Fear.

A lot of the decisions in my past were made out of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of being judged, fear of not being good enough, fear of failure. I don’t know where it stems from – why I chose fear over excitement of the unknown is something I wish I could have realized and changed sooner. But this entire journey of recovery and learning to live without the eating disorder has forced me to face my fear of the unknown. It’s showed me what life can be like when I let go of that control and make room for actually living. And the more I let go of fear, the happier I become. I’ve realized it’s a choice to be afraid. And I’m choosing to let that go, because being afraid limits me to my comfort zone. And staying in my comfort zone prevents me from growing and learning.

A few blogs back I talked about control and why I’m afraid of letting go of control. And in a way this is a continuation of that post, because the whole root of this fear is not being in control of situations. But it’s exhausting to be afraid and to constantly be anxious about the future. I’ve been reframing the anxious thoughts of fear into anxious thoughts of excitement. To be nervous excited for something is a completely different experience than being anxious afraid. And learning to make decisions that make me anxious excited is something that I am heavily focused on. Facing my fear of recovery and gaining weight was the first time I really pushed back on the discomfort of the unknown. And it’s given me a life that I love, with people that I love. Choosing to be optimistic and excited about the future, rather than not seeing a future at all, is a feeling that I’m not quite sure how to explain. It’s surreal to sit here and think about the place I was at when I hit rock bottom. I was so afraid of every aspect of my life that I wasn’t even living. I was going through the motions that I thought I needed to do, rather than what I wanted to do. And in this past year I’ve taken back the reigns to control where I want to be and who I want to be.

Taking care of myself emotionally and physically has given me the opportunity to make decisions that I want to make, not that I think others want me to make. I switched out of my role at PwC in IT Audit to go into recruiting, which is something that I wanted to do for so long but couldn’t because of fear. I guess I thought I would be letting the people down that believed in me and the path I had taken to get my CPA and the dedication that I put into my college career. I was afraid of being judged for leaving a role that I thought people expected me to be in because of my past. And that’s where the problem lies – I limited myself based on the past version of myself. Not the current version and not the future version that I can see. And it’s like once I took off the blinders, all I can is what my future self wants. Where I want to be in a year from now is something that’s actually tangible and that I’m excited for. Living in New York City is something I couldn’t have imagined a few years ago, and in a few months I get to move there. I’m in a job that I love without fear of being judged for the path I’ve decided to take. I’m excited about exposing myself to new challenges and new opportunities, meeting new people and being vulnerable to let people know this new version of me, adn learning to continue being vulnerable with the people that new the old me.

I’m learning that fear doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Being afraid of losing something means that I have something to lose. Making decisions out of fear is something I promised myself that I won’t do anymore, but being afraid is something that I can accept as not just a negative emotion. Each time I conquer a fear, I grow. Each time I conquer a fear, I allow myself to see a piece of myself that I hadn’t before. Each time I conquer a fear, I prove to myself that I’m more than what my eating disorder confined me to. I’m nowhere near perfect, but I’m no longer afraid of NOT being perfect. Because perfection is boring and perfection is something unattainable.