Healing Pain

This week has been tough. I have been at my end more times then I can count...each time swearing I am going to give up. "Life in my eating disorder was better than this." I nostalgically think back to those days with a feeding tube in my nose, down my throat, and recall much more joy then I actually possessed. So, after giving myself a brief reality check, or at least throwing myself a small pity party, I stand back up and keep fighting. I don't really have a choice. Therapists would say quite the opposite. "Getting better is completely your choice." "No one can make you get better, you have to want it." Even though I roll my eyes even as I type out those words, I know they hold alot of truth. HOWEVER, in many ways I don't feel like I do have a choice. I feel like the choice is being made for me...because to do anything else would be choosing to torture the ones around me that I love so much...but also would be throwing away any chance of a future, a family, and the life I so desperately long for. Some days it feels like more then I can stand. Some days it seems like dying would be the easy way out, because living life in the here and the now is torture. I lived through all the crap that has happened in my life once...and it seems horribly cruel and unreasonable to have to relive it through flashbacks. To have secrets buried so deep for so long only to be brought to the surface, begging for words to be attached to what words could never express, is exhausting. How could there be so much silence for so long...and still there be such vivid pictures? How could I have "forgotten" so much only to have it resuscitated. And its hard to not have a clear understanding of what freedom or "living" truly feels like. Some days I wonder if maintaining the fight would take less determined perseverance if I knew what it felt like to feel free. Then at least I would know the joy of freedom will outweigh the pain of the fight...or the pain of facing the past.

It's quite odd how much Grey's Anatomy inspires me to write. I think the beginning and ending monologues are there to inspire thought and obviously to stir curiosity...but I don't know if its normal for them inspire me as much as they do. I personally like to attribute it to all the therapy I am in...what I won't admit is that it has always had this affect on me. All that said, I just finished watching the season premiere. So, bear with me.

So Derek Shepherd, a world renown brain surgeon, has just come back to working after getting shot by a killer who was loose in the hospital last season. Anyway, Derek came back and took on this patient who had a brain tumor that was inoperable... oh but not for Derek Shepherd. : ). The surgery that was required however was very invasive and would require an unbearably painful recovery. The had to literally cut the kids face in half and break his jaw to get into his brain. So, very very painful. So Derek is paged because the kid had come out of surgery but is in so much pain that he is FREAKING out. The pain was literally driving him insane.



So, this is what Derek says to the patient, Greg: "You have to listen to me Greg. This is the fight, this is the fight. The pain is going to stop and we are going to help you until it does. This is your fight. The tumor's not driving anymore, you are. You are in the drivers seat. Life that's in your head, you get if you fight, got it?" Then Derek turns to Greg's mom, who is a hot mess, and says: "This is pain. It's not a dying pain. This is a healing pain. This is a victory pain. You won. We won."

I got chills. Literally. You could see in this kids eyes the pain...the pain that was debilitating. Derek never denied the pain. The pain was freaking real. The pain was enough to bring anyone to hysterics. I know I may be reading into it but the pain wasn't weak. The pain was just that, pain. Awful, excruciating, make you go crazy, pain. They were pumping him full of morphine but it could only do so much...the morphine couldn't make his broken jaw go away. The morphine couldn't sew his tongue back together and magically reduce the swelling. In many ways the kid could have looked back to the time before the surgery and say he felt much better before...when it was hiding away, killing him slowly. It's the same thing for me I guess. The pain in healing at times feels much worse than the pain of staying sick, hiding from the secrets your mind doesn't want to feel. The truth of the matter was that the tumor would have killed him...and I believe this eating disorder would have killed me. And the removing of my "tumor" tore apart so much in me...and when they sewed me back together the evidence was finally there for the world to see. That which was hiding, sucking the life away, is exposed...and healing from it is just the beginning of the deep, heart breaking pain. The boy had a choice...let the pain of removing the tumor drive him to kill himself...or face the pain for days, weeks, months...maybe even years on end...believing that one day, life on the other side will be worth the fight. It was a choice only He could make...its a choice that only I can choose for myself. But what was interesting was that He didn't only address Greg. He also addressed Greg's mom. Greg wasn't fighting alone...he couldn't fight alone. With a pain and a hurt and a healing so intense, no one can do it alone.
"This is pain. It's not a dying pain. This is a healing pain. This is a victory pain. You won. We won."

