Where is Air

    A few weeks ago I was at the park, out for a run, believing that my lack of time exercising in the last year would have no impact on my ability to sprint. When I say I was running you may mistake my words for the literal definition instead of the figurative meaning I am implying. I mean I was running, well jogging would probably be a more accurate title, but I was desperate to get away from all the hurt and despair and hopelessness that felt like bags of sand attached to each ankle. I wanted to run from the pain that felt like it was killing me alive. I began to jog and for the first few miles I was painfully holding pace and then a sharp pain screamed at me from my side. The urge to hold in each breath hit me like bricks because with every breath the sharp pain roared to life and the thing I was doing to stop the pain was now the source... and the thing that would ultimately bring healing to the stitch in my side, breathing, felt like the very thing that was at the root of it all.
   There are days like today when breathing feels as useless as the idea of swimming the ocean in it's entirety. I have found myself again desperately seeking help and freedom from this eating disorder and instead of feeling hope I feel nothing but the lack there of. I don't understand how it is possible to want something so desperately, to seek it with such ambition and to find myself covered in the fingerprints of my indulgence. As humans, when we are in pain, we find a way to make it stop. It is honestly a instinct of survival and for me it has turned into a seduction unto death. I find myself broken tonight. I have put myself in a place where people are making decisions that they believe are best for me and yet those decisions feel like the pain of the abandonment and rejection I was running from to begin with. I put myself in this position where I don't have a voice. I am the patient and they the professionals get to tell me that I am wrong about my theory that punishment based consequences do not motivate me unto recovery...but instead they reinforce the pain that is there to begin with. I go along with it because I am taught that my opinion doesn't matter because I am blinded by my illness, or that it matters but it doesn't change the contract being put in place. How am I supposed to leave and be in a place where I can make decisions based on my intuition instead of having to look to an exterior source for guidance. How does this not continue the cycle of doing whatever I am told as to not have love and care withheld from me. I am broken into pieces, running from that which is myself...running, running, running until breathing becomes too sharp and furious and staying alive is no longer worth the air that keeps me surviving. I just want to stop running. I just want to stop breathing.