at dawn i would watch the sun cut ribbons through the bay

So much has happened since I last blogged a very elusive post. NYC, school, work, life, family, friends. I've kept myself incredibly busy, so any downtime is incredibly nice.

I flew (yes, flew), to New York City on the 23rd of August. The 5K Color Run was taking place in the city and earlier in the year my friend and I had decided we were going to do it. I decided to spring the extra money for a flight because I wasn't quite finished at my job and needed to save travel time. Expensive, but so worth it. Landing in an hour and a half was pretty spectacular when you're used to a 10 hour bus ride. Leading up to the trip I felt a lot of ambivalence about my decision to go. My friend was in an accident the weekend before I was to arrive (but thankfully was for the most part okay, and is recovering very well!). Her parents were up to help her out, and I wasn't exactly sure where I would fit into that equation. I still wanted to come, but also didn't want to infringe on her time with her family or her recovery. But still, she assured me I was always welcome and she wanted me to come, and she still planned on participating in the race. (She's just crazy amazing like that!). The trip was incredibly different than what it usually is; somehow a combination of good bad and in between different. It gave me the opportunity to reconnect with a good friend I hadn't seen in a few years. We spent more money than necessary at Victoria Secret, and she introduced me to the best Vegan restaurant in the West Village, and perhaps, (at least in my opinion), all of Manhattan. This trip was a lot more laid back, and I didn't feel such an overwhelming need to fill my camera or always be on the go.

And then it was smack back to reality. I had to return to work the next day, which was an unbelievably weird juxtaposition. I find it so hard to fathom being at work and knowing less than 24 hours ago I had been in Times Square. I feel like every time I leave the city, my physical being returns but it takes days, weeks, months...before my mind follows; before I'm present again fully. But work didn't last exceptionally long. There were only four days left. Most people had dropped by then, and we were working with a very small crew, which seemed to even out nicely as there was less and less to do as the summer season drew to a close. Of course, it wasn't going to officially be the end for me, as I planned on returning for fridays and weekends to make some extra cash during the school year.

Which leads me to school. In simple terms, it didn't work out. And I wasn't upset about it. At the crux, it was a dead end program that wasn't going to take me directly into my RN which was the original plan all along. It also didn't feel right. Being there, didn't feel like where I was supposed to be. I'm still not 100% certain of where that is, but sitting in my one class should have felt good and exciting - the same way doing my high school courses this past year felt good. All it felt like was a chore. I have applied to several different programs - one of which was the program I turned down at the college in London that had been my first choice.

People keep asking me if nursing is what I want to do, and to be honest, I don't have a solid answer for them. I don't know what I want to do - I can tell you what I don't want to do, based on what I have already tried in the past. But what I want to do, I'm still not one hundred percent certain. I think that was another reason why turning down school wasn't as hard on me as people expected it to be. Can I see myself doing nursing? 100%. Do I want to do nursing? Yes. Do I want to do it for the rest of my life? I don't know. I don't know if it's something I will want two years from now after all the money and training and school. I think it's hard for me to truly know what I want when the future still seems black to me. So...Let's face it. I didn't expect to be alive past 20 and I'm now 22, approaching 23 rapidly, and I facilitate between wanting to run head first into the future and wanting to run in the opposite direction of it. How can you know what you want to do when the future still seems black? When death still feels like it can lurk around any corner so what's the point? It's dark and dreary and depressing, but I still find it hard, most days, to make sense of my future. I feel like every time I think I've figured out what I want, there is something on the other side of the scale, quietly dismantling all my thoughts. It's weird to see all of my friends graduated - living the next chapter of their lives. Laurier feels so close to me these days, and yet so far away. Living away from home, in my own apartment. The days we'd run over to warmingtons for lunch or a 3am poutine from lonnies. I'm very nostalgic these days.

