What a great week this has been. I feel so much more refreshed and rejuvenated after getting to meet with all members of my former treatment team, getting to spend quality time with some of the most amazing women I know, and really thinking through some deicisions and actions I will be taking in the near future.
I was at the mall yesterday with my friend Heather, and told her how amazing and odd it is to me that the whole time I've been in Tulsa, body image thoughts have rarely come up. Weird, right? Especially since this is a big treatment area, and I have been around the people who saw me when I was at my worst, and are seeing me now in a much healthier spot. I thought I'd be nervous, and I was at first, that people would see me as fat because they had once seen me so thin, but once I got here that didn't even cross my mind. So, why when I am home do I worry so much about how people, usually strangers, perceive me? I think I just felt so comfortable with people doing so well with their own recoveries that I didn't need to think about body image. I had better things to fill my time and my thoughts with. I have been thinking a lot lately about making a big transition to pursue schooling and independence...Nashville is a possibility, but moving back to Tulsa is also an option. It has been so different being here and being healthy. I felt like I could enjoy the company of others much more than I could when I was sick, and it just felt normal. I felt like a 25 year old, which I haven't felt in quite some time. I think moving, regardless, would help me feel more independent nad productive and purposeful, so the big question is where to? Both are viable options and both are options that the team here supports. Of course they would like me back here for selfish reasons, but they support either move, with the clause that I will have to be extra cautious with such a big transition because I am not known to handle transitions very well. But honestly, I feel sturdy enough to do it. The finances are going to be my biggest feat, but I am wracking my brain trying to come up with every possible option on how to make it work. I have had to put all my effort into coming up with a solution before and did it. I can do it again.
It's just time for me to move on, to get my life going again, to be normal and stress over school and relationships and finding time in the day to get everything done. It's time to live like a "normal" person now, and not a sick one.
I love my home in Orlando, but I don't love Orlando. I love spending time with my parents and am so grateful that they allowed me to come back and live with them to get back up on my feet, but I'm ready to have some independence now. I am ready to get this going...to move on and grow up. I stunted my entire life with this eating disorder and I am tired of it holding me down, ruining my dreams, and keeping me from setting new goals. It's time to make some deicisons...a wise woman told me once that there is no wrong deicison, no undoable decision. You make them, they work out or they don't, you learn what to do next time, and choose a different path. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that one because I feel like making the wrong deicison means I am stuck and trapped with no way out. But that is so far from the truth. I just learn a lesson...hey, we all need to learn lessons every now and then, right? I could be really bitter about the whole grad school thing, and not even so much that they rejected my request for readmission, but that they took SO long letting me know that I then missed a lot of school deadlines to do something else, but I am not bitter. Now I have a clean slate, a fresh canvas, and I can paint it any which way I want.
So, I am headed home to see my family, rest up, save up some money, and start making decisions that are best for me, regardless of the support I get or don't get. I am going to have to take a risk if I want to grow...
<3 LB
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