I CARE ABOUT BEING LOVED BY OTHERS MORE THAN I CARE ABOUT BEING LOVED BY MYSELF.
I wrote that in a journal I had started before I began my recovery journey in July of 2020. That journal was filled with me writing that I knew I needed help but wasn’t ready to get it.
“I’m 97 pounds, you can see the veins all over my body, I workout way too much, I restrict food, and I obsessed over calories. I thought this made me strong because I had so much discipline and control, but all I feel now is out of control completely. I don’t remember the last time I was comfortable in my skin.”
I wrote that on May 26, 2020. Before I had accepted the help of therapists and medication, I knew I was in a dark place, but I didn’t know how badly I needed to get out. Looking back at that journal has shown me how far I’ve come in 8 months, but it more so shows me how much farther I have left to go.
AM I WEAK?
Needing help makes you weak. It makes you a burden. If you were strong you wouldn’t need anyone else. If you were strong you wouldn’t be sad. Feeling sad makes you weak.
That’s what used to run through my head. I constantly told myself that accepting recovery would make me weak. That needing the help of therapists and medication made me weak. But holy shit was I wrong. Accepting recovery made me vulnerable, yes. Weak? Hell no. Admitting you need help makes you strong, letting others in and being vulnerable makes you strong, and feeling all of your emotions makes you strong. Why has it taken me my whole life to realize this?
That is a question I’ve struggled with recently. But the thing is, I’ve spent so long feeling bad for myself and feeling guilty for not understanding how to process and be comfortable with my emotions that I haven’t put in the work to actually do it. And that is where my godsend of a therapist has come in. I’m not normal and I don’t want to be. I want to be Nikki.
The walls I’ve put up are built on a foundation of lies. I began building these walls upon the assumptions that I wasn’t good enough, I could only trust myself, I couldn’t show my emotions because it made me weak and a burden. And it’s like I’ve been trying to get around, over, and under these walls, but I’ve never tried breaking through them. Numbing myself out was easier than addressing the root cause of my emotions and the reasons I put up these walls.
Throughout my childhood I was scolded for acting out, not doing as I was told, saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, walking, breathing, sleeping.. It felt like everything I did was wrong. And I’m not putting the blame on my parents (gbless my mom, she is my hero), but it’s hard to grow up and understand what love is when you don’t have an example to look up to. By the time I was old enough to start forming thoughts about love, my parents had already fallen out of love. I watched two people stay together who didn’t love each other for a majority of my life. So this foundation of love that I have been trying to prove my whole life that I am worthy of, was a misconception from the start. I’ve been trying to prove that I am worth loving, but without trying to understand love itself.
SPEAKING OF LOVE..
I love ‘saving the day’ and being a ‘fixer’. I love helping other people with their struggles. I love showing up for people. I love showing up for people because I feel like no one ever showed up for me. I feel like I have to show up for everyone else so that I can prevent them from feeling the way I have.
I am reliable. I am smart. I am loved. These are things I have been trying so hard to prove to myself. And it was so hard for me to finally admit that I needed help because it made me feel like I was betraying everything that I wanted to be. If I was reliable then I wouldn’t have prioritized exercice, food restriction, & calorie counting over the people I love. If I was smart, I would’ve understood that those habits were not healthy, that I was killing myself, and that my view of nutrition *pardon my French* was extremely fucked up. If I was loved, then why did no one help me? Why was I able to get to a point where I was isolated and alone, fallen under the radar and shrinking myself to nothing?
I know that this logic is flawed beyond words. I am flawed and I accept that now. But what I don’t accept is allowing myself to think that way of myself ever again. I am flawed and my flaws make me who I am.
I have a big heart with so much love in it, but I’ve spent so much time trying to show that love to everyone but myself. I don’t want anyone to feel unloved in the ways that I have. (By NO means am I saying that I feel unloved. I’m talking about moments and times of weakness and depression). I want people to feel comfortable being their true selves and love each other and what makes us each unique. Sure it’s probably cheesy and it is unrealistic for every single person to feel this, but hey a girl can dream. The thing is though, in order for me to be able to help others, I have to be able care about myself the way I care about them.
FEELING MY FEELINGS
The above is much easier said than done, but it started with recovery 8 months ago. Throughout this time I have learned so goddamn much about myself that it’s all coming out as word vomit on this page.
I don’t know why I hold myself to standards that I don’t hold others to. It’s some weird fucked up logic in my head that if I don’t hold myself to the highest possible standard, that I’ll fall through the cracks. That I’ll just be another ‘plain jane’ that won’t be remembered. So if I do the very best at everything and I’m always there for everyone, people will realize my value. right? That I’m worth loving? God, I was so wrong. I know that the people who matter already know the person I am.
A big piece of recovery is continuing to set goals and milestones. Something to work for and achieve. Move onto the next block as the one beneath you crumbles. And setting these milestones in recovery wasn’t too hard – it’s easy to set a goal, it’s hard to achieve that goal and keep moving forward. To not regress. What’s hard is holding yourself accountable every day to continue working towards that goal, to keep pushing forwards even when you do regress. Recovery (and life) is not a linear path. It’s okay to go off the path, it’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to get frustrated and feel every emotion in the book. What’s not okay is losing sight of these goals.
And I’ve been rambling because setting goals for myself outside of recovery scares the living shit out of me. I’ve been so hesitant to set new goals for myself because for so long I was set on the idea that there wasn’t going to be a life AFTER the eating disorder. I was the eating disorder and the eating disorder was me. I was going to continue whittling myself away until I couldn’t anymore. I used the eating disorder to ‘prove’ to myself that I didn’t matter enough for anyone to notice that I was shrinking myself to a point of not existing. The smaller I got, the more I proved myself right. And god that was fucked up. I was proving to myself that no one cared enough to stop me. I (very incorrectly) thought it was everyone’s responsibility except mine to tell me that I mattered, that I was enough. I was so insecure and depressed that I dug myself into a hole that I didn’t plan on digging myself out of. And I’m so ashamed of that, that I never really confessed that I was ready to stop living.
REALLY LIVING
I know now that I was not ready to stop living. I have a whole life ahead of me and got lost in the hole I was in. The hole I am climbing out of. I want to live my life by feeling every single emotion, being vulnerable, exploring the world, feeling uncomfortable, living in the moment, and most importantly, loving myself for who I am.
Blooming into Myself 