“Why bloody me?”

“Why bloody me?”

To maintain Eating Disorder recovery is like training for the Boston marathon…except you’re expected to run the bloody thing everyday. The lifestyle of recovery (training) is spiritual, mental and physical and quite intense…here’s a little re-lay for ya…

6:00 am Prayer – (Good morning God! Thank you for the recovery I have from this mind numbing, soul killing Eating Disorder! Have a nice day!)

6:30 am Freehand Journal for 3 pages (helps get all the neurotic thinking out on the table)

7:00 am Moderate exercise (Yeah for endorphins! We need ‘em!”)

7:30 am Abstinent breakfast + Vitamins + Anti-depressants/Meds

8:30 am Work (Cause we are participating members of society!)

12:00 pm Abstinent lunch

12:30pm Check in with sponsor

2:30 pm Alert! Alert! Crazy ED girl at work triggers us by excessively talking about dieting, how fat she is and her need for plastic surgery on her hook nose

3:00 pm Make an outreach call to a girl in recovery for mental clarity and how to block out the sad ED girl voice at work.

3:15 pm Go to car to find ear phones for iPod

4:00pm Abstinent snack (I love apples and peanut butter!)

5:00 pm Free from work!

6:00 pm Abstinent dinner with amazing friends

7:00 pm Recovery meeting (Yeah, for girls who get me!)

8:00 pm Reading and some good tunes

9:00 pm Journal.

10:00 pm Bed.

After a day like this, one can turn off the light at the nightstand and take one of two routes on the way to dreamland…….

Route G4 – As in “Grateful 4”

 This route takes you to: A Hawaiian luau where you are singing and swaying to the ukelele thanking God/Higher Power for relief from the participation in the deadly Eating Disorder disease today. Gratitude that at least there was no binging, purging, lying, stealing, hurting, screaming and chaos making that hurt you and other people. Route G4 is a great route…it’s quite a “noble “ route…the more “evolved” route if you will… but most of the time I don’t take this route… Nah…I choose to instead hang out with the bottom dwellers on ….

Route “Y” – as in Route “Why me?”

 As in “What gives?” or “Why the hell did God give me such a pain in the ass disease that makes a slight conversation in a cubicle send me into a neurotic mess that only 4 phone calls and the voice of reason can fix? Why on earth do I have to journal, attend meetings, take little pink pills, see therapist and go to bed on time all to just balance the damn chromosomes in my brain and keep food in my body? Why on earth am I on this hell hole of a journey and when the hell can I leave?”

Deep isn’t it? Profound. (Great script writing too if I do say so myself) Yes, this is the route I take. It is self-deprecating, narcissistic, neurotic and nauseating (even to myself.) So the question remains… “Why me?” The common answer to this question is the bland robotic answer of: “I don’t know.” Or “That’s life… buck up!” But, I don’t care for answers that consist of only 4 syllables. (I know… I’m so difficult!) So I have come up with my own answer for Route Y…

I choose to believe that the life I live isn’t simply a physical one. It is spiritual one. That actually as C.S. Lewis says, “You don’t have a soul. You are soul. You have a body.” If I lived as if this statement were true I would believe that when I experience physical pain and humiliation it’s not that bad because it is taking me to the next level of the spiritual evolution of my soul.

Maybe all of my physical feelings of peace, harmony, exhaustion and pain are secondary to my spiritual well being. My spiritual well-being brings psychic revelations that trump every painful and joyful physical feeling I have. Realizations I have are that even the painful experiences serve a purpose. (I know it’s a far out concept. But, here me out) Maybe, there is joy in pain and struggle is that I get to realize that I survived it. That I walked through fire and that now I am actually stronger, bolder and taller. It builds my character, it makes me a strong woman, a survivor and someone who is deep and sensitive and able to relate to others. Struggle teaches me how to problem solve, how to accept life for exactly the way it is. Struggle teaches me how to be creative with what I have. Struggle teaches me how to budget my money and my emotions. Struggle has taught me that even when I’m at my lowest in the trenches of a mental disorder that even when the world isn’t loving me I still have the ability to love it. That I can still muster a smile, a hello, a hug and a very small, I love you too.

“Why me?” is a great question with a great answer.” My answer is:  Because you deserve better. You can do better. Because you can go to far greater more colorful places once you’ve been through this. When I was a little girl I got Nintendo Mario Brothers for Christmas. I was mediocre at it. But never got passed level 7. A friend of mine came over one day after school. She dominated Mario Brothers. She knew all the secret passageways, all the trick moves to kill the bad guys and within 20 minutes she was in the palace fighting the evil Bowser and trying to rescue the Princess. When she got to the end she handed over the controller to me so I could have a shot at winning the game and saving the Princess. Within 3 moves I was out. She tried again, she let me give it a shot at an easier level, but still it was too advanced for me to win the game.

The fact of the matter is we can’t rescue Princesses, travel to distant places or even come to know who we truly are behind the palace doors until we take our own journey in stride and battle it out, play by play, then we can move on arrive at the palace. But, then you arrive at the palace and you save the Princess and what do you know… the game is over. Life hurts sometimes. There is good, there is bad, there is joy and there is pain, but this is life it’s about living, experiencing, surviving for the end all goal of saving the Princess which ends up being yourself......