First, I just want to say that I have been so overwhelmed (in a very good way!) by the responses I've received from so many of you over the past week. Thank you so much for reading and sharing my posts! I honestly don't have words for how much it's meant to me.
I've been thinking a lot about what I wanted to write about next, and given some of the responses and questions I've recieved in regards to my last post ("You Just Have to Want it More..") I thought I'd dedicate this post to explaining more about the role that I do believe motivation to change has in recovery.
I wanted to clarify that while I don't think anyone can simply "choose to recover", or want to recover enough to somehow eliminate the struggle, I do think we have choices to make on a daily basis, that will either move us towards the life we want to be living or further into the eating disorder. I know that I made a comparison to cancer in my last post - and while I felt like it was relevant in that specific context, I usually hate when people compare eating disorders to cancer - because it truly isn't the same. I don't beleive that anyone with an eating disorder is "terminally ill" or "chronic" (although I've been referred to as both by numerous 'professionals'), I believe that anyone, with the proper support and treatment, can achieve at least some degree of recovery. You're never completely powerless over your situation in the way that someone with cancer is. Even when I couldn't 'want it enough' to be able to eat, I chose to pick up the phone and call the treatment center. I chose to pack up my bags and go to the airport. I chose not to give up on myself. You always, no matter how sick you are, have the choice. Once I got to treatment I was faced with a million more choices. (per hour) Every meal, every snack, every second in-between. And it was excruciatingly difficult, because everything in my head would be screaming at me that it was none okay/that I couldn't do it/that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I put X, Y, or Z in my body, and I knew that if I didn't eat I could make all of it quiet down, but if I chose to keep eating it was just going to get louder/worse. I felt like I was torturing myself. The best way I can think to describe what it felt like to know that the eating disorder would take away everything I was feeling but to continue choosing recovery anyways is to compare it to what I imagine it would feel like to be drowning and to have a life preserver less than an arm's length away from you but to choose not to grab onto it. It was awful, but I chose to keep going anyways. I had moments where it really did get to me too much, and I felt like I couldn't make the choice, and I would resort back to the eating disorder - skip a meal/refuse to drink my boost etc. - but I chose to go back into the next meal and try again. I didn't give up.
And since I've been home the choices have multiplied. I'm no longer just called into the 'Colorado Cafe' to sit at a tray that's already been prepared for me. (which was not an easy task in and of itself) Now I have to make the decision of whether or not to eat while knowing that I could very easily not/that no one would know etc., and I have to decide what to eat, and how much to eat etc. etc. It's complicated. And the eating disorder is so, so simple. It's hard.
But I know that while the eating disorder does give that temporary relief, it is just that, temporary. In the end it only leads to misery. My friend, Danielle, who has been my best and most faithful supporter through all of this, gave me the following advice when I was in treatment, and it's something that I've really held onto in the months I've been home; "Yes, you're miserable now. But you were miserable then too. At least with this miserable, there's a chance that it won't always be miserable, or atleast not as miserable. The eating disorder will never be anything but miserable, and you and I know it only gets more and more miserable the longer you stay in it. Give this miserable a chance." And really, I think that's what it comes down to. Recovery isn't the exciting journey of self-exploration and discovery that I think it's often portrayed as. It's not "embracing your quirks" and "loving your genes" etc. It's eating and freaking out and hating yourself for eating and hating yourself for freaking out about eating (and essentially just hating everything) but continuing to choose to do it anyways because you know that you want more than what the eating disorder has to offer and you're willing to fight for it.
I don't believe that you can want to get better enough to make the process any easier. And it sucks, because it doesn't make any sense that you could want to get better and still hate yourself for eating, but as I explained in my last post, nothing about an eating disorder is logical, and I think part of recovery (atleast for me) has included coming to terms with that. I'm never going to make sense of the way my brain works. And wanting to make it work differently, unfortunately, isn't going to do anything. I can (and you can!) still choose to do what will move you forward in recovery even while it's screaming at you. And I can attest to the fact that while my brain is definitely not my best friend most of the time and I still struggle quite a bit, the act of choosing recovery over the eating disorder has gotten easier with time. I no longer debate with myself for hours over whether or not to eat breakfast in the morning, it's just what I do, sort of like showering or brushing my teeth. Over all, I'm okay. And there are so many things that I can do now that I wouldn't have been able to do before. I can hold a job, I can get to know my co-workers without them needing to know that I ever struggled, I can sit in the kitchen and eat dinner with my family (versus sitting on the roof crying because I thought the calories from their dinner had gotten into the air in my bedroom...), I can go to the mall with my sister, I can go out with friends, I can think about things other than germs and calories and dying. And that makes choosing recovery worth it, even when it feels miserable.
So, to sum it up - you do have to want it. You have to want it enough to make the painful choices that will move you towards it even when everything in you is screaming at you and telling you not to. You can't want it enough to make it go away, but you aren't powerless either, and you never will be.
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