I am here

I'm sitting at work and I'm caught up too far ahead. Again. So, I'm bored. I've submitted my paper for school, have 3 hours to do a project for work, and am crazily trying to entertain myself. So, here are some ramblings

You are here

Covered in mud, sweat, and tears

Even through struggles so dark and hope way low

You are here

In all the times you thought you would not survive

Your life was over

And you saw your demise

You’re still here

Even though you’ve beat your body to hell

And atrophied your insides

Just waiting to hear the final call bell

You are here

Don’t rush after things you’ve lost

People that have left

Opportunities you’ve forgot

They are not here

And you cannot be there

yet

Where have you been?

So, it has been a couple months since I’ve written a blog post. Between long days with treatment to returning to work full time I haven’t had much energy for anything; which is just a little bit sad because the process of writing down my thoughts is actually quite therapeutic.

For a while I actually lost sight of life’s worth; the meaningfulness of my life ambition and the future had been jaded and I no longer cared for their significance. Being away from work, removing myself from my regular environment was, in fact, a wise move. It reminded me of what I wanted to become, what I have to offer, and grounded me to the process of working through my own heartbreaks and issues.

Now I am back to work doing what I did before, in terms of job description, but I find myself looking at life completely different. In a healthy way I am making sure I am taking care of me first. I am learning to reach out to others to actually be part of the world everyone else is part of. I can no longer accept the secluded life I have been living for so long.  

Next week I return to school. I am excited because it was one of the things that has been on hold since March. Learning is such a beautiful process for me. I learn from the day to day but I am excited to start going through the intellectual process again

Uhhhhhh

Im sitting here...awake. Tired but unable to sleep. Whatching the clock tick by; 12:00, 12:45, 1:55, 2:30. I have to leave in 4 hours. Words are eluding me.

Perfect

Just a little blurb about this one.

How often do we lose focus on what we are reading because we get caught on grammatical errors? How many times have I gotten sidetracked by some imperfection that might be surface level and never delve deeper? How often have I been so overly concerned with my outward appearance to forget about the parts of me that are beautifully imperfect?

So, I think I'm going to work on not fixing grammatical errors, stop tweaking pictures/getting stuck on the exterior and fail to get to know someone/thing/experience more genuinely. And I'm going to try and appreciate the parts of me that are perfect just the way they are: imperfect.

Love

An interesting thing happened during my day today. I was having a conversation with some co-patriots about the word anger. Looking at all the emotions that can be expressed when feeling angry. And then we had a role-play situation happen in which we all realized our mutual anger about a situation.

Through the realization we also reaffirmed our cohesiveness as a group. In laughing about why we were angry we started along the process of looking through the emotion joy. We realized, by venting our frustrations with each other, we were lighter and our burden was not so heavy. We laughed about the frustration and learned to trust each other.

The last word we discussed was love. And the different levels there are to love as an emotion. It's not just about the romantic love. There's love born out support. A knowledge another person has your back, that they are there for you. This brightened our whole day. Because we knew we were going to be ok.

Much like this conversation today, in a crazy time during my own life, the end result of the day was a sense of hope. If a group of people could serendipitously realize they were happy and love and recovery was possible, than they could each take a piece of that promise away with them. I took a piece of this conversation away with me.

Who has the power?

Power. A strong word. A word that can mean both positive and negative things.

On the negative side is when someone else (or an eating disorder) takes the power from us. We allow the strength and direction of our life to be given to another person. Despite the fact that it does hurt, it's still hard to take that power back from another person.

On the positive side, when we hold the power to our own life, this strength has no limitation. As long as we do not abuse the ability to direct our life by hindering another there is no limit to how far we can go.

Isn't funny that I think of the word power over the word force? I think it's because I think of the word force in a negative connotation. Maybe because of the various experiences I've had in my own life, but I think power has a slightly more positive direction when talking about the ability to direct our own life. The word force feels more like an external entity (like the eating disorder) has the power over how my life will go.

And how often have I given the power over to my eating disorder? How often have I willingly, without a struggle, decided to give the control over to it with the hope that losing the weight will make my life better?

Maybe I do need to change the vocabulary in my internal messaging a little bit more. Change the direction my eating disorder has on me to something that isn't so positive. Because my eating disorder isn't a strength but something that takes the power away. It has truly taken the power away from me in making my own decisions.

Invisible, emotional, illogical

Yesterday I thought about the word logical and the thoughts that flowed were incoherent and had little to do with logic. A week ago we talked about being invisible but I was not seen and, thus, was not heard. And all these words flow from my brain as I contemplate the emotional mess I'm in. Therefore I find it quite appropriate to write about all three at once...


For me, right now, I do feel that all three of these words are intertwined. Much like the braids of a rope; each individual strand makes the whole stronger for how tightly they are bound together. Not necessarily what I would choose for climbing but, it's what I've got to work with, and I can still get up my mountain with just a tad bit more caution. 


I think all three of these can be both positive and negative really. Sometimes it's good to fade into the background, if only to truly hear (not just listen) to what is going around you. And emotions; they let us know when we are upset, angry, happy, envious, and so many more. It's only in the application they become hazardous. No person is logical all the time and I would question anyone claiming to be so. 

I found this poem and found it very profound when reflected onto my own life and thought I would share it with you as a way of ending this rather peculiar post

The Invisible Person

By: James Laughlin

Life kept rolling her over   

like a piece of driftwood

in the surf of an angry sea   

she was intelligent and 

beautiful and well-off 

she made friends easily 

yet she wasn’t able to 

put the pieces together 

into any recognizable shape  

she wasn’t sure who   

she wanted to be  

so she ended up being 

no one in particular 

she made herself almost invisible 

she was the person you loved so much 

who really wasn’t there at all.