Swimming My Self to Shore

An adventure through recovery from an adult eating disorder; a real time experience of letting go to live the dream. . Positive and healing intentions to express versus trigger.

[swimmingmyselftoshore]

Free Write

Morning. Waiting for a tele-health appointment. How much has evolved and changed within me these last 9 months. Two weeks into recovery at the Anna Westin House, covid hit. As I left, two months later, the world was a different place. The new freedom within me was met with restrictions beyond my control. 

I am much larger now. My body. It is still hard to accept, I am learning to love, and to realize that I am 34 and the body changes as it ages. I had not experienced the change in body during my days of malnutrition, so it has been a double whammy for me. I still long for the days of my thin self, however, now I am healthy. My mind functions, my body functions, and I am able to continue on my path of living a life worthy of my self. A full life. Content. 

So, here I am. A dip the last month, however, asking for help earlier than ever before has lead to the dip being only a dip, and not a landslide. 

I think I am going to start logging life again. I journal, however, so much more comes out as I type as it follows my mind quickly. 

There is so much within me to share. The world needs my words, or at least, perhaps it will reach a few fellow warriors to encourage their own recovery. 

I would like to meet up with my fellow warriors again. We met up for a few meals and it was great. I got scared of covid and shut myself off from people this last month as more depression and anxiety set in. It is time to open up again. 

[swimmingmyselftoshore]

“Dad, will you please play a game with me?” I trembled versus going down the rabbit hole.

[swimmingmyselftoshore]

Busy hands calm the mind. Focus on the light of hope.

[swimmingmyselftoshore]

I am not sure where to start without writing that. 

Here I am, on the couch and the windows are open. Winter passed so quickly for me. I sit before this space as I freely write; something that I have not done in some time. I am looking out the window, letting the fingers move for it moves quickly and when I do not stop it, it is a flow. Rhythm. My fingers remember where to go faster than I can get the words out and yet, pause, remember to breath. 

Where are you?

I am here. 

Where are you going?

I am going to the Anna Westin House residential adult eating disorder treatment through the Emily Program. 

Looking down just now as I mistype.

Anything to distract from what I just wrote.

I dropped a mic, in the air, as my friend E. does this at work and I have always admired her timing and confidence in doing so.

I have a bomb to drop. I said after. To make sure the point was clear. This is a different practice; for E. the other E. who I’ve known for 14 years plus, I dropped the bomb and didn’t prepare her and it was not the right setting. I did not even realize the words out of my mouth and how calm and clear they were - blunt - and only later processed that oh dear, this was a bomb for her. She did not live with this. I have not shared to the extent it has affected my life. I mean, as she said, “I thought you just hated the grocery store.”

Enough for now.

Many truths.

Decompress.

Breath and relax into living in truth and integrity.

THE ED mindset does not allow for that unknown - what exposing a truth can do. 

The hope returns and I have never been so ready and prepared for this new life.

I have been dreaming of it. I did not think it was possible, so often, and yet it remained within me, deep.

I choose You, Life. You are desperately reaching out to me through my body and I heard. 

- S.

p.s. If you happen upon this, you are brave. Deep down, you are brave and you are not alone.

[swimmingmyselftoshore]

In a world that seems ever more overwhelming in its instabilities and its complexities, the simplicity of such a restricted way of life can offer comfort of a kind, even if all anorexia’s obsessive rituals are really the exhausting opposite of simplicity.

Emily T. Troscianko

[swimmingmyselftoshore]

1: Anorexia nervosa is a disorder of the brain.

I have read enough blogs, wandering and seeing, perhaps if I did this too, perhaps if I just wrote without editing and shared the me I know to be - rather than the me I publicly present - what would this do for me? What if I let out the secrets within my mind in an anonymous forum of sorts? What power do I reclaim in doing THIS - writing remission reality in “live” free flow - instead of searching, reading, losing myself in THAT - - - - that image that I see and want - nothingness. 

Even now, there is a release I feel as the keys seem to press themselves. There is a juncture of my mind to the brain, or the brain to the mind, and then to the keys. Let these thoughts that surround and surmount me at times take another avenue. Perhaps this simple act of writing can save me from the future. 

The future - within the last three months I have actually desired a future. I shake my head, now, with this tear that is in my eye, when I see these words. I want to let all of this out of me. I am so tired of having it within, having this as my life and identity. 

I have mental illness.

I am not mental illness. 

Maybe non-sensical, but a release, and a beginning in these words on this screen. I am tired. Somehow I ended up sitting at my computer again and was sucked in. Maybe, I ask myself now, if I am the one to write the words that I see on the screen, will I then let myself go and live - rather than the non-living waste stream of the internet? 

It is so easy, a sick-comfort, to be in that space. 

I want to be okay with the discomfort again. I have lived it before, I live it now even as I type... just...to get rid...of that exhausting voice...but I know I can not get rid of it...to lessen the ache of it... that is what it is now.. an ache, for the voices I taught myself not to listen to in an auditory sense - so they became fuzz-static, the voices became a feeling, transformed, and yet, here I am still speaking with them, these voices that I know are “crazy.”

These voices run so fucking deep it makes me sick inside. It makes my body physically go inward, tighten, squeeze up, and tears slip out and I hear the ringing in this moment. 

Grief.

I intellectually know now that these voices will never go away. Disordered eating, anorexia,whatever it is and is not, will never go away. It is a disorder of the brain.

Anorexia nervosa is a disorder of the brain. 

I learned that a few weeks ago, maybe it was longer, my sense of time is not strong. It has made an impact upon my life. It was a turning point. This is where the point continues to turn, as I write, and let go in ways. I am on the other side of the few weeks in hell - the dark pit.

Day one, of sorts.