because now my body doesn’t hurt anymore. You kept me safe, but you kept dragging me down. You had me locked up in a tower and now that the window is open and the ladder is propped up, I am not sure if I want to fully descend all of the time. You gave me shelter from the storm, and although sometimes I need that shelter, most of the times, I am happier out in the wind and rain.

I am not sure if life is better without you. But life happens without you. When something happens, is it really better than when it did not happen? No. It simply exists now. I am no longer an impressive list of achievements on a shiny piece of resume paper. No, now I am a living, breathing, person, eyes wide open, seeing the world for the first time in years.

I do not need you anymore. Belly aches from laughter feel better than belly aces from bingeing and purging. And a puffy face from crying out my emotions feels better than a puffy face from purging. Everything feels better because I can feel. Even the pain feels better.

I understand now why I needed you, but now I have someone else. It’s not you, it’s me. We want different things in life (I want to live and you want me to die). It is not going to work. I am sure you will find the perfect girl for you in the future (and I hope she kicks your ass, too).

Finally free,

Me

 

You think eating disorders are fun and games, but they are not. You think that recovery is one choice to get better, but it is not. This is my life in a world where I can write a leetter to the monster who used to occupy the spot on my shoulder and pull my string. This is my life where I am learning to move my limbs and think on my own.

Maybe now you have an idea.

 

Motivation Monday

Motivation Monday. I have decided to make Mondays a chance to discuss motivation in my recovery. Today, I want to adress the words themselves.

These two words have many negatives associated with them. I am calling BS on these associations.

Let us take the word “motivation”. It is often used to define how one feels about exercise and losing weight. You need motivation to commit to a healthy diet and exercise regime. This seems harmless enough. When it is placed into an eating disordered mindset, this is dangerous. Exercise does not become something you do to improve your health. No, on the contrary, exercise is what you are supposed to do in order to be worthy, to be enough, to be… Yet, any amount of exercise will never be enough. A healthy diet is not a lifestyle, it is restriction, it is a death sentence. Motivation is accompanied by tv commercials and magazine covers screaming at me to “lose ten pounds this month!” and “trim 4 inches off of your hips this week!”. Wow, I didn’t know that I needed to lose ten pounds and 4 inches. Thank you for the reminder! Motivation equals self control and implies that you have been doing something wrong.

Now, the word Monday. Monday is accompanied with dread. It is the start of a greuling work week. It is the start of a stream of days that takes us closer to our ending. It is associated with recovery from a drunken fiasco of a weekend. Coworkers nod at each other and smile through their puffy eyes and sleepy brains.

Need I say more?

New associations:

Motivation equals the will to live your life. I am motivated to keep running the circles and loops of recovery. I am motivated to continue to fill my days with different ways to cope with my own existense, by attempting to celebrate my existence. The motivation transforms from being a death sentence to being a prescription for change for the better.

In the book, 8 keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder, the authors discuss five stages of motivation for change.

1. Pre-Contemplation: You don’t think you have a problem and/or don’t want to change.
2. Contemplation: You realize you have a problem and are thinking about changing, but you don’t know how to start or what to do.
3. Preparation: You are getting ready for change. You look into different options, research online, or buy a self-help book.
4. Action: You know you want to change and you are taking action making plans, and doing things differently.
5. Maintenance: You are working to continue doing the new behaviors, and not slip back.

Here is a table of my old behaviors and my new behaviors. I am definitely motivated to keep it up!

Old action	New action
Spending money on binge food	Spending money of great toiletries or presents for myself
Walking to the grocery store in a daze	Clearing the days with light exercise/yoga
Spending 1-2 hours in a b/p episode	Spend 1-2 hours writing
Finding comfort in shaky emptiness	Finding comfort in feeling full
I hate myself	This feels amazing
Weekend night spent with a box of pizza	Weekend night spent with a bubble bath and a face mask
Food, food, and more food	Food and friends, and quality time

Now for the word, Monday. A new week means a new beginning and a new chance to embrace the world around me. Maybe I will find a good job? Maybe I will discover a new way to spend my day? Maybe I will make a new friend? You never know what will happen. If you spend your Monday’s dreading the events of the week, your eyes will never be open to the good things aorund you.

