Sanitarium

It isn't a day that will go down in history books, but it should be a day etched in my memory somehow, so I will write it down. Today my mother published a blog about my eating disorder journey. I cried. It broke my heart to see in so many words the tragedy that is a 10 year period of my life, written out for people to see, sitting there for people to judge. It felt real and connected with my thighs, my bum, the pippin breasts that are beginning to take shape.

I have been reading The Fall of Giants, and I cannot wait to tell James that I am almost 300 pages in, and I am utterly taken over by it. If I did not have that monster of a book, the weight of which could single-bindedly hold me to the earth, I don't think I could've made it through talking with my mother about it.

It has never been my desire to have people know my story. I don't want people looking in and judging. I don't want to know that others know, but the truth is, there is greater strength in them knowing than keeping it in. Holding it close just makes me weak with hunger for connection. This makes me strong, if only in the idea of letting it go. I cannot control others' viewpoints of me, thank God, and it is much more fulfilling to just have it be out there from my mum's point of view.

I know that in the future I will have a more personal account of it, I will bring my voice closer to the surface through the repetition of getting it down in words, or speaking truths to people, and soon I will be able to be proud and glowing. As of right now I just feel ashamed and unruly, a child in a mucky pond as his mother scolds him. Why should the child feel ashamed of something that comes so natural, and what does the world gain from making others feel ashamed? I'm not sure. But it is a battle no matter how you look at it.

I wish I were better at allowing. I will become better through practice. It is time I grow up. I can feel it. It is time I take the chances and changes that are necessary. It still breaks my heart that I do not have a period. Something my younger sisters have been fighting this whole time and I am here scott-free from the bloody mess of a menstruation process. I wished to God that I wouldn't get one for the rest of my life, and in some senses I still do wish that. In another sense I deeply desire more from life than sitting on rocks alone. It is great, but the fullness of life is brought through pain and vulnerability. I don't know why. It doesn't make much sense. But it is that way. And that is to be expected.