Saturday, August 10, 2013

Lessons in Growth

"We'll never be this young again, I just realized.
Laying naked on his futon.
Staring at the ceiling.
"Nope, we won't."
Traces my hip with his finger.
"I guess it just made me realize we'll never inhabit a moment again."
Time.
Ambiguous, yet it's usually us hiding.
Taking handfuls of hopes and days and scattering them.
Come back for more to make more trivial attempts and sense out of the nothingness we perpetuate.
Empty.
We could be anything, but instead we choose to fall under the rush of frantic wings of imagined necessity.
And sometimes we break away.
When I was 14 my friend told my mom in a note what was happening to me.
I wasn't mad and it made the abuse stop.
Collapse into darkness and anorexia.
At 22, much older than then and much younger than the range of possibility, I have weathered some storms.
Dad worked too much and hid his struggles under caged floors to release when I turned away.
Mom felt that expansion of the blackness depression.
Fighting, yelling, chaos, starving.
        <the cop said I wanted to do it.>
                       <please, I didn't know what to say, just scared and shamed.>
I met Tony and he destroyed himself too while I piled back on bricks to make amends and threw a few at the windows.
Opening the drawer to find less spoons as I find reasons to justify the comfort of others.
My mom tried to commit suicide one Christmas day.
I felt the unraveling.
Relapse.
    <Will there ever be a day I don't want to fly away from this life?>
Ugliness.
It inhabits our bones like cold.
Force it out but human nature is our design.
When L has his arm around me or comes from behind to hug me around my waist the memories snapshot in....
Truthfully, I accepted that this summer would be no different.
Woking for love he had for me but couldn't express, some drug use I would claim hurt me too, insecurity, fights. You know, we had good times too.
Xbox playing, camping, eating dinner we cooked, walks with the dogs, vacation, those showers where we would tall for ages because somehow water loosens inhibitions.
Tony is not a monster and he keeps more pain and intruders away that would hurt him by being like he is.
He also provides, works very hard (even days he's coming down and rarely misses work), doesn't judge, respectful. 
There were still nights I sat on the porch with a bottle of wine and tried to force together pieces that didn't fit...
Leaving was something I never saw coming.
Neither did he.
Laying in the dark, me on my back, his arm across my stomach.
Cheeks wet from tear after tear that replaced each old one.
Chest heavy, heart threatening to burst through my ribcage.
I held it in and let a new sun rise and set on the old that sticks itself in between the wrinkles of my brain.
"I feel terrible L! Maybe I should have done something different or maybe I went too fast. He hurts  and I try so hard not to hurt anyone but I do it anyway!"
"You have so much faith in people that it borders on child-like naivety. I'm almost jealous because I don't have that kind of faith. You want to help others to the point that you'll take their burdens and you can't. No one can."
"But I try. I just don't want anyone to hurt."
A few more tears slip from my eyes and find a place to hide in the creases of my pillow.
He raises up to hover over me and kisses and hugs me.
I can feel a few of hid curls wet from skimming my face.
I found I live my life for others.
My happiness seems selfish to me, but I truly am selfish in the end because I pleased too many people and you can't appease fickle whims long.
I don't know if I did things right.
Coming back to Tony gave him hope when there was none but I missed him so much...
Even now.
I just want to be friends.
   <please don't leave my life completely...>
Dating L was probably a low blow to already weak knees, but I would have went back.
<please forgive me, I really do love you...>
I never saw a day when I would be healthy.
I assumed there would always be heartache and I would be this way forever.
Fervent praying.
Restless days.
Sleeping too heavily at night.
I left.
I think that day I walked out on more than an unhealthy relationship.
Slowly, from that day on, I began to regain my life.
You see, we let the ache for a better life live there below the surface.
Feed it.
Compliment it with excuses.
Live as a victim.
Put off recovery from an eating disorder because I'll get fat and emotions are too intense.
"God, make me strong enough to stand naked and vulnerable in the face of the things I deny and hide from. Please help me overcome."
Sadness is addictive, but so is happiness. I'm scared to forge ahead, but I can't go back.
The sun is rising and you can't block it out for long.
"Alright, you weigh 139 now."
Cringe
"Oh... that's huge."
"What is it with you and that scale? It's not your worth. We only use it to calculate all this. You pulled out your tissue on the scale and started crying about it but you didn't even let me get to this part. You are now 112 pounds of lean muscle and you lost half a pound of fat. You went from 19.76% body fat to 19.04%!"
"But will I get bigger?"
"139 is as high as I see you getting. I think that you really have a good body for bikini if you wanted to."
"I don't want to compete but I want to get that fit. I can't go back."
"Yah, but you can make this unhealthy too. You have to work on your mind."
"I'm trying. Little by little."
Little by little.
Looking for life.
Forgetting what it's like to crave the comfort of sadness and fear growing because it hurts.
What have you learned this summer?
Will you decide to look up?
Rush of feathers to hope.
Fly away with me?

4 comments:

  1. Did you trainer say those things to you about the scale? He seems like a great support.
    Every post you say that you stay away from Tony I'm proud and happy. It takes a lot of courage and strength to walk away from something so much a part of your life, but again, you did it for the right reasons. Feeling pain is what humans are good at. Don't let Ana take away that pain. You need it to heal.

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    1. He did. :) he's a cool guy and has really helped me. You're so right but it's so damn hard! I don't like it or want it...

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  2. I'm really impressed that your trainer understands that BALANCE is part of being healthy - that obsessing over being fit is not a good thing. I'm sure you know this, but I want to point out that gaining weight does not = getting bigger. If you are losing fat, you will take up less space because lean body mass is more dense.

    When I said that things Tony did are abusive, it's not to say that he's a bad person or that there weren't really good parts of your relationship. People are more complex than that! That's part of why leaving a situation like that is so hard. I think you need to accept the fact that Tony may not be able to be friends with you. I also think that if you tried to break away more gradually that he would have started clinging/scrambling/threatening harder and sooner and it would have been pretty much impossible for you to leave. Is his illusion of happiness more important than your actual happiness? You seem to know in your heart of hearts that you did what you needed to do, even though it still hurts.

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    1. He's a super cool guy and he really gets that balance in your life is important. I feel like he's been so influential in my choice to recover. Feeling super empowered every time I hit that weight room. I know that muscle takes up less space but it's that silly mentality that hangs around, you know?

      No, I know that. We all do crap things and then we all do good things. I know I'm going to have to. I've been in denial about that and I guess I have to admit that to him, what I did was shitty... You're probably right though. I just didn't see any other way to do it. I put other peoples' happiness first and that isn't right either.

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