Another week means more chances to explore!

Motivation Monday. This is a chance to grow as huge as possible, instead of chiseling away at your curves and your personality!

Food for Thought Sunday

Myth: Eating disorders are about the food. If you eat regularly, restore your weight and health, you are recovered. (So go out and eat a bagel. Please.)

You hear this time and time again, when you go to group/individual therapy, read recovery blogs and books, and tackle your own personal ed monsters. Murphy was not in my life because I was hungry for food. He was in my life because I was hungry for something else… The food covered up something, and it actually mirrored a trend in my life that I practiced since I was a small, small child.

Here is a question to start digging up the meaning of the food, taken from 8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder: How is your relationship to food like your relationship to people?

This took me a night of tossing and turning in my bed to finally unearth, but as I sit at my computer this morning, I am hit by the answer. It is too obvious.

My relationship with food while in my eating disorder is to binge and purge. No amount of food is ever enough when I am “hungry”. Nothing satisfies me, and when it finally hurts so much inside of my body, I get rid of it. I take in a lot and then throw it out. It’s like Murphy gives me the fullness, love, support, comfort that I yearn for, and then he takes it all away, leaving me so raw and empty that I cannot help my curl up into a ball on my bathroom floor. If I kept it up, I am pretty sure that I would have turned my bathroom into a swimming pool from all of the tears cried.

My relationship with people my entire life has been to befriend very easily. I am super open when I first meet a person. It becomes an intense relationship, and then it instanly fizzles and dies when I move on to the next friendship. In elementary school, I had a different best friend each year. When I went on cruiseship vacations with my parents, I would make great friends and then leave them a week later. I essentially learned to binge and purge friends. I would fill up with the great feelings of connecting with someone and then when it became too much and felt uncomfortable, I would release them from my life.

Sorry Dale, we can no longer be friends.

As I grew older, it became easy to let people leave my life. If they did not want to be there for me and keep in touch when I moved away or when I shared my struggle with my eating disorder, I would be okay with it. After all, I have lost A LOT of friends throughout my life. It is nothing new.

Moving onwards…

I have changed my relationship to food. I no longer feel the need to fill up to the point of combustion with food. I no longer crave that emptiness in my body afterwards.

My relationship with people, however, is a work in progress. I am scared of making friends. In fact, I do not know how to make friends, and as a 27-year-old woman, I feel that it may be impossible to find someone or someones who would waant to be a real friend. After all, people my age have many friends and a huge support system, right? That’s what I believe. Why bother to burden them. Why bother to burden myself…

Yet, I have one best friend. My fiance. We spend too much time together and are more comfortable together than any two human beings should ever be. And yet…he is still here with me. He loves me and I love him. He is proof that I have the capacity to hold on to someone and work on a relationship with people, just as I have worked on my relationship with food.

This is a work in progress…because I will always be a work in progress.

Saturday Lesson

This princess learns something new every day. That’s the fun part of life, learning. The challenge in this is in being vulnerable and admitting that you do not know everything. Even as I type this and know that I do not know everything and that I am not perfect, my heart clenches. It actually hurts to admit to myself that I am imperfect, that I have much to learn, and I have so much farther to grow. However, I sincerely hope that I never stop learning and growing.

Saturday Lessons

I am declaring Saturday a day to discuss a lesson that I have learned in my life. It may or may not be recovery related, but it will always be life related. Because, as I step forward, my recovered life will be the only life I am living.

Lesson: “Put on your big girl panties and rock it.”