And I miss New York these days more than usual. Sometimes, I feel like I never went in August. The city feels more than an arms length away - friends feel more than an arms length away. I literally ache for the day that I can go and not leave. It's when I think about New York and living in New York that there is something - even the smallest something - about my future that isn't black. I miss it and it hurts like a son of a bitch. I want to be swallowed by the city and not worry about how many days I have left and if I'm spending every single second absorbing it all in. Its my home.

I guess that's where I am at these days.

Gate F64

Was this trip a bad idea?

i'm still waiting patiently

Oh my. I sort of underestimated how little free time I would have working two jobs this summer, and in that little span of free time I do have, I'm usually too tired to do anything except laze around the house. It's an understatement to say that I am anticipating the arrival of school, if only for the slow down. I'll keep both jobs, but I'll only be working weekends at aggc, and continuing to work at the office during the week. Where do I even begin?

Work started to go downhill at aggc once M left. I didn't realize how much she made coming to work easier, until she wasn't around anymore. I have amazing friends still at the course, and it has been such a rewarding summer, but it's been four months and I'm tired of the shit management pulls and the way that most of us are treated. I guess those issues were always there, but it made it easier when M was around just because. I also took a week off work in July for a family vacation. The break was definitely much needed, but I've been trying to get back into my routine that I was in prior to the vacation and it's proving to be more difficult than anticipated. I still am in bed before midnight (most days, anyways), but I'm always exhausted when the morning rolls around and my alarm is going off at 4. I just have to push through for another 3 weeks - 18 days. And then it's just weekends, which are always so much easier to deal with.

And then there is the issue of school. The enthusiasm I have held over the past, what, two and a half years seems to be fading as it grows closer. I did get into my top choice, but declined the offer and decided to stay local. I don't regret this decision to any capacity. I was very unsure of it when I made it, but as the time as passed, I realized that I DID make the right choice. But still, a part of me wonders if this year is just a waste of a time. Is it a time filler? It isn't going to take me exactly where I need to go. It actually doesn't even help in the slightest - save the fact if I get a high enough GPA that might help. I'm going to simultaneously be doing high school classes and college courses, which will keep things interesting. I have class every day, which is another piss off. The way schedules are made are very different than what I got at RU and WLU. Basically, there are four blocks with schedules pre-made and you have to pick. So it doesn't really help you in any sense trying to get some days off. We'll see how things go though.

I've been doing extremely well in my recovery - behaviour wise. There was a stretch of time where it just came so effortlessly to me. I always believed it would be a choice - you know, you wake up in the morning and you decide to have breakfast because you choose recovery. You choose to fight - everyday is a fight and I can choose to sink or swim. But it just came so naturally - so, dare I say, normal? I woke up and ate breakfast because it was time for breakfast. It wasn't a conscious choice to eat and choose recovery. It was just waking up, making breakfast and going on about my day like the past nine and a half years didn't exist. But of course, there are always ups and downs, and I'm somewhere in limbo right now - not actively engaging in behaviours, but fighting the war in my head. A lot of things slammed me at once - school became very real, a very big fall out with my sister, quitting my meds cold turkey, the potential end of a friendship with my once best friend, M leaving...The list seemed to go on, and on. And some days it is a battle to not engage in behaviours. It's hard and its tiring and there have been some moments where I do wonder, "What the fuck even is the point? This isn't what I had hoped for last year when I decided to fight for my life." But, I keep pushing through because at the end of the day, it's my only option.

The year is almost half over. What do I have to show for myself? So, so much.

