I haven’t written in a few days. Not because I wasn’t acknowledging my feelings and thoughts, but because I was living in them. The way that I feel in this moment proves that all discomfort truly is temporary, and that recovery is possible. The days and nights I cried when my meal plan was increased, when my exercise was decreased, when I was forced to talk about things I sheltered inside of me for years – all of those were necessary to allow me to be sitting here writing this right now. I’m grateful to be here. To truly and fully be here, with every emotion that I have, and to acknowledge each and every one of them. I feel happier and more in touch with myself than I have in years. It’s a foreign feeling almost, to be in touch with my emotions and to be in the process of understanding them on a deeper level. Specifically, I’m exploring the feeling that I have in the back of my mind – When is the other shoe going to drop? What is going to happen to take away the happiness and peace that I feel in myself? It’s that self-sabotage coming into play.
Why does it have to?
It’s a great question. Why does the other shoe have to drop? Why does something bad have to happen? I know that the answer is that the shoe doesn’t have to drop, and that I don’t know that something bad is going to happen. But it’s like a pattern developed in my brain a long time ago that I’m not allowed to stay happy for a prolonged period of time. That there will always be something to mess it up or stand in my way of happiness. And that’s a pattern that I have been trying to break now that I finally understand I am the only one responsible for my happiness. This pattern of self-sabotage became a defense mechanism a long time ago. It comes from a place of fear, from a place of losing people I love or things I love, from a place of feeling worthless, from a place of not understanding myself. I can’t be mad at anyone but myself when I sabotage my happiness or my relationships – there is no one to blame except myself, and this fit into the easily manipulated mindset that my eating disorder capitalized on. If I sabotaged every aspect of my life, then I would have nothing to lose. The happiness wouldn’t go away because I wouldn’t be afraid to lose it. I think that’s what my eating disorder convinced me. I say ‘I think’ because I’m honestly still trying to figure it out. But once I had distanced myself away from the people and things I loved, the prolonged happiness I believed would come with independence and no fear of losing it, never came. Instead, I felt guilt. I felt lonely. I felt ashamed. I did it to myself – I self-sabotaged to avoid being hurt by anyone or anything else.
It was something I never recognized.
I’m just now understanding how convoluted my train of thought with pushing away the things that make me happy in order to avoid losing them. It’s just extremely fucked in my opinion. It’s that damn emotional maturity still catching up to me. But I’ll rewind and take you through my mindset. I wasn’t happy with the way that I felt, so I decided to exercise and change my diet. I had started a new job, ran a half marathon, and passed my CPA exam months prior, and I was left feeling drained of adrenaline. The exercise and diet brought this back. They made me happy. So I kept doing it. I would spend more and more time focusing on these activities that gave me endorphins and adrenaline and made me feel strong. And when anyone would comment on my diet not consisting of enough, or my exercise being too excessive, it felt as though a piece of my happiness was being taken away. If someone suggested I don’t exercise for a day or wanted me to go out to eat, it felt as though they didn’t respect my happiness and my new lifestyle. It again felt like they wanted to take it away. And I didn’t like that anything could be taken away from me – so the other solution was to just get rid of anything else that could be taken away aside from food and exercise, so that I wouldn’t have to fear losing them. I just wouldn’t have them anymore – I would only have food and exercise. And food and exercise equalled happiness. Relationships end, people leave, your job can fire you, a pandemic can take away all social activities that you once loved. So why risk losing those? Why risk the pain and sadness of any of these losses when it’s easier to just push them away, shove the feelings of sadness it caused you to part with them down, and focus on what makes me feel good? That’s what I thought.
I wish I could’ve shaken myself awake from this delusion.
If I could go back in time I would literally knock some sense into myself. I would scream and cry and shake myself that the only thing I was doing was killing myself and losing touch with everyone and everything around me. There was no other shoe to drop because I had dropped them all myself in such a dramatic way. All of the trauma in my life that caused me to become defensive of my emotions led me to believe that another shoe was always going to drop. But the thing is, if I would have just reframed my thoughts, I spent 6 months studying and taking my CPA, I trained for and ran a half marathon, I began a job at the firm I looked up to in college. I did ALL of these things in the last year, what else can I accomplish?, I would have realized how remarkable my life was. I wasn’t happy because I was terrified of losing that feeling of joy and accomplishment, rather than relishing in it and celebrating it.
I know life is going to throw some curveballs along the way, but looking back on the past year, I would never have imagined I could be feeling like this right now. I went through the worst time in my life and came out on the other side – I know I’m going to feel angry, sad, hurt, upset, etc., etc., at some point. It’s inevitable – but these aren’t bad emotions. They aren’t any less worthy of recognition than happiness. Because in order to keep this feeling of inner emotional peace that I feel right now, I know that I need to acknowledge the not-so-fun feelings when they appear. That happiness isn’t just served on a platter. That I’m not going to just sit here and wait for the other shoe to drop, because it damn well may never drop.
I promise myself that I will not make that mistake again. I won’t make the mistake of letting life pass by because I’m too busying worrying about what could happen, or what happened in my past. Instead, I choose to be excited about what could happen. Instead, I choose to learn from my past. Instead, I choose to be happy. (:
Blooming into Myself 