remodeling and rebuilding...

picture this.
your beloved house has burnt down to the ground and is completely in ruins.
you have to rebuild.
start from scratch.
pick up the pieces, salvage what you can, save the memories and keepsakes, and create something new from the wreckage.
you scramble around like crazy picking up pieces of wood that have height markings from where you grew over the years. you plan to use those pieces of wood as part of the foundation for your new home. you gather up the banister you slid down as a child and survey it to see if it is usable. you go about, gathering up parts and pieces, filling your arms, growing tired and weary.
people tell you "just start over!" and "begin from scratch!"
but let's just say you don't have enough money to start completely from scratch so you must use part of the burnt down rubble.
now imagine trying to put together all of these ashen pieces, that are fragile and weakened. you spend more energy just trying to get them to stand and stay in place and hold up the foundation than you do actually building something new. you can never seem to get ahead.
as said in alice in wonderland, "it takes all the running you can do just to stay in one place."

i feel like i run around trying to pick up the pieces of wreckage left behind by the eating disorder, salvaging what i can and atempting to put back together some semblance of a life. i want to just start over and start from scratch but it doesn't always work that way. in order to go to nursing school i have to send transcripts from schools previously attended which means i have to retrace my steps backwards into the past, only to be reminded of the painful years spent in and out of a vicious cycle with an eating disorder. i have to spend time on the phone fighting with administration in an attempt to get F's changed to W's so that i don't look like a complete failure to potential schools. i have to review my college gpa, which could have been much higher if i hadn't been using all of my energy to simply stay alive.
moving forward always requires bringing along some of the past. i've tried one too many times to move forward and leave behind all of the past completely...and i've failed. i've moved states. i've created new personas. i've changed majors. i've disclosed new information. i've hidden information. i've done all of this in a futile attempt to leave the past behind and move on. but will never happen, at least not without bringing with me some of the past, as well. and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. i don't have to get overwhelmed when thinking about fighting with school administration. i can choose to look at it as one more step towards freedom from that chapter of my life. yes, it is a total pain in the butt and i do find myself wishing that things could for once just be easy, but i know i have the capacity to actually do it.
i am learning to choose what pieces from my past are important and what pieces of my past i can let go of. i'm tired of carrying around such a big load and trying to keep my head above water. i'm tired of trying to rebuild and getting nowhere because i'm constantly having to deal with those old, ashen pieces that i keep carrying with me. it's time to do some remodeling, i suppose.
i realize that this post was probably all over the place. it made sense in my head but probably didn't written out. sorry about that!