learning to dance 1

well, i'm back.

it's been a long time. a lot has changed since i last wrote here.

i am still in recovery, although i don't like to use the word "recovered" anymore because it's a bit premature, and i'm not even sure what it means. i think recovery is a lifelong process that is always subject to revision. i'll write more on this another time.

i relapsed six months after my last entry. you are probably wondering, "what the hell happened?" and the answer is very simple - i didn't know who i was and i didn't know how to function in the real world without my eating disorder. i came to some startling realizations about myself in graduate school, mainly that i felt completely empty and lost, without direction or self-knowledge, and it was very frightening. of course, i had knowledge up the wazoo about my anorexia and recovery, but that can only get you so far. you will find that life in general is not all about mental illness, and your expert knowledge on EDs is not really applicable to much, which is perhaps why so many people with EDs end up attempting to work with EDed people; it's a special niche.

i was sitting in class one day - the teacher was talking about mental illness - and i said to myself, "this is depressing." something didn't feel right. i began to feel depressed myself and was skipping classes. at my work study job at an agency for the homeless, i was warned i couldn't wear a skirt because, "the men around here get friendly real quick." a drunk man charged me on the streetcar; i knew that, as a social worker, i would have to deal with people like him all the time, and it made me incredibly uncomfortable. i asked myself what i was doing in such unpleasant situations that triggered the hell out of me. a big chunk of my life had already been involuntarily focused on mental illness and addiction - why was i going into a field where i'd make money off of submersing myself in the things that made me so sick? after a great deal of soul searching, i decided that going into social work wasn't right for me. i wanted to go into a profession that didn't involve so much stress - i'd had enough of that in my life.

i dropped out of the program in the middle of the semester, and as you can imagine, my whole life was turned upside down. i was embarrassed and depressed about doing this, even though i knew it was right for me. it was such a hard decision that i relapsed in ED behaviors and self-injury. i was scared out of my wits; i had moved all the way across the country to attend school, and now i was dropping out and had no idea what i'd do next or how i'd pay for my apartment. i didn't know a damn thing about myself and it felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. to feel like a stranger in your skin, to not know what your next thought or action could be, to feel so totally groundless and empty - it is indescribable. i was a void. i literally felt that i had no identity; my eating disorder had stripped that away from me, during all the years i missed out on school, friendships, jobs, social events, and countless experiences that would have otherwise contributed to my life, had i not been preoccupied at home with counting calories and starving myself. thanks, anorexia.

i will never say that going to grad school was a mistake. i don't believe any experience is a waste, even an eating disorder, because you learn and grow from everything you do. if i never went, i might have always imagined it would have been the right choice, and the only way to find that out was to give it a shot. not all of it was unpleasant either - not even close. i realized my lifelong dream of living in new orleans, i moved away from home for the first time - cross country! i drove there! - and i immediately formed a number of friendships with my peers. for the first time since i was a child, i had a circle of friends and i regularly socialized. we went out partying constantly and it was the best time of my life. i learned how to order a drink at a bar, rode in cabs by myself, went to all sorts of clubs and restaurants, danced with strangers, tried new foods (and yes, alcoholic drinks), went to florida and spent halloween at a gay club that was having a drag show... i had a blast. i loved the city. new orleans taught me how to dance.

which is why it was so fucking hard to leave it, and i agonized over my decision. i just knew that i had gone into social work because my life up to the point of recovery had always been about helping others above helping myself, sacrificing my needs for the needs of others, caring about people way more than myself... i wanted to be there for new orleans, but also to help other people; already into my recovery, i was so focused on everyone else! i could really see myself becoming very unhealthy as a social worker, and i had pursued it for the wrong reasons. plus, i was fresh out of anorexia, and had lost years and years of self-discovery; i jumped the gun by going to grad school so soon. i knew myself so very little that i'd gone into a graduate program that was completely wrong for me. i hadn't given myself time at all to get to know myself, my interests, my dreams... i just gravitated toward a profession that contained elements familiar to my life, forgetting that they had damaged that life and made me very sick.

apart from being in a program i disliked, it was quite a shock to my system to reenter the world. i felt like an alien that had been dropped on a strange planet and was expected to just get up and immediately know how to get by. you forget just how much you miss out on when you're eating disordered, how much you hid away from and neglected to explore... and it all hits you in the face in recovery. you have to come to terms with what you have lost, and the magnitude of it can make you want to run screaming back to your eating disorder, because it is so overwhelming and unfair and sad. i felt stunted emotionally, socially, developmentally, because the day i became eating disordered was the day i hit the "pause" button on my life. time has passed, and everything has changed, and yet you did nothing with your time except make yourself sick. i'm not going to lie; it sucks. i hated thinking about how i'd missed out on high school, and so many years that i could have spent hanging out with friends, traveling, going out to dinner with people, instead of the shit i was doing by myself, in my room, on my computer prowling ED message boards. i went through a mourning period, grieving over all i had lost, and did it while feeling like my identity had been swiped clean. it is this stage where many people flounder - they can't handle the feeling of displacement, destitution, and confusion. your eating disorder is what you know, it lets you hide away from the world and all your problems (in the short run), it makes you feel good (sometimes), and it's painfully familiar - naturally, it's where you turn.

like i did.