I went from having all the time in the world to really having no time. Once my exam was over (Which I think I got 86% on, finishing the course with a 94%), I was on my way to New York City a few days later and upon returning, I immediately started two new jobs. It's been a bit of struggle trying to maintain a balance and find a schedule that works for me, but I feel like I've got something down finally. It's weird - but a strange weird. I really resisted it in the beginning. I didn't like going to bed around 830. I've always been a night hawk, and am usually going to be when the sun is coming up. Now I'm going to bed before it even sets. I was really unhappy about that. It just was such a drastic change and I really fought that. Whenever I'm presented with change in my life, that's my immediate reaction. Fight it. Resist it. I had a couple of really stressful days at my full time job and seriously considered quitting it, but I didn't. I really felt like everyone in my family was waiting for me to fail. I know how that sounds, but I knew right from the beginning that nobody, save a few of my friends, really believed in me to be capable of doing this job. I was constantly told I would hate it or wouldn't be able to hack it out. But I can 100% say that I love it, I love the job, and I'm so glad that I did decide to stick it out. I've made so many new friends. And it's been weird for several reason.

First things first, I'm not the "sick" girl. I really feel like that has always been my identity no matter where I go. Every job I have had, my eating disorder has been raging in my life and it's just known. And now, people have no idea. And at first, I really wasn't sure how I felt about that, which sounds super weird. A part of me was so glad to have left that identity behind, but another part of me felt like a scam. Like I was lying to people - wasn't being fully honest. I've always felt like one with my eating disorder. It took over me. It became me. I didn't know who I was beyond that and that was such a struggle - figuring out how to be separate from it. The topic comes up at work and I keep to myself. I add my opinion when I feel like it. I'm so close with a girl at work and sometimes I feel like I'm not being a good friend by not necessarily lying, but also not telling the truth. It's a weird paradox.

The girl I'm really close with is from Germany. She's been here for a year on a working holiday visa and we actually started out hating each other. I thought she was a snobby bitch and she thought I was a lazy dwarf. But, I don't even know how, but we became really good friends. She's leaving to go home soon, and we're both really upset about that and trying to make the most of the time that we have left together at the course.

I started medication again at the beginning of May. It took a while to start working, but I feel that it has helped me incredibly. I still have some days where shit hits the fan and I think it's not working, but for the most part, it's just been such a great aid in moving forward and continuing to get better.

There is so much more to say, but alas, so much to do.

remind your lungs how much they love the taste of air.

Say what? Incredibly long time, no blog. And for once, I can actually say, that yes, I really have been too busy to blog. I've been studying like mad crazy for my biology exam, which is in exactly and hour and a half. It's weird to have the time to sit in Starbucks and blog for an exam. I'm usually that person trying to cram in last minute information because I left studying to the last minute. But not this time.

The stress leading up to this exam has been an incredibly different stress than I'm used too. Usually I'm frantically freaking out over things I don't know because I haven't gone to class, or done the work or done the readings and I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to wing my way through some bull shit to get a passing mark. But my stress this time has come from the fact, "What if I don't get perfect?" I know how that sounds, and I know that my goal shouldn't be 100%, but that's where the stress has stemmed from. I'm actually not afraid at all that I will fail, because I know my stuff well enough that I won't. And that's a first. And this stress that I feel right now weighs less than the stress I'm used too. So when people say don't stress out, you're gonna do fine, that's not why I'm stressing out. But, still, it's appreciated. I'm going into this exam and all I can ask of myself is to answer each question to the best of my ability and be okay with that, whatever the mark is. Whether its a 60, or a 90 or 100%, so long as I did the best that I could, than isn't that as close to perfection as you can get?

And once this exam is over, I'm going to drown in books. I'm going catch up and I'm going to get excited for New York. Yes New York. I leave on Saturday. The excitement is there underneath everything that I'm feeling for this exam. To be back in my city, in the center of my universe. It's just... I don't know. :)

This entry is so all over the place, haha. I don't know. I just, things are all over the place lately, but in that really good way of not even trying so hard to contain everything into a box and everything be black and white. Life is messy, mine is extremely messy, and I'm learning to just go with that.

you are more

Every time I have sat down and wrote about being in recovery/being recovered, I have always felt the need to justify it. I always felt compelled to just try so hard to prove a point of, "I'm recovered, I know I've said this before, so fuck you if you think it's just empty words." And it wasn't necessarily that I thought I would "go back" or that I didn't believe in myself, but it's hard to make yourself believe otherwise when you're used to a constant pattern.