Last summer, I worked at a seasonal cafe in Glacier National Park, called Two Sisters’ Cafe. It was located four miles from each of the park’s entrances. All twnety or so of us that worked there lived in cabins behind the cafe and spent the summer without tv, internet, and any real luxuries. This was my first line cooking job and I quickly learned that I do not have the mentality or personality to be a line cook. It was difficult, fast-paced, efficient work. There was no time for perfection, correcting mistakes, or checking mistakes. You get a ticket, you execute. That is all. A robot could do it. I am not a robot.

Fast forward one month into the summer and I was actually kicked out of the kitchen. I was so terrified of making a mistake that I was making mistake after mistake after mistake. When Big John shouted, “Get the fuck out of my kitchen” in front of the restaurant, I sulked outside and waiting to be fired. I believed that it was over. It must have been, because I was being so careless and really shaming the art of cooking. Susan, the other owner, walked out and told me to leave and wait until she came to talk to me.

I was feeding my fears, making them come true.

That evening, I went on a hike with our head line cook. She had been working there for five summers and knew how difficult it was to work with John and Susan. She had been screamed at. She had been kicked out. This was not out of the ordinary. They liked to teest you and make sure that you had what it took to handle the intense crowds that walk through the doors in the middle of the season.

During that hike, I knew that I didn’t deserve to be treated like shit. But I also knew that I was treating myself far worse that John and Susan. They were gentle and kind in caprison to how Murphy made me treat myself. So we completed the hike and I slept, awaiting my fate for the summer.

In the morning, Susan drove by my cabin and told me to come down to her office. Terrified and knowing that I may or may not be working my shift that evening, I strolled down within five minutes. I sat down in front of her, took a deep breath, and waited for the shouts.

Instead, she was calm and very matter-of-fact. She said that I was being sloppy, but based on my attendance and professionalism, it seemed that I cared about the job, so she wasn’t firing me. She believed in my ability and knew that I could do it. I was getting in my own way, and that needed to stop. She told me to “put on my big girl panties, and rock it.”

That is exactly what I did.

I went to my cabin, took one of my work t-shirts and made some additions. I wrote “RAWR!” on my right shoulder and on the bottom corner of my shirt, I drew a pair of big girl panties. I also wrote “ROCK IT” on my wrist in permanent marker every shift that I worked. I was going to pretend that I was strong enough to do this.

Here are the doodles that accompanied the days surrounding this turning point in the summer.

The day before. I appropriately drew different elements of the summer and my mind.

The day I was kicked out of the kitchen. Very conflicted.

Things started to settle, but I was not exactly hopeful.

Maybe it is possible!

Yes, yes I can do it!!

Strong.

I surived the summer. I actually did a terrific job and reallly enjoyed cooking the evening shifts with one of the other line cooks. That summer, I learned that I can do anything. I may be slow to learn and get my butt in gear, but I can take the heat.

Lesson: I have what I need inside of me. I am strong. I simply need to believe it and be it. Life will never make sense and be linear. You are challenged, you arrive at the challenge, and you are challenged again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Feel Good Friday

This princess has spent the majority of her twenties lost in darkness, seeing light when she opened her eyes, but usually too terrified to open them fully. When one is lost in an eating disorder, it is easy to forget what feels good. In fact, you never do anything that feels good. That would be plain wrong. It would not be a responsible or productive use of time.

What on earth could come from reading a silly young adult series?

What good would it do to indulge in a fluffy fragrant bubble bath?

Why would you ever build a pillow fort in your living room and keep it for a few days as your little nook?

Words I now live by.

Somewhere along the way, I believed that pleasure was plain silly. I actually believed that my eating disorder made me feel good. The truth is, that my eating disorder did not allow me to feel at all. Feeling was terrifying. Even the good feelings.

What the fuck do you do when you feel good?

Dance around your living room? Run up and kiss the love of your life? Oh, right, I guess I could do those things.

One of the cores of recovery is learning what feels amazing. There are things that feel indulgent and incredible and make you sink back in bliss. These things are pure magic. They can take you away without numbing. They can elevate you without feeling dizzy. They can make you smile, giggle, and even cry when you need to. These are the “little things” that everyone talks about. The little things that make life and the world a place you want to be.

