Brittany Burgunder

I CHOOSE TO CRY

Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you.

My past is haunting. It’s disturbing. It’s a nightmare straight out of a horror film that can’t possibly be real. But it is. For years I did anything and everything to avoid thinking about, acknowledging or accepting my past. How could I? How could I look back on years so unspeakably painful and then make sense of the fact that it belongs to me? Well, for years I didn’t. I numbed and distracted myself from my buried wounds at all costs – healthy or not. I didn’t see it as coping. I saw it as survival.

I will be frankly honest with you all as I pride myself in doing… I have terrible, terrible, terrible PTSD. I had PTSD before my eating disorder even began. My eating disorder helped me deal with the trauma, but then my eating disorder created it’s very own traumatic Hell to pile on top of my core trauma. It all just kept getting buried deeper and deeper all tangled up together.

I used to tell people about my “life story” completely emotionless… sometimes even with a smile. How do you speak of such events so detached? So distant? So disconnected? I had to. I wasn’t ready or mentally able to comprehend it all. It was as if I were speaking about a stranger, but this was so much worse. I would have felt something – anything for this poor stranger – but I felt nothing. It was like I awoke from a decade long coma and was expected to know who I was. Heck! I didn’t even like myself or life before my eating disorder started!

To make a long story shorter, I’m finally able to own my story, my past and am beginning to make peace with it. I can cry now… that might sound silly, but nothing could ever make me cry, feel, or wipe the permanently drawn fake smile off my face. But I’m ready to look back now. It’s painful, but it’s also the moment I’ve needed for oh so many years. It looks like a breakdown, it feels like a never ending waterfall of tears and it makes you think you’ll never stop bleeding. I want to let you all know that there is so much beauty in the breakdown. There is so much healing in the tears. And there is so much strength in letting your open wounds finally close and fade to scars of victory.

If I can do it; you can do it. Because I believe the darker your past… the brighter your future can be. ~Britt

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