But things feel different this time around. There is something inside of me, that I can't quite reach to bring up and explain. I don't even know if it is something that I can describe, but instead something I can just feel. When I say I don't want to ever go back, I don't ever want to go back. And I know that nobody every truly wants to go back, but when things get hard, it's always the more "desirable" option because it feels safe in the familiarity. I can't ever fathom the idea of going back. I can't ever fathom the idea of being sick again. I can't fathom the idea of having an eating disorder again.

I look at the past stretch of time (because I can't tell you where...this, for lack of a better word, all began and when it will end.) and see the ways I have changed and grown. The ways I have pushed myself to succeed, to believe in myself, to change and learn to adapt to change. I know I have said it a lot, and heard it a lot for that matter, but I have come a very long way. I have become, becoming?, the person that I want to be. A person who understands what it means to live and be alive and feel and have good conversations over a slice of cheesecake with my girlfriends. A person who sees myself for what I can do, what I can be. The abilities I have, the talent, the brain, all of it. And fuck, lets throw beauty in there too.

I believe that you can be recovered - that life doesn't have to be lived in a limbo of always being "in recovery." I don't believe that we have to live our lives with one foot in each world. Do I believe that everyday is a fight? Yes. Every god damn day is a fight regardless of what you have gone through and lived through. That's what life is.

I beginning to like the person that I am these days.
One day, maybe I could even love her too.

sooner or later.

So this is about the time I usually bolt - pack my bags and run to New York City because I'm too overwhelmed, too stressed, too confused, too lost, too unsure, too much, too much, too much. The idea of the future simultaneously thrills me and terrifies me. I had to borrow $225 from my sister to apply to nursing school, and that makes me anxious, because its just more money that I already owe her. It's more money and I want to want to believe in myself, but I'm scared. I'm scared that I can't pull this off, and I don't know how to convince myself otherwise. I'm smart, and I'm capable, and I can't translate that enough into, "You can do this." I think I know I can, but then I get scared. I'm working my ass off and I'm just scared it won't be enough.

I feel like I'm changing faster than I ever have at any point in my life. I feel like I'm growing and evolving and shifting and I am so aware of that in my friendships, in the way I interact with certain family members now, in the way I just had the courage to admit a secret that I'd be carrying around for over a year. And I look back and think these are such good changes, and some of them I'm happy for, but others, I want to just scream and shout that I wasn't ready, that I'm not ready, that I'm afraid the change is going to happen and I will want to go back. I feel like I've lived my life like this for so long - try to make the change, and make part of it before deciding no, must go back. And I know that that is a cop out and that that is an excuse but I just don't know how to change it because it scares me.

I had a heart to heart tonight with one of my best friends, and I feel like it's the strongest our friendship has ever been even though he is on the other side of the world right now living out his dream. I just was so honest with him about where I've been at lately, the things that are going on and in return he just was too. And I know that I've always been able to tell him everything, for the most part, and we've been close for so long, but I don't know how to explain it. The same way I can't explain the difference I feel in another friendship all because I found the balls to tell the truth. It's a change and it's a shift I can't explain and that is the change I was ready for. I just wish I could feel this is the other parts of my life that are changing.

I miss the city and people in the city, and I wish it were as simple as getting on a bus and going. But I have to stay here. I have to stay here because if I bolt, I'm never going to learn to be ready.

I can do this. I wonder how many times I'll have to say that to myself until it starts to stick.

& i would have stayed up with you all night had i known how to save a life.

This date sneaks up on me every year and catches me by surprise. The "it-feels-like-just-yesterday" has started to fade. The absence I feel as a result of your death is always present. The moments where I want to call you up to tell you something have long since stopped. I know I will never get over your death, but I have finally accepted it.

