I decided to post my last entry that was actually written in March and not on today’s date, the 25th June. I think I would have posted it anyway but the sentiment of hope that I clung onto in the post has crystallised and grown through my recent behaviour and somewhat tentative progress. All the while, writing these posts these past years, I have been acutely aware that talking about issues without the practical implementation of those wants and needs , is fundamentally useless. If I desire to change and in so doing to perhaps help or influence others with similar problems , unless I can illustrate these changes by offering myself as an example , then I am no help to man or beast, least of all to myself. All the self recriminations and negative self-talk wear thin after a while if that is all that I can produce or offer. It presents me as a victim of my own making and to question if I choose to remain in this place because in some weird way I use this flagellum to constantly whip myself because it brings me some sort of perverse pleasure. Am I wallowing ? Has this been part of the problem all these years? I don’t believe so. I think that I am addicted to behaviour that served a purpose at its inception but has subsequently imprisoned me , wrapping its pernicious tentacles around me offering little escape. This being said I do believe that there is ALWAYS a way out of any situation if one is determined enough and tenacious enough to seek a solution. I am beginning to grasp that genetics and hereditary may indeed play a very real and viable role, particularly where anorexia is concerned. However, what I have further ascertained is that having anorexia or an eating disorder as I have always called it, has shaped my identity for most of my life and that clinging on to this as what defines me, is going to be the hardest thing to let go of. Who am I truly? Who will I become when this toxic identity tag starts to erode and dissipate? Will I like what emerges? Seems to me that the risk is well worth it given that I revile and abhor how I have always regarded myself. I knows that this seems harsh and as I write it I am conscious of this pattern of stinking thinking that is intrinsic and constantly expressed within. It is one of my biggest stumbling blocks and challenges if I am to elevate myself from the burrow I have dug and in which I have chosen to live all these years.
I am more than delighted to report that I have started therapy and have had 4 sessions with a psychologist – an eating disorder specialist based in London. I had 3 sessions with her before seeing a dietician. For some reason that I am still trying to fathom, I have refrained from writing about this important journey thus far. I find this odd given that I have been open to my foibles and failures with candidness and honesty in the past. Perhaps its this fear of failure that has fostered my proficiency in avoidance , something that I am expert in as I have written many a time before. Perhaps its nothing more than writer’s block and I haven’t been in the right space to commit myself to tabling the course and progression of my pilgrimage towards health and happiness. Whatever the reasons, I feel I am now back on course and will henceforth write regular blogs describing my tentative steps from exile into what I hope will be forceful strides, leaps even , towards freedom and enlightenment.
