Wah Work. I Don't Wanna.

I want to purge. 
The anxiety of returning to work has my stomach sick. 
Breathe. 
Remember to breathe. 
In through the nose out through the mouth. Again. Again.
I slowly release and immediately gasp for air.
I feel like I'm drowning--I am drowning. 
Swallowed up by worry and frozen with fear from the unknown.
Anxiety rocks my heart against my rib cage. 
The breath comes from my chest shallow, light.  
I'm outside myself. I can't calm down. 
Just calm down.
This goes on for minutes.
I don't know where I am or where I was or what I was doing. 

Then I'm brought back by the beat of Ultra 2014 streaming live into my headphones.
The steady heart of the music. 
I close my eyes and I'm back there, only two years ago.
When I was at my first ever music festival, UMF 2012.  
I'm a too skinny, scared, 24 year old, anorexic, bulimic me.
And somehow in that mix I began to find room for hope.

I felt it in the crowd. In the music. In the lights. The air. My breath. My body.
It was pulsing in the night.
I was completely sober and yet in those hours where the lights flashed and the beats crashed I was high.
Elated.
Anew.
Different.
Light.
Real and yet surreal.
In a happier, gentler world I never knew.

"You'll never fly if you're too scared of the height."

I was scared to go to Ultra back then.
And now I am scared to go back to work.
This is my second time coming out of a treatment center, trying to take those next crucial steps towards living a life without an eating disorder.

I am scared to fail, I am scared to succeed, I am scared to leave 'my home'.

And yet I went to UMF and I was so far out of my comfort zone. I was submersed in a world that while it was new and scary and foreign it was warm, it was love. People respected themselves, those around them, the air radiated love, positive energy.

There was a seed planted for the recovery life I am living today in those three days because I did something I feared.

Now I face my fears every day when I eat lunch, when I do not workout, when I talk about my trauma and when I ask for help.

And each time I am rewarded with a little more strength, a little more peace and a little more life.

The music quiets and the beat gets ready for a drop, my heart flutters and tears come to my eyes.

I smile to myself.

I close my eyes and picture myself next to the old me and take her hand and we sing the words together 

"Freedom ain't free it's a long road"

And she tells me it's ok to take this leap of faith.

"If you never say goodbye."

And now I am here and I am calm and I am ready for what tomorrow holds because I know there is a power out there, an energy that will help carry me through it as it did two years ago and as it will for the rest of the years to come.

Inventory

I haven't written in a while because I was so happy then I was so sad.

I'm coming off a week long binge after a week long of not bingeing and before that it was a week long binge.

So much money wasted and time on eating and throwing up-I disgust myself.

Anyway, I felt compelled to write-not about the above but about what I'm doing right now.

I'm doing an inventory on my life up until now. I'm listing out resentments, fears and people / places I've harmed.

I resent over 300 people. Going through my facebook friends alone got me most of them but my God I had no idea I was this jealous, bitter and angry at people...especially my dearest friends.

Every girl who is happily married (not sure why I am jealous of that), who is thinner than me, in better shape, has a fiance, has a job I want, who was once my friend but doesn't talk to me anymore, any guys I dated or thought should be more interested in me and show me more attention...I AM STILL UPSET AT THEM.

And half the shit I'm saying is my own opinion and not facts, like "She's prettier than me. She's happier than me. She thinks she's better than me. He talks to her more than me."

I've have created so much hate in myself that it's clouded my head and my perception. It's blocking me from moving forward.

I will share them with a trusted friend so these resentments and fears are no longer inside of me, no longer holding me back.

Also, I've realized I'm petrified of losing my job, getting a new job, trying to get a new job, trying to be sexy, trying on jeans, being overweight (we knew that one), of never being good enough, of everyone else's opinion, that I'm never going to figure this out, that everyone has it better than me, that I'm missing out on something, that I'm not doing enough...etc

And the hardest one is going back through not the people that hurt me (the kids that spray painted WHORE in my lawn, the girls in the 6th grade that called me Super Bitch, my "best friends" that wrote shit about me anonymously online, my parents who never got me help) but rather those I have hurt.

The best friends whose guys I've taken, the boy friend I cheated on, the guys I moved onto one to the next without a break, the ones I used so I could feel important and get attention, all of the times I've made my family late for something because I was working out or staring at myself in the mirror.

All of my shame, fears, worst traits have been brought up lately and it's really fucking overwhelming.

I know it'll get better after this but it sucks listing over 300 things that make you a bad person. But I guess we're all flawed and I'm doing something right by doing something about it.