my mom had never told me this before...

...but during our morning ritual chat over complex carbs and window-beams of sun, she told me that my therapist in high school looked her square in the face and said i was the worst case he'd ever seen.

i never knew that, and i wouldn't have believed it if either of them had told me (part of me still doesn't), but it was truly encouraging to hear it.

i was partly encouraged because i hadn't thought about high school in awhile. sometimes i forget how bad things were then, and i think only about this past relapse- which was bad, but not as bad-and i feel invalidated in my decision to get help last fall. but thinking about all the years i can't get back, the high school memories i could have had but don't have, reminded me that it was the same disorder that took those years that tried for the final time to take even more last fall.

the other way in which i was encouraged (which is also the better way, because the first way is kind of a crutch for my recovery) was that i realized that a small strand of the EA God always intended me to be reached out last fall, begged for help, and alongside an amazing treatment team and God himself, fought her way out of one of the worst disorders a licensed professional had ever encountered, and reclaimed what she knew was her own.

so for all the fellow strugglers who've found this blog and thought, "wow. i wish i could do what EA's done but i'm just too far gone," know that i was NOT better off than you, it has NOT been easier for me than for others, i was NOT just a minor case that was easily reversed. Know that if i did it, you can do it. I give all credit for my decision to recover to Jesus Christ, but aside from Him, there's no super power or secret to my success in recovery. i didn't want to, i didn't think i needed to, but for some reason i just did it anyway. (sometimes i think it was because i just wanted an adventure).

i'm not trying to be bossy, but please stop waiting for a reason to recover, because nothing's ever going to be good enough for long enough. stop waiting til you want to, because however much you want it, the first time your size * pants won't zip, you'll want your eating disorder twice as much as you ever wanted to eat.

sometimes you just have to do it because you'll die if you don't, because you'll never be anything or anyone but your disorder unless you walk through the fire of letting it go. you're not going to want to until you've tasted life and you're not going to taste life until you've acted outside your disorder for quite awhile.

you can.

love,

EA