LEAPING OFF CLIFFS
Food was my drug of choice you could say. However, an eating disorder is never a choice. On the left I had just began my battle with binge eating disorder. On the right I am healing my relationship with food and learning to enjoy it with moderation. But it’s not about food! It never is … it never was. But when life gets tough … when life gets lonely … when life seems to have ganged up on you … you smartly look for ways to survive, cope, make it through another day. It’s not your fault for desperately trying to feel better by masking, numbing and distracting yourself from much deeper rooted pain.
But what happens when your way to survive becomes all you know? What happens when it becomes your normal? What happens when you are once again miserable, yet stuck in this new “life?” You want out. You wonder how things spiraled so far in the wrong direction seemingly overnight. But now it’s not so simple. You hate your coping skills, but you also hate what lies beneath them. You hate your current way of life, but you came to this way of living because you so desperately wanted to escape your past life.
So how do you let go? How do you not only give up the behaviors that you believe hold you together, but also realize that by letting go you will not return to your past misery? You trust. You talk. You ask for support. You deflate your ego. You tremble with fear. You believe. You stay patient. You focus on you. You re-train your brain. You take baby steps. You celebrate every minuscule victory. You fight. You take back your power. You choose. You change. You recreate. You sit with the pain. You cry. You scream. You heal.
You see … you’re leaping off the edge of a cliff. From your view it looks as if the cliff must have a 10,000 ft drop. but what you don’t realize is that cliff is only an illusion from your point of view. Because once you get the courage to take the leap … you’ll realize it’s really only a 2 ft drop onto a soft grassy patch. Don’t be afraid to start over. Because it is in the leap into the unknown that you’ll find your wings. ~Britt