.Suffocating.

During the past few months, I've attempted to post nearly a hundred times. I come to my blog, sign in, open a new post, and sit. . . Sometimes for nearly an hour. And the words just don't come. Countless thoughts, themes, experiences, messages, and reflections stir through my head. Yet I sit, silent. Mute. The truth - Ed has begun to suffocate me, once again slowly sucking my oxygen away as the days pass. His attempts to silence my voice, mind, and heart have shown him victorious.

I'm losing myself again. I feel it. I'm relapsing. Though I'm not sure I would ever say I fully reached a point of recovery, I am definitely falling back. This vicious monster has plagued my thoughts and behaviors, and I'm slowly losing grip. I've become weak, and have started to obey the demands of this kidnapping assaulter. And slowly, slowly he is killing me.

It's so odd, because although an Eating Disorder is exhausting, consuming, depressing, frustrating, never-ending, etc. etc. etc, that all controlling voice is able to brainwash the victim into believing that "he" is the answer. Though I despise my eating disorder and the way it destroys my life, my future, and my relationships, it does a good job of getting me to believe that it in fact is "The Answer". Rationally is this the truth? No, obviously not. E.D is the antithesis of "The Answer". But Emotionally, it feels like the only thing I have. I read a chapter in a book on recovery today on death sentences. It asked readers to reflect on how they would live if they knew they were at the end of life. At the end, the author commented how so often with ED, we have lived so long in this "nightmarish dream of 'thin' that we have forgotten all of our good dreams".

This thought resonates so strongly with me and I think is such a huge reason that I am stuck in relapse. The eating disorder has been a part of my life for so long that I have a hard time remembering my passions, my dreams, my hopes for the future. If I had free time, I honestly do not even know what I would find enjoyable, because ED has blinded me to myself. Right now every free moment I have is spent exercising. As a child, I LOVED writing. I loved music. I loved social time with friends and family. I loved games, coloring, imagining, dreaming. ED is trying to suck all of those dreams and passions out of his victims.

The fight is so hard. I don't know if I'll finish school. I don't know if I'll continue in the career field I thought I was passionate about. I don't know if I'll be able to have healthy and normal relationships. But I need to try to fight for a life, and one that isn't ruled by E.D . . . Because a life in which he is the most important relationship, the most passionate dream I have, and the 'activity' I prioritize most is not a God-glorifying, pursuing life that each of us is called to live. It's time to seek after HIM (God) instead of him (ED).