Acceptance. Group Therapy Brought To Me By Above & Beyond.

Tunnel vision of the stage.

I grasp onto everything Above & Beyond is typing.

Lights flash, smoke rises,the beat starts.

"A little bit lost and a little bit lonely."

Goosebumps rise.
My heart jumps.
I'm elated.

"But I hold on and I feel strong and I know that I can," I yell with my hands up embracing the message and the of relief of being understood.

The song plays, the chorus hits, the beat takes me away.

My body moves. I'm not in control. I'm just expressing what's inside me.

Time, place, people, looks--nothing matters.

My mind takes me to a beach where I see myself age 20. I'm in a triangle green bikini, white floral bottoms. I'm walking past old friends who look at me and gawk. They comment on my weight. Their words cut me. I thought I was finally ok, finally thin enough, finally acceptable--loveable.

I want to hide but I am in my most vulnerable place-outside in a bikini-my disorder glaring.

I come back to the Showbox SoDo I'm holding myself. Arm in arm. Slightly buckled over in pain with the memory, in pain for her. She was so lost. So confused. So thin. So sick.

I open my arms and she willingly walks into them. I hold her. There isn't much. I feel her bones and see her rib cage. I stroke her hair and I tell her it's ok. Everything is going to be ok.

I tell her I don't hate her. I  understand her. It's ok to be confused. She's going to be ok. She'll be ok.

My mind shifts to 12 year old me. She doesn't know love. She knows anger. I try to take her hand. She doesn't want to be touched--not anymore--never again.

I look into her light brown eyes and let her know it's not her fault. She's grateful for the love. She sits with us.

Then I see no one else. I realize it's my turn to face me as I am now with the same compassion I just received my past.

Now it's just me holding me. I embrace myself in this moment as I am.

It is ok that I am not ok. It is ok that I do not know what's going on or what will happen. It is ok that I am frustrated. That I am confused.

 I am who I am because I needed to protect myself from my present which is now my past. I needed to be who I was and do what I did in order to survive.

In that moment of an accumulation of my past and my present I accept myself and I forgive myself.

Above & Beyond types "Group Therapy" on their screen.

I smile.

Where I am, who I am is exactly who I need to be.