A Year of Recovery

[[Side Note: A Year of Recovery

This year has done more for me than any other year in the past seven as far as my ED recovery goes.  I cannot even express the change that has taken place and made me such a happier person.  Where do I start?

I started off the year believing that I was really getting better by keeping up with the jobs that I loved to do and making a difference in the environment.   There’s no doubt it was good for my work mentality, but on the other end of the spectrum, I was not doing what was needed to really help me get better.

I was still obsessed with counting calories, depriving myself of food when I was exercising to burn off calories, staying away from various kinds of fear foods, scrutinizing my body to death, and keeping myself from being social with my new friends in my new city.  How was I going to be free of my ED if these attributes were still lingering, and getting worse faster than getting better?

I decided early on in the year to start on a feature I deemed my Side Notes and it has changed not only my life, but what seems like so many of my readers.  It amazed me how being so open about the emotions and turmoil that goes with having an ED many people do not share.  I was astounded with the amount of support that I got from the blog and helped me through every step of my recovery I shared with the world.

As much fun I was having driving airboats around in the Everglades of South Florida it was time for me to leave mid year to dive into another job, in another small and isolated town by myself.  I believed that I was getting used to this kind of moving around and living in crazy wilderness areas, but I never anticipated the emotions that would arise with having to only knowing and interacting with one or two people, and then absolutely none.  It was devastating coming home every single field day to nothing but an empty apartment, my friends and family hundreds of miles away and not being able to do anything in my town.  So I made one of the best decisions ever: I adopted a cat.

I have never been a cat person, but with my small living situation I was willing to sacrifice my love for dogs for something more attainable in my current situation.  Honey came into my life and I can’t express in words how much I love her.  I was at a time where all I felt was severe loneliness and having something that depends on you and loves you unconditionally was what I needed in my life.  My ED had convinced me that I didn’t deserve to be loved, but Honey sure changed that train of thought.

But the best decision I made came in May/June of this year and I cannot boast enough about how much it has changed my life for the better: THERAPY.

I wrote a post recently for Gena about the importance of this aspect of ED recovery and will discuss it again here. I cannot express more about how terrified I was to seek out help like this.  I knew it was what was best for me, but I felt ashamed and such a burden.  Most of all I felt like this made me some sort of…freak (I can’t find the right word, but I didn’t like how it made me feel essentially).  But I knew I had to do it.  It was essential and I was sick of being sick of myself, hating what I saw in the mirror and being ashamed of well, everything else.

So I went to a local therapist in town.  I had gone once before when I was in college and the counselor didn’t know much about eating disorders so it made things a bit hard to discuss.  This time I made sure the person I was seeing had a specialization in eating disorders/problems so I could get the real support that I needed.  I hated speaking about the things that made me uncomfortable inside and out, but it was what I needed to hear and be told was not a rational train of thought, and instead to see the real picture.  I went through different courses of recovery with my therapist, from trying to eliminate A.N.T.S. from my thoughts, worrying so much about first impressions, having high anxiety for social and food situations, my over-exercising/compulsive exercising, and so much more that has gone undocumented on the blog.

It’s a relief for me to see her every other week or however many times a month, and really discuss the emotions behind all the things that bothered me, were bothering me or were going to bother me.  It’s a tough cycle that she works through with me but it’s getting better. I have grown more in the past 6 months than I have in the past 7 years that I have worked through this alone.

Now I can’t say that I’ve been alone because that would be a lie.  I have had the wonderful support of my family, friends and bloggers to get me through some of the roughest times I’ve had, whether it was a break up that caused a relapse or feeling like I had eaten too much in one day and hadn’t exercised at all.  Every comment, email, text, tweet and phone call has made a difference and I am so thankful for every single one of them.  I could not have done it without all of you too.

   

Not only was I taking care of my mentality through my efforts in therapy, but I also took a step towards doing better in running.  I may have been running for almost 15 years, but it doesn’t mean I’ve been doing it right, or with the right mindset.  I started off the year running the Miami 1/2 Marathon on a whim, and did well considering I was having knee issues, and broke my old PR from the San Antonio 1/2 Marathon last year November.  But I wasn’t doing it correctly. I was going through runs without the proper fueling and refueling, creating havoc on my health and ability to do anything with pride, confidence and strength.

I continued through the first half of the year using running as my way of burning calories, and only burning calories.  I do love running (as I have no coordination to do any other sport correctly) and always have, but it tired me out, gave me headaches and stomach aches, depleted my train of thoughts and injured me in more ways than one.  Changes came this summer after a conversation with Monica on the plane ride to HLS, and thank God for it because my running now, freak’n rocks.

We talked about our issues with eating and I don’t remember what she said exactly, but after discussing half marathon training with her, it finally clicked.  Something she said finally clicked and I took the initiative to do what was right for my body to be able to handle running the way it should.  I started refueling while running.  I bought a camelbak to help me hydrate through so many sweat drenched run (because I swear I sweat more than all of you, combined. lol). All my efforts proved my ED wrong and showed me how strong I could make my body when I ran, and showed in the Oregon 1/2 Marathon when I broke my record and two hours on one of the hilliest courses even the race coordinator didn’t believe many would PR on.  Take that!

Along with therapy and with the advice of my therapist I was able to do something I never thought I’d be able to do: I got rid of my scale.  I avoided scales at all costs, whether they were at my parents or the doctor’s office, and made sure that I wouldn’t let that number dictate my mood or my feelings about who I was.  I had to remind myself, “I am not a number.” and truthfully, it was hard at first.  I was gaining weight and knew it, as my clothes were no longer fitting from the year before…but I had to keep reminding myself: you are doing things differently now; your body is readjusting to your activities and making sure your body has the adequate muscle and fat to function properly.  I was also afraid to have curves (and truthfully still am) but hey, it caught me a guy didn’t it?  But not only that, I realized how much I had grown and gotten stronger when I had some girls at the gym make comments about me that were inappropriate.  I didn’t break down, like I would have last year if it had occurred then…

I apologize for the long post, but I think I needed to write it (even if you didn’t read it all) to essentially reassure myself how far I’ve come in the past 12 months.  It’s a miracle in some sorts and will keep getting better into 2011.  I still have many of the same problems that I had but they are in a different phase than they have been the past years.  2011 will be one of getting further through them and who knows, maybe even ridding of them to really let me be the person I can fully be.

Fingers crossed!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! 

LET 2011 BRING YOU LOVE AND HAPPINESS!!!