Not giving up

This road hasn't been an easy one. And I am most definitely not where I wanted to be seven months in to this process of meeting regularly with someone in regards to my eating disorder. I suppose I thought I'd be 50 pounds lighter by now and living on salads because I would be all about wanting to eat healthy stuff and the hardest part would be behind me.

But it's not so. I don't think the hardest part is behind me yet.

I've been told that as a person begins to really recovery from an eating disorder, that the things that have been kept down with by food start bubbling up to the surface. They start coming out and there's nothing left to do but deal with them. And it's so exhausting - the things that keep coming to the surface - that I guess I wonder if I still have it in me to keep going. Will there ever be an end?

And of course there's the current life I'm living too. There's the unexpected things that life hits you with and you have to choose how to deal with those things too.

While I didn't put on the bulk of my weight until my 20's, bad habits and disordered eating started long before that. I've had an eating disorder longer than I haven't had one. I am in this process of trying to relearn things I never learned, and un-do ways of thinking that have been a part of who I am for the majority of my life. This process feels long and exhaustive because it is. And it was a long and exhaustive process that led me to this point too.

Yet, it's hard for me to give myself a break at how long this is taking. It's hard for me to always recognize progress and name where I've changed. It's hard for me not to just focus on how much weight I want to lose and what size I want to be. It's hard when I've seen others diet and have success and I have to remind myself that I'm not "dieting." All of it is hard.

I am convinced however, that what I am doing is what I need to be doing for me. This is what I've needed to do all along and there has been change and there will be more change, but it's going to take more time. This is the only thing I've ever done that's given me any kind of hope that I could change here - and not just to lose the weight and have a trimmer figure so I can wear cuter jeans. It's more than that.

I've been given this hope that I really can feel differently with and around food - and I know I can because I've felt and experienced some of that over the last seven months. I can live where I don't feel powerless to it and I can make healthier choices because I actually want to not because I have to. I can just live and exist with food and have a normal relationship with it and see it as fuel and sustenance and not a reward or a comfort or a place to hurt myself with.

But the process is sucking. I've been at this stand-still for what seems like forever. I've been stagnant and unmoving in regards to my weight. It hasn't really gone anywhere. And though some clothes are bigger and looser and I see shrinkage in my face and arms and even some in my legs, I am still virtually the same size. The temptation to give up and throw in the towel is ever present.

I'm seven months in to this whole thing and I'm not ready to give up yet. I've put in way too much time to sabotage myself now. I've spent way too much money on therapy to quit now. I don't want to go back to the misery and the sadness I felt because food was ruling my life. Even if I have to stay at this size forever and just struggle in it and be alive to what's going on and have good days and bad days, then it's better than it was before. Because right now I'm having good days with food, and not-so-good days with food. But I'm having good days.

I'm needing to remind myself of that today. That I don't want to go back to how it was. I want to keep struggling in this, because struggling out of it feels way worse.

And who I am - the real, raw, natural Jennifer...she is lovely and fun and beautiful. And she can stay in this. I know I have the guts and determination and fight to stay in it. I don't want to go back.

Even if I never drop another pound, I am committed to pushing through the hard things to have and experience and live life. No matter what size I am or I'm not.