the new puzzle

I am learning alot these days. Weeks, well months, on end of group therapy and programing will do that for you. BUT, one of the things I have learned in this last week is that I was a very different person when I was sick. I know, these revelations are amazing, right? : )But seriously, I was so far gone that I really had no idea what I wanted or how I was going to make it through another day...I was just existing, hoping that the next minute was better than the last. The thing that breaks my heart is that I pulled other people into it with me. People loved me enough to step into my broken world and convince me that there was a way out...and they were willing to help me find it. I look back in awe of those people because there was nothing about my life in those weeks and months that made me a good friend. I was self absorbed, depressed, and daily wanting to end life as i knew it. It was God's grace and love for me that He placed amazing people in my life to walk me out of that hell...and thankful doesn't even begin to describe my heart towards them.
So, where am I going with this? I guess what I am seeing or fearing these days is that I am essentially just starting to figure out who I am separated from the things I found my identity in for so long. I would never have said I found my identity in the eating disorder, but I think that's because I could never separate myself from it long enough to see they were two separate things. I guess in some ways I feel like I just woke up from a coma and years have passed and I realized who I have been living "as" isn't me. So what? Right? I mean that's great to some degree, isn't it? Of course! The problem is that it changes the dynamics for everyone. I don't want the same things I thought I needed before I left...things I did need before I left. Before I thought I had to have everyone all around me telling me what to do...because I really was incapable of making even the most basic decisions. Now I want to be making more decisions on my own. I want to spread my wings a bit and try out this whole flying thing...which everyone is all for. But I don't think people feel like they can trust me...which is fair. I wouldn't trust me either. I have found that I had everyone taking care of me before...and now I want friends who can be my friends. I guess I just feel like I am trying to come back to my life and fit into all the same molds and I get frustrated when everything feels so wrong. I still want all those relationships just as much...I still want to be doing all the healthy things I was doing before...but no matter what I try to do I don't fit into those exact molds. Its scary...for everyone involved. I'm not going anywhere or leaving or running away...but I have a feeling people will or have felt that awkward push and pull with me...and I have a feeling its not just with one or two people...i am guessing it is with everyone. I guess I am just learning that who I was isn't who I am...and I don't know if people will like/love/want me, the real me. But the crazy thing is that I can't go back. I can't will myself to go back to the molds I made for myself...I literally don't fit anymore. And, no pun intended, I think I literally out grew them.(OK seriously that's a little bit funny...I mean I gained like 20 pounds since I left...all needed, i know, but still. funny). But for real, I don't fit anymore. I believe the change is for the better. Ok I KNOW the change is for the better. But change is weird and it takes time to figure out new roles and how to interact with people in new ways...the poor people in my life have been through alot with me already and I know I am not always doing it with the most grace and sweetness possible. But I am trying harder than anyone may believe. All the painful things in my life have been dug up and all my coping mechanisms have been taken away...and I am so raw. So my guess is that I am not the most pleasant person to be around...which I bet makes some people wish I could just go back to the way I was before. I'm not going to lie, I have days I think I want to go back...but only because it would be easier.

These are all just thoughts...thoughts that stem from doing alot of therapy and looking at why I am so frustrated that I feel so frustrated when things here don't feel "right". Not in a "I need to move" sort of way. More in a "how do all these pieces fit together" sort of way...because my puzzle changed. Its like the pictures advanced forward a few scenes and now I have no idea how to make everything fit. It involves alot of the same things and same people...and yet it all fits together and feels very different. I thought I was going to get better and come home to a happy ending and it turns out getting better was just the realization that I am not the person I thought I was. And even more so that things are going to keep changing as I walk out this wonderful process people call life. I call it learning how to walk out the freedom that has always been there...I guess I am just now discovering it is mine. Jesus paid for it a long time ago...

Keep fighting

There are days when I feel paralyzed. I feel trapped within my skin...as if I am totally disconnected from this shell of a body and the life from within me is desperately trying to escape. I guess that's why running away never helps. I keep searching for that next thing...when no matter how fast and far I go, I am still there. It's not that I am failing miserably in my recovery. I actually feel like I am making forward progress. I think in some ways that in and of itself IS what hurts so much. I thought that when I reached this place in recovery I would feel more joy than pain. I thought I would laugh more than cry. I thought I would feel stronger...not more lost and uncertain than before.
I met with Tiffany today for one of our sessions. I was expecting us to discuss which days next week I would do the IOP program...and instead she told me that they just don't think I am ready to step down from day treatment. I wanted to fight it with the amount of time I have been in residential and day treatment combined as my defense. I wanted to give all the evidence of why I SHOULD be ready to go down to a lower level of care... and yet somehow those arguments only left me feeling more depressed. I guess the hardest part was hearing that what they really thought I needed was a PHP program...not that they won't help me and have me do day...but that the level of care that I needed was actually closer to a PHP level. Its frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I am the one making the choices on a daily basis. I am the one who puts each bite of food in my mouth. I am the one who is responsible for making the changes I have to make in order to really live the life of freedom God desires for me. And Renfrew is being wonderful. They are trying to help me get a scholarship that would allow me to do day treatment for another few weeks. It is such a blessing. It really is. I guess its always easier to see the negative. I feel like I have failed yet again. I feel like my best efforts aren't enough. I feel trapped in a life I didn't sign up for...I guess no one really asks for this to happen. I never thought one day I would have to fight so hard to escape what seemed like a harmless attempt to lose 10 pounds. I never thought the secrets of my past would haunt me and never really vanish behind the walls I so carefully constructed. I never thought my dreams would feel so far away.
I am so thankful that God isn't caught off guard by this. I am so thankful that my mess isn't too big for Him to handle. I am so in awe that He could still use someone as broken and flawed as me to further His kingdom. I have to keep reminding myself that He is faithful...that even the people He has placed in my life at Renfrew are examples of HIS faithfulness. What a blessing that people see enough fight and desire and effort in me to want to give me a scholarship... it helps remind me that even when I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel for myself there are people who see it for me...who have been there and have walked this path and know the signs much better than I do. God has never been out of reach. He has never walked away as I flail about gasping for air. With each turning of direction He fashions each step accordingly...to set me towards the purpose He has for me. I believe in total freedom. I believe it will come from HIM and HIM alone. So I walk by faith...believing with hope. Even though my plans for my life don't match up with my circumstances...I stand assured that His love endures and His faithfulness is unending. The creator of the universe has me in the palm of His hand. It's easy to be afraid. It's easy to try and take back control and fight for what I think I need...but where does that get me? So, I write this today and choose to stand in faith...believing that His faithfulness is greater than my fear...His love is greater than my depression. His hope is greater than my unknown. So i just keep walking...believing that freedom is a process... believing I am being moved from glory to glory...believing there will be a day when I am free. Until then, I keep fighting.