Since my doctor’s appointment, I’ve been obsessing a bit. There’s something that’s thrown me a bit - something about the fact that, well, as my partner put it last night, I have this tendency when I relapse to be so dissociated when it happens that it always seems to surprise me when someone tells me how bad it was. In retrospect, I’ve had similar reactions in the past - when my former therapist looked at me and said, “you know that shit doesn’t work;” when a close friend - at her wedding reception - came over to me, gave me a hug said that she loved me and that she and her husband wanted to send me the money I’d make working so that I could quit working at a job that was sucking the life out of me (and again a couple of weeks later when she was telling me that a friend of hers who I don’t know well had asked what was wrong with me and whether or not I was okay).
I was talking about it last night - obsessing some over the fact that I was obsessing and wondering if it was alright. She said, “are you going to stay okay?” I said, “what do you mean?” She said, “just, sometimes in the past, when someone has asked you what you’re doing and if you’re alright, you get into a spot where you start thinking about it so much that you do it.” I didn’t talk a whole lot for a while, thinking some, so she asked another question: “or do you think that you’ve just started to be open about it once you’re called out?”
It’s awkward sometimes when someone knows you so insanely well that even the little subtle things that you hide from yourself are obvious. It’s awkward too when you know that there are people out there who know you, who can read you and who stand by not matter what. I’ve been doing some reading (per usual). I’ve read about a boyfriend so determined to help his girl through anorexia that he’s nearly as obsessed with helping her as she is with restricting what she eats. I read a post by a girl on the other side of the road who talked about not yet being sick and tired enough of being sick and tired who finally was able to move forward - even if only a little bit - when a friend merely said “I know” when she admitted that she was scared.
I’ve been lucky. I have friends who love me so much that even when I was completely out of control they never tried to control me. They’ve listened, they’ve cared, they’ve been there. That’s one of the blessings that I have been counting, and it’s one of the things that’s brought me to think about the “affirmations” that I’ve been going through internally the last few days.
- Friends are a blessing and aren’t to be taken advantage of. I’ve been blessed with some of the best friends that anyone can have; I owe it to them and to myself to say thank you.
- Self-awareness is essential; self-doubt needs to go by the wayside.
- Beauty moves; if you need to sit still and do nothing - or you’re too wiped out to move - there’s nothing striking about it. Nature doesn’t sit still, the oceans are always in motion, why should I?
- Withering doesn’t allow for growth.
- Relationships with a doctor are essential - no matter how much I complain about having doctor’s appointments, no matter how much I still get nervous and anxious about getting on the scale and talking about what’s going on, there’s an awareness that comes from talking about my body and recognizing that I need it to be healthy are great gifts.
- One moment really can change everything.
- Everyone who enters into our lives helps us to grow - even if we cannot see it until years later.
Mostly, I’ve been looking forward. I’m seeing all of these changes that I want to make in my life and some that I have already made.
The biggest impact that it’s had is a little bit surprising, even to me: after my appointment on Wednesday, I went to a brewpub, ordered lunch and a beer and sat down with a pen and paper: while I waited for my server to bring the meal, and while I drank a beer afterwards, I wrote a letter to someone who recently came back into my life after a long absence.
Without talking too much about it because - truth be told - I’m kind of embarrassed by it, I wrote about different things that had happened, parts of my life that I’d wished she’d been there to share. You see, she was someone who I knew almost in another lifetime. We didn’t grow apart, per se, but there was physical distance between us and I got really caught up in a lot of self-destructive patterns. One night we were talking and she said, “I love you, but talking to you can be a bit of a downer; tell me five really good things that have been happening.” She said it because she wanted to share my life with me; at that point in time, I didn’t believe there was anything good in my life and I was completely crushed.
A few years passed, we talked less - but I never stopped loving her. She came into town, met my partner. We talked some, went out for meals because, well, that’s what fit into her schedule. I went to the airport with her - and since it was way back before 2001, we were able to go to the gate. She and I talked; she sat with an arm around me and, as she was getting ready to board the plane looked at me and just pleaded with me to take care of myself and to not stop letting her in. I think we only talked once or twice after that.
Anyway, the letter.
What I realized on Wednesday, what I was thinking about when I was so overwhelmed I wasn’t really thinking, was that there are people in my life who I am so insanely grateful for; I owe it to the people who have shaped my life to say thank you. I think we all have those folks in our lives - those people who made a subtle statement that stuck, those people who give us a hug when there aren’t any words to say and make us laugh when it seems like we’re going to lose our minds, those people who remind us that - even when we feel like we never want to see someone again - it’s important to say i love you because you never know when you won’t have that opportunity again. I decided that it was time to say thank you.
So I did. I poured my heart out to her. And now I’m insanely nervous about it (having dropped it in the mail yesterday). How do people react when someone who’s been out of their lives says, “I know we’ve fallen out of touch, but there’s so much of my life that I want to share with you because the reality is this: I wouldn’t be the person I am without your influence in my life, and I just wanted to tell you that I’m really glad that you’ve been my friend.”
Tags: distance, eating disorders, friendship
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