Pillow Fort

Today, I am typing inside of my pillow fort. Yes, I actually built one yesterday. And yes, it is still in the middle of my living room today. I am taking stock of the simple, silly things that keep my head on straight, when I find myself spinning out of control.

Music: Months ago it was my recovery playlist. This week, it is a playlist of my favorite musical tunes. I has forgotten how much fun I have singing along to showtunes. Also, I learned that The Newsies is nominated for a Tony! I loved the original movie.

Young Adult novels and series: Okay, so I used to make myself attempt to enjoy actual literature. Truth be told, I do not enjoy it. I indulge in young adult stories, like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Aviary, and now I am reading the second book in the Divergent series. I keep feeling myself disappearing into these worlds and love it. I honestly do not know what I would do without these books right now?

Books are magic.

Girly spa things: Fancy nail polish, face masks, toner tabs that you fizz in a bowl and steam your face with, bath bombs, foot masks, even hair masks. I have falling in love with indulging my body in treatments and products that make me feel pretty. Yes, it may sound ain, but recovering from an eating disorder leaves you with a sometimes altered body image. When I take care of myself and feel good, I look in the mirror and actually see pretty.

Sex: (Inappropriate, I know. But honestly, this must be said. Block your eyes if you need to.) I have a tendency of taking myself far too seriously. I actually forgot how great sex, completely unplanned and spontaneous sex with your fiance, feels. I think I am in the middle of an intimacy breathrough. You see, with an eating disorder, you have complete intimacy. The act of bingeing and purging, the building up and release, is very much like sex. Trusting that intimacy can be a great thing is difficult, but I am rediscovering this.

Pictures, Words, and Art: I am a very visual person. And I love words, always have. I am one of those people who will not speak unless I know precisely what I will say. With pictures, I find an immediate connection and I won’t let go. I have discovered the pure fun of Pinterest and am loving every monet that I search for ideas and inspiration. Words give me purpose, and a way to speak with people. It does not matter if the words simply float around in the air, unseen. They are there, they are tangible. That is enough.

Watching my words fly around makes me feel good.

Feel Good Friday will be a regular thing for me. I need to remind myself of what works. Enjoy and feel free to add your own feel good things.

100 Days – Myths

This princess is celebrating a big day today. She is not how she will celebrate. Maybe by releasing lanterns into the night air, going on a hot air balloon ride, having a magic tea party, going for a nighttime flight around the neighborhood? Or maybe she will simply breathe in the meaning of this particular milestone.

The key to enjoying my days and my life. Breathe.

Today is just another day. However, it marks 100 days from the moment I broke up with Murphy (my eating disorder) and declared an official separation. I still remember him fondly, because he did serve his purpose, but I no longer need him in my life. I am not clutching on with white knuckles or holding my breath until the next time he can infuse me with breath. Nope. I am clutching on to life itself and breathing on my own now.

May is Myth Month, and as a myth buster, I want to address my own personal myths of recovery and how they have evolved and have been busted throughout my seven-year adventure of recovery. In those seven years I was in recovery. The past 100 days…I am recovering. There is a difference between surviving just another day and looking forward to the next release and knowing that indulging the monster will never happen again.

Myth: Recovery means having life figured out.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.  The onl thing I have figured out is that life will always happen. It does not matter what you figure out, what you conquer, what you achieve, there will always be another puzzle, another obstacle, an other project. The gift of recovery is that I am nnot able to meet life face to face, say hello, and try my very best.

I am getting married, but it is not happily ever after. I am graduated from college, have a chef certificate, can write and cook my heart out, yet I have no idea what to do to make money in this world. Life is a huge learning process, but at least now I can learn and play along.

Myth: A day without ed is a day of freedom from negative thoughts and sadness.

I do not think about food anymore. I do not obsess or agonize about calories. I know what I love to eat, I know what flavors and textures make both my palate and my body happy. However, I still feel like a crazy woman in need of a padded cell at times.

