It is night again. I have come to a point in my journey, where night means forgiveness. It is a time, when all is quiet and dark, that I have a real and clear choice about which direction I choose for my thoughts to go.
Some nights I choose the “higher road.” This is the road of healthy, life enriching and extending thoughts which include, “forgive the past, for it is past“ and “tomorrow is another day.”
I have an opportunity in the silence and the dark of my bed, away from…
the reflections in the mirror, my car window, the shadows on the street, holding myself a certain way when embracing anyone, the folds of my arms over my towel after I shower, tucking my stomach into my pants, the dreaded replica in the windows of my own home when it is dark out…
to breathe.
And I breathe……
In the dark, I can breathe, feel the life within me and appreciate the fact that I have life. LIFE! I have a heart that pumps and lungs that work even though I rid it of life’s essentials on a daily basis. I torture not only my body, but my soul with the very brain that makes it all function. Yet, somehow, it keeps working… I am grateful for that, or am I?
But that is not every night.
Some nights I choose the “tomorrow I will be better" road, but it is not as it truly sounds. Tomorrow will be better: I will only eat fruit, or only eat vegetables, maybe all fruit juice is the way. I will go to the gym and burn 1,000 calories. I will kick start my “new and better life!” The life of the skinny person I want to be. But it’s never been good enough before. Why would it be good enough now?
Other nights, I just cry myself to sleep after my husband is long gone to the land of sweet twitches and sighs. I ache to be as care-free and confident as he is. These are the nights when I feel the worst. For it is on these nights that I have no purpose, no future. I have nothing to drive me forward. I don’t have the energy to continue in my disorder and I don’t have the power to turn away from it! I don’t have the strength to tell anyone how my day really was and what’s worse; I don’t have enough confidence in anyone to trust they could handle it. That is so sad.
I don’t trust anyone enough to tell them everything, because I am afraid. I am afraid of being alone. I AM AFRAID OF BEING LEFT ALONE! I have no trust in anyone but myself and that leaves me in a very scary place. I am a scary person. I am afraid of me. I am embarrassed of me.
And so, I am back to the beginning again. I have revisited this place many times.
The first dozen or so times I found myself here again, it was awful. I beat myself up and berated myself for being a failure to have wound up back at the starting line again without ever having finished the race. There have been many times when, as soon as I started the race, I ran straight towards the woods. What kind of loser quits or gives in before finishing? -- But then I started to appreciate the fact that I kept going back to the race. I kept trying to do it again. I wasn’t actually giving up, was I?
Then, even though the rules seemed to change, I started to appreciate that I was learning things along the way. That each hole and divot had a name and a purpose. Each opponent had a defined name, even if I could not identify them at first. They each have their own intention, to make me give up, and they are all very clever. I have learned that if you pass one of them, it doesn’t mean that they are not going to overtake you again later. That is one of the things that is so frustrating about this disease. You are only as good as the training you put in and how healthy you are in your mind and body on the day you put yourself or something else puts you to the test.
And when your test is every day, you will fall. I fall. Every day now.
And I am killing myself, every day.
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