The Time is Now

         The Time is Now. This is the theme for National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, which is going on right now. I love this theme, and for me, it really hits home. In every journey, it takes something different to reach the point where this feels true, for someone to say to themselves, "The time is now." Rock bottom means something different for each of us. 

        So what did it take for me to say, "The time is now"? Well, the short answer is, "A lot. A lot had to go wrong, or at least feel like it had gone wrong." But the long answer, well, it's long. So get cozy, grab a blanket, and let's get into it. 

       My journey through anorexia took about 15 years, from the time I started to hate my body and began unhealthy behaviors to lose weight until the time I could honestly say I was fully recovered. My ED took everything from me. It took my joy, my strength, my passion. It took me away from relationships. But it was never enough to get me to choose recovery.

        I started the healing part of my mental health journey when I was 20, during the summer after my third year of college. First stop: the psych hospital. Honestly, it was a beautiful experience. I know that for many, psych hospitals are an awful experience. But this place was different. The staff was different. The patients were different. With the exception of one or two people, we were all there truly doing all we could to get better because that was what we wanted most. In the months that followed, I was diagnosed with PTSD. Nothing else has ever shocked and resonated with me so immensely. 

        So time went on and I knew I wasn't eating much. It had been this way for a long time. I wasn't even trying to not eat anymore. I just had no appetite. I was anxious and depressed and eating was stressful and took energy I did not have. I must have said something about this to my therapist in one of our early sessions because he asked me, "Do you have concerns about your relationship with food?" I was completely thrown off. I'd never heard anyone ask this question. I almost brushed it off as I answered, "uh-noo." But it swirled around in my mind. "Relationship with food? What does that even mean?" I went back the next week and told him that actually, I think there is a problem with my relationship with food. Though he didn't specialize in eating disorders, he was willing to continue seeing me as long as I also went to the ED clinic my university offered. I did what the doctor said. I did what the dietitian said. But my heart wasn't in it. I was going through the motions so that I could keep my therapist.

        Five years later, my eating disorder hit an all-time low. There was a variety of factors that led up to what some may have viewed as my rock bottom. My ED was out of control. I could not escape the rigidity, the rules. I could not calm my mind, no matter how hard I tried. The PTSD and the ED screamed at me every moment of every day. The culmination? My first and last suicide attempt. The seriousness of it all didn't sink in until later. I tried to understand it...to feel the weight of it, but it took weeks, maybe months to settle on me. 

        No, this was not the point when I said, "The time is now." It would be another year plus. My behaviors had become less intense and I didn't feel consumed by the eating disorder to the same extent as before. But it still controlled so much of my life. 

        I was battling infertility, and I say battling because this was yet another area where I felt that I was at war with my body, another thing that made me feel betrayed by my body. I lacked the support network I needed, and I will acknowledge that that was largely my own doing. I have walls and I didn't know how to let them down.

        A little out of the blue, my boss asked me if I had an eating disorder, and without hesitation, I said, "yes." She sent me to the woman who was exactly what I needed in a therapist. I actually left our first session thinking, "She is way too perky but I think I can make it work." 

        A few months in, she had me write a letter from my body. I came to session the next week, read the letter and told her, "I need a dietitian." Yes I had been working towards recovery. I wanted my life back. I wanted my body to trust me and like me. I wanted to help others who struggle with their body and with food. And I knew I had to be recovered to do any of these things. 

        So in conclusion, it was a letter. Yes a lot of crappy circumstances led to that letter, but in the end, a letter that I wrote made me decide, "The time is now."

        I hope that if you are living with an eating disorder, you won't wait to go through everything I've gone through. I hope you won't hit rock bottom time and again. It is within your control to say, "The time is now."