You know that feeling of wanted to jump out of the window because you cannot sit with your thoughts? Have you ever experienced that feeling where so much energy is coursing through your veins that you cannot see straight? The monster still finds its way into my head and makes me want to punch anything in sight and scream at the world. In the past, a binge and purge would cure this coursing of electricity. It would unplug me from that crazy source of….whatever you want to call it.

Now…I simply let it pass. I lock myself in the bedroom, kick and scream at and into the pillows. I collapse in a heap on the bed and breathe in and out, eventually giggling at how crazy I can be at times. These “episodes” will happen and they are simply red flags and warnings that something needs work. I can now address these things and start working on them, instead of numbing and trying to erase them.

Myth: Recovery means a seemless relationship with food and self-image.

Every person struggles with their body image and what they eat every now and then. The difference is that a healthy minded, non-ed person does not define herself (or himself) by their body size and/or what they eat. I am not a bad person because my jeans fit tightly today. Actually, I think I will have a talk with my clothes drier.

Overall, I enjoy my body. I even enjoy spending what once would have been binge food money on “food” for the outside of my body…my favorite toiletries. I indulge in awesome bath bombs, bubble bars, lotions, and body butters from LUSH and Bath and Body Works. I soak in the great feelings of having a body that is surprisingly whole after all of the abuse it has endured from the monster.

Making friends with the woman in the mirror.

Myth: Recovery is an earned Happily Ever After.

Nope. Again, life will always happen. There is numbed, coasting, effortless existence. If I wanted that, I guess I could get a prescription for some happy pills and go along life not giving a shit for the rest of my life. No thank you.

Myth: If I am strong willed and selfless, I should be able to recover easily and quickly.

Actually, it is not that easy, and we all know this. A binge and purge does not feel good. This illness does not feel good! In fact, I cannot count how many times I have said, “I hate myself” when in the middle of an episode. These days, I do not say those three words. Instead, I try to say the following words as often as possible: “This feels amazing.”

Myth: Full recovery is not possible.

100 days, while simply another day of good choices and living, is proof to myself that I am doing this. I am recovering. I have a feeling similar to making it to the other side of a really wide body of water. I am finally on shore, learning how to walk with my feet on the ground.

I have two feet and ten toes. I can do anything in the world.

It helps me to have a goal related to a healthy number. Days free from behaviors gives me the currency of strength and proof that I can and will keep on fighting and now I am slowly living and not fighting anymore.

My next goals:

Six months: I will get a tatoo of an inspirational image.

Dandelion turning into birds. Wishing for freedom. Living that freedom.

One year: I will get a tatoo of an inspirational phrase or word.

Until then, I am actually curious to experience the unfolding of my life without Murphy glued to my side.

Myth Busting

This princess loves to write with a purpose and an open heart. She wishes to cut herself open and show everyone everything that lives inside of her. It is not always pretty. In fact, most of the time it is raw and disturbing. But that is life. She has grown tired of shiny rainbows and lollipops that promise nothing but smiles. She has learned to embrace the rain clouds and thunder, the winds and the fierce cold. She has learned that darkness is necessary in order be born, or reborn. Without darkness, you cannot walk into the light. And without emerging, well, you are simply stagnant. She spent too much of her life being stagnant.

Caught up in the shiny happy rainbows.

This month on WEGO Health is about shattering myths. Many myths are associated with eating disorders, but the one that has pervaded my mind the most, and the one I have spent too much of my ed-stained life believing is this: You can never fully recovery from an eating disorder. I have been told, from professionals and from others in recovery that an eating disorder is something you will fight daily and that it never truly goes away. I believed this. I believed that it was enough to live day by day in fear of slipping into my old behaviors, and that I was still healthy if I slipped only once of twice a month. After all, once or twice a month does not fulfil the diagnosis of bulimia.

• “Frequency and Duration: For a diagnosis of bulimia nervosa, episodes of binging and purging must occur at least twice a week for three consecutive months.”

