I started this blog as a way to channel my healing process throughout recovery. It was a way for me to put pen to paper, to understand my thoughts and feelings, while being more vulnerable with the world than I had ever been with myself. I hoped my words would help others understand the reality of my eating disorder to not only help them better understand me, but also others who may be struggling. As I continued to heal, the words continued to pour out of me. I had opened the flood gates of my thoughts and sharing them allowed me to feel liberated of the noise inside my head that I had failed to communicate or even feel for years. What I’ve continued to learn and reiterate is that I would not be the person I am today without having gone through the pain in my past. The negative feelings and emotions I tried to push away for so long were crucial to not just my recovery, but my maturity and growth. The pain that I have resented is actually the seed that allowed me to bloom. I’ve feared pain and suffering, when I should have respected it. While I don’t want to feel pain, or wish pain on myself or anyone, I do think that pain is necessary and is obviously inevitable in life.
Learning and understanding my eating disorder allowed me to peel back the layers of myself that I didn’t realize that I had. We are products of our experiences and perceptions, and being able to understand how I have perceived the experiences in my life has allowed me to shift my outlook on fear, suffering, and love, all of which I believe intersect. Being afraid of imperfection and being afraid of pain sheltered me from maturing enough to understand what love could be – love for other people, love for growing, love for living, and love for myself. I was in my own way. I was scared to feel because pain was the worst thing I could imagine. Being able to recognize pain as an opportunity to pivot and grow is what has driven me. Am I thankful that I punished myself for years both physically and mentally? Obviously not. But I am thankful that I realized my fear of vulnerability and committed to myself that I would no longer continue down the toxic cycle I had learned as my norm. The caveat to that was learning that committing to change was the easier piece of actually changing.
I think that recognizing behaviors I learned growing up weren’t what I valued, and realizing that I could stand up for my individual values was one of the harder first pieces of recovery. At first I wasn’t quite sure what I valued or what my opinion was, because I didn’t trust myself enough to believe in myself. I feel like I hid myself for so long that I lost the conviction I needed to stand up for my own needs and desires, not those of others. It felt wrong to push back on the beliefs and values I had learned throughout my childhood and early adult life. There was only so much blame I could put on others before taking responsibility for not exploring what it is that I believed in as an individual.
Something I still struggle with is trusting my opinions and convictions. I feel like I’m still learning what my own opinions are and separating them from the opinions I just absorbed for so long. That’s the beauty of life, though. Being afraid of being wrong just limits the opportunity to learn from a mistake, or to learn a new point of view. My current opinion of what my life should be is nowhere near what it was 3 years ago, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. Finally learning to share my opinion and getting over that fear of it not being understood or misinterpreted is giving me the confidence in myself that I’ve lacked for so long.
Something I began to struggle with during recovery, and part of the reason I had trouble continuing to write about my recovery, was the fear of being defined by my eating disorder. I felt as though continuing to share my explorations into my eating would limit the perception of me to just be someone who had an eating disorder. Just as writing was a tool for my recovery, so was taking a break. It’s allowed me to explore life outside of an eating disorder. I’ve been able to feel free of the box of familiarity I had limited myself to by diving headfirst into change and uncertainty. This life I’ve built with the man I love has shown me that I’m so much more than someone who has recovered from an eating disorder, and that there is so much more to life when you learn that fear and pain can be catalysts for new opportunities if you let them.
While this blog may no longer be focused on my eating disorder recovery, the name still rings true. I hope to continuously bloom into versions of myself as I navigate my mid-to-late twenties and experience all that life has to offer.
Blooming into Myself 