Since I have finally started to open my eyes to the world around me I have seen that I am very lucky to have certain people in my life, not least some incredible friends who have stuck by me through thick and thin - no pun intended(!) and a wonderfully supportive family who accept me for who I am, love me despite my flaws (which are many, and range from being a pain in restaurants and crying over food to supporting John and Edward on their quest for X-Factor victory!), who never judge and who make me see that there is always hope. And without those people I would not have made it through the past year. Because of them, I am learning to accept myself as I am, flaws and all. I am terrified about the next few weeks, but knowing that my friends and family believe in me means that I know I'll be fine.
On Saturday night I went out for a meal with the people I love and had just the loveliest time. Somehow I managed to leave the anorexia at home for the night, relax and enjoy myself......and even eat some baklava! I was free and had fun, which I haven't done for far too long. Maybe that's why I want to work with children - being a kid should be about playing and having fun, and for so many reasons, it isn't always like that. And that is something I would like to help change.
There are times, usually late at night when I can't sleep, when I worry that I'm not done with my eating disorder, that I never got ill enough, that I'm not ready to let it go just yet. And I realise how absurd that sounds - how can a person cling to something which nearly destroyed them? That's something I don't yet have the answer to, and logic tends to fly out of the window. All I know for sure is that I don't feel alone anymore. As corny as it sounds, I do feel very much surrounded by love and support. So while it may be a long time before the anorexic thoughts disappear entirely, just thinking about that love helps make them go away.
There have been moments when I have wanted to go back in time, to re-do my life and never have developed an eating disorder, but I could never decide which point in time I would return to. To 8 when I first went on a diet? To 14 when I worked out how to make myself vomit? At university I read Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maître, in which Jacques believes that tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut - literally that everything happens for a reason. I haven't retained much of the knowledge I was supposed to be gaining at Nottingham (although I can still remember which bars and clubs do which offers on cheap drinks and where to get a decent pizza delivered after 2am), but that has always stayed with me, and even if I had the opportunity to time-travel now, I wouldn't go back and do it differently. Although this year in particular has been hellish, I have gained so much in return. I used to wonder why I had to get ill, why it had to happen to me, but maybe I needed to be literally stripped to my core to start to see things as they really are, to realise who I really am and what is important to me. If it took me losing nearly everything to finally see how much I really have, then I can start to be ok with what has happened over the past few years, stop wasting time wishing it hadn't happened and start to move forwards.
I've learned that all a person has in life is family and friends. If you lose those, you have nothing, so friends are to be treasured more than anything else in the world.
~ South Park
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