This is dangerous thinking. When I was still slipping once in a while, I was often being strict with what I consumed, either being restrictive or over indulgent. I was always on edge. I was terrified of being alone inside of my own mind. It was a very crowded place, because I still allowed my eating disorder to occupy his very spacious room. I never thought that I needed to kick him out. I never believed it was possible, because I never believed that full recovery was possible. If I kept this up, my body would continue to suffer, slowly getting more sick. Better is not enough anymore.

I can now say, with certainty, that I believe in recovery. I believe that I will one day be recovered (period). It took a lot of stumbled to get to this point, over seven years of recovery, to be exact. But now as I am typing, I am spinning with the excitement of having kicked ed out of my life almost 100 days ago. Each day I spend without him in my life, I grow stronger. I open up more to life. I am less scared.

Amazing words.

I am going to be a myth buster and the exception to the rule, a beautiful disaster that by some miracle still lives and is learning thrive.

Health blog challenge – The end

Today is the first day of May. I am stunned by how quickly the month flew by. I completed a blogging challenge, wrote a 100-page play, got rejected from my dream job, and reached 90 days of recovery. I am growing with leaps and bounds and taking on life. Kind of. Not really.

If I have accomplished these feats and milestones, shouldn’t I feel happy? If I have accomplished things people have not even dreamed of, why is it that I had to lock myself up in my room last night to scream into and punch the pillows? Truly, a white padded cell would have been perfect for that moment. If I am doing so well, why do I have moments where I am bursting at the seams. Not in my clothes, mind you, but in my body. Sometimes I feel like the energy within me is too huge for my mind and body. Sometimes I feellike I am too enormous for this world. And then there are the times where I feel so miniscule and invisible.

Myth: A recovered Life means a Perfect Life

Being recovered means being happy, right? Being recovered means having your life together and living your dreams. No. No. No. Recovery means that you live. You take in life. That’s it. There are no roses and balloons being thrown at you. You are not rolled a magic carpet as you walk into a store. You are simply another person in this world.

The difference is that I no longer have Murphy on my shoulder. I am not longer listening to his derogatory comments and hatred. I am no longer walking around like a zombie, eating away at the hours left in my life. My skin is soft, my body is hydrating, my face is only puffy from crying, my hair is stronger, I walk with confidence, I can walk into a store and buy something without freaking out, and I can be intimate without a panic attack.

Little by litte, the gifts that come with life appear at my doorstep. Little by little. Just like my recovery.

I suppose I was expecting more fan fare when I appraoched the milestone of 100 days in recovery. I was expecting more celebration in completing a book (January) and a play (April). I’m still me, no one different. I am still looking for employment. I still have the same feet, hands, body, and mind.

Congratulations. You win…Life. That is enough.

Am I still allowed to celebrate?

Health blog challenge – Day 30 – Wordle

Word Cloud. As we mentioned back on HAWMC Day 16 (link to pinboard post), a picture is worth a thousand words.  For today’s post we’re going one further and putting your words into an image, a word cloud or tree representing YOUR health focus, interest, or passions.  Write down some of your favorite topics off the top of your head or review the tags in your blog post for some surprises.  For some examples on layout check out www.wordle.net.

Recovery key words

Can someone please explain to me why it is the last day of April?

Health blog challenge – Day 29 – 6 sentences

Six Sentence Story. In this day of micro-blogging – brevity is a skill worth honing. Can you tell a story and make it short and sweet? What can you say in six sentences? Will you give your post a title, beginning, middle, and end – or do something different entirely? You’ve got 6 sentences: be creative, inventive, and direct; this may include being generous with punctuation. Good luck!

 

The princess rolled over in her bed to cherish the sight of her prince. She realized that this moment, this day, held so much it its hands, for it was the past, the present, and the future. Yesterday, it was the future. Today it is the present. Tomorrow it will be the past. She walked out of the bedroom, ready to live.