The Imperfect Bits Of Me, Perfectly Love You.
It's saddening just how many parts of me I consider imperfect. They're the parts of me tinged with an eating disorder, depression and OCD. Those parts of me are wounded with a love I didn't learn. They're the parts of me that contribute to my ongoing desire for self-destruction. But what has never tinged are the parts that melt with the love I hold for my close-knit network of friends and family. Everything I've never done has been because of me. But everything I've ever done has been because of the ones I love. I get up, I try, and I repeat because that love is entire, endless and true. I am only alive today, existing in this crazy, mad world because that love exists. And I really believe that.
I am incredibly strict with the exact amount of food I let myself eat every day. It can always be less but it can never be more. The other evening, I'd already consumed my limit for the day but my family randomly suggested we get ice cream. I was so sick of saying 'no' so, for the first time in years, I let my heart and soul speak 'yes'. It wasn't planned, it wasn't within my limit, and it wasn't aligned with a given time.
But what it was was so much more than what it wasn't.
It was fun, it was freedom and it was a memory. I would do it all again to feel the relief my family felt, the hope on their faces that I wouldn't chicken out and the delight they experienced in my moment of bravery. This was the first time I'd ever exceeded that limit outside a hospital or meal-plan setting. There will always be a part of me that detests what was done, but I'm learning that it is okay to not succumb to every demand that part of me barks.
My family describe their best way of helping me as meal support, which entails what it sounds like - sitting down with me, eating together and talking to distract me. I've tried eating alone, eating if I feel hungry and eating without structure. Believe me when I tell you how hard I have tried. But it always results in me being trapped inside the glass box as it fills and fills with water. I cannot eat for myself or by myself. I am usually okay for a day or two at best. But then I see a longer-term goal - the opportunity to increase my self-worth by decreasing my total weight. But when my family know I'm not coping, I see how afraid they become. Last year when my Mum and Dad went on their honeymoon, there were several occasions that they considered cutting it short to fly back home. I hate lying. I'm bad at it when it comes to those I love. And there were many times I did a terrible job of covering up my struggle, my pain, and my internal conflict. You see, my family are on the other side of that looking glass all the time, watching me slowly drown in the situation I cast upon myself. When I self-sabotage, it doesn't only feel like hell for me to know that my family knows I couldn't do it, that I didn't do it, it feels like hell for them to watch. I know they see past the fake smile with gritted teeth, the standard 'I promise' and the endless 'It is all okay.' When I choose to swim in the bottomless ocean of anorexia, it's the loneliest I've ever been and the loneliest I will ever be. Because I feel myself falling apart, I feel myself losing all I'd worked to build, and I feel every part of myself rapidly deteriorate - my heart, my body, my soul, my fire, my control, me. It's one thing to let down myself. It's another when I know my family see through my bullshit. I feel the guilt of knowing that the pain in their eyes is a direct result of them watching me kill myself and them knowing there's nothing they can do about it. But when they can do something about it (i.e. when they make the time to do meal support), I do my best to surrender for three reasons.
I know from experience that I'm not strong enough to fight without them present.
Seeing the look on their face as they know they've lost their final ounce of hope, breaks me.
When my parents can guarantee I've had a meal, I feel their growing fear, desperation and heartbreak ease from a crashing wave to a freshwater ripple in a lake.
Everybody has parts of them that they doubt. They're the parts we want to hide from the light, our failures and the fear of chasing what we don't think we can be. But every part of me, even the parts I doubt, will always hold enough space to harness, save and breathe the irrevocable love I have, if not at all for me, completely and totally for them. I believe that everybody can love. I believe love is stronger than what gets acknowledged. I believe I will lose everything before I lose love. And that is why, since I haven't lost my imperfections, they perfectly love you.
Kisses,
COS x
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