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me: has a breakdown

Knowing that trans women of color started the movement in the united states and were literally immediately erased and excluded from what they started is the most deeply jading knowledge.

We’re supposed to feel. We’re supposed to love, and hate, and hurt, and grieve, and break, and be destroyed. And we build ourselves to be destroyed again. And that is human. That is humanity. That is being alive. That’s the point.

Write your own definitions for love and happiness and let everyone else do the same..

Faith is a hard concept to hold on to when someone is in the throes of an eating disorder. It can feel impossible to look on the bright side when you feel stuck in the dark. But faith is a pre-requisite for recovery. Faith is the foundation for the work that is the path to recovery. You must believe that something better is on the other side or you’ll never cross the bridge. It’s funny, though, because the “grass is always greener” mentality doesn’t seem to apply to eating disorders. People struggling with eating disorders are perfectly content to stay on their itchy, dead plot of grass. But this is because they can’t see the greener pasture of recovery. It’s like a mirage, something talked about in metaphor but that doesn’t exist in reality. Or it might feel like a foreign land that is impossible to get to, and they don’t speak the language. The greenness can even feel like astro turf - too good to be true. And at least, the familiarity of the current grass provides a sense of safety and security. The confines of a single familiar blade feels safer, more doable than a whole yard of grass. And sometimes, the person feels like they don’t deserve a pasture. They feel like they are only allotted a little and can’t imagine having a lot. So, part of my job as a recovered therapist is to be the travel agent and tour guide for recovery. I have to use my experience of crossing the bridge, of knowing what it’s like not to just visit but to live in the land of recovery. I stand as a model of possibility, of hope of finding a net after taking a leap of faith. …… teaching clients that they deserve the greener pasture……teaching them that they’re invited to join the club of recovery. There is no magic password. Just faith and hard work. As someone trying to recover, you have to make the choice to take the leap or to stand on the precipice forever. Recovery can’t be something you dip your toe into. For it to be fully felt and completely comprehended, you have to immerse yourself.

There will be days when you want to just throw in the towel and give up. There will be days when nothing makes sense anymore and you feel like happiness won’t show its face to you any time soon. There will be days of stiff necks and no sleep and sore muscles. People will be cruel. Food will go bad. You will feel like the world is out to get you. But then spring arrives. Something big blooms in your chest. Sparrows sing to you and the air suddenly is clearer. You fall in love. You will grow a garden. Good things will start to come to you, beautiful people will find you. Remember those good things when the days get cold and the nights get long. Remember that you deserve to feel good. That you deserve to have good people and good food and a safe place to come home to. Remember that bad moods pass that all bad days end. And that no matter where you are or how lonely you get, somebody out there is looking for you and is waiting to for you to find them and give them your love.

Healthy is hard. You’re three-dimensional again; once more connected to the world, and your life—because you have a life now, or more of one at least—and that’s scary. Nowadays, people expect more of you: standards and deadlines and demands seem to multiply in the outside world, while yours only ever required just one.  I’m less scared of fat than I am of the permanence of fat, of flesh, and I’m scared of handing in my weapon. I’m scared of having a body here to stay and a brain constantly in conflict.

This is the weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and forth in your head, often, about giving it up. It’s hard to understand, when you are sitting there in your chair, having breakfast or whatever, that giving it up is stronger than holding on, that “letting yourself go” could mean you have succeeded rather than failed. You eat your goddamn Cheerios and bicker with the bitch in your head that keeps telling you you’re fat and weak: Shut up, you say, I’m busy, leave me alone. When she leaves you alone, there’s a silence and a solitude that will take some getting used to. You will miss her sometimes…There is, in the end, the letting go.

Recipe for recovery: Ingredients: -1 cup of self-love (you deserve it) -5 years of therapy (and counting) -80 mg of Prozac (every day) -many nights of crying  -2 cats -3 hospital stays -however much relapse is necessary Instructions: 1) Try to find the self-love  2) Fail 3) Time for the hospital stays 4) Go to therapy 5) Take your Prozac…it will help 5) Relapse…again 6) Cry…again 8) Forgive yourself 9) Keep trying 10) Wait—this is a lifelong journey