Five years is a long time without you. Five years is really a long time without anyone. Five years of false promises that in your death I would take recovery seriously; that I would stop treating my life like it was a game that I could never lose, that I would stop playing the odds as if I were above everything that killed you. Five years of relapse, of giving up, of treatment, of hospitals, of therapy, of group, of putting in a half ass effort to, what I am learning now, was a pathetic attempt to convince myself. Convince myself that you could be in recovery while simultaneously losing weight. That recovery meant it was really okay to binge and purge so long as you had control - that going days without eating was really okay, because if you're in control... Five years of lying to myself, and where have I gotten?

Last July, I gave myself six months to live and if at the end of those six months, things were still the same, then I had full permission to just check out of life. That I had played my part and done what I felt I was supposed to do, and I could peace out and be done. And those six months, were not easy. There wasn't some life changing moment where I realized life was worth the fight and that if I just gave myself time, things could get better; I could make things better. But to say that I did not change over these past six months would be a lie. In the subtle, smallest ways I have changed and that has made it worth the fight.

I don't make promises to you anymore. I don't make promises in your death. I've long stopped. But I've been learning to make promises to myself; learning to be accountable to myself. Learning with the help of the people who populate my life with their unconditional love for me, with their eccentricities, with all the pieces that make up who they are. I'm trying, now. Really trying. Really forcing myself out of this eating disordered world. I wish you could see the things that I am doing, meet the people who have brought out the best in me, but also meet the people who brought out the worst in me, because it was all just a learning experience. Like you. You were a learning experience, ARE, a learning experience. These past five years without you have been a learning experience.

Life is so short, and we only get one shot at it, as far as we know. I can't fathom the idea of leaving the people I love the way that you left me. I can't fathom passing my pain onto the people who have loved me and supported me and been there for me. I can't fathom how you were okay to do that to me, but I forgive you and it is time for me to move on now.

It's time for me to keep living.

the light meets the dark

I have all these ideas about what recovery means to me and what that looks like. I don't really know where they come from and what it all means, or even if it's how it will look for me down the line from now. I've been doing so much thinking about the eating disorder world and if we ever really do leave it, fully, I mean. I want to reject Marya Hornbacher so badly when she says you never come back all the way. That you always have one foot in a world where everything is backwards and upside down and sad. I want to reject this because it pisses me off. And I feel like it just gives me an excuse to be like, well if that's always how its going to be, than really, what is the point?

But I've really been contemplating this, do we ever leave it fully? I see people who are recovered, hear stories of people who are recovered, like K, and it makes me long for a formula - one solid answer. I know it's different for everyone, but I want a formula for recovery. I want to know how to get from B to A. I want to know if that's possible, or if we just stay in some limbo.

But truly - years down the road from now when someone is doing better, can we still be so heavily impacted by the eating disorder in the most subtle of ways? A comment about weight, or a diet, or calories - doesn't it all just revert back to the eating disorder? My cousins wife's daughter from her first relationship told my niece that she was fat at Christmas. And I listened to my niece go on and on about how she was going to go on a diet, and that she weighs herself every single day. She's 9. And right away, my mind just reverts to the eating disorder - to that time in my life. And it's moments like that that make me think, do we ever truly leave it? Or are we forever living with one foot in the world?

I have this ridiculous notion that I'm going to get together with all my friends who were sick at one point in time, and we're all going to be recovered, and talking about the menial tasks of life that really, aren't so menial. Tasks that I didn't think I would live to be able to do - picking out towels for the guest room, getting the mail, paying bills. Simple, stupid, everyday shit. But simple, stupid, everyday shit that exists in the real world. And that's the difference.

This was just a giant 1 in the morning ramble because I can't sleep and because I truly want to believe we can leave the eating disorder world, despite the evidence to the contrary.

i like it in the city when two worlds collide

Where am I at these days? Somewhere in the middle, I like to believe anyways. I don't know, I feel ridiculous saying it, but I sort of just like gave up when I got home from New York and when things got tough. And like that's really what always happens. Things get hard, reality hits me, and I just decide to stop fighting. Like, I went out for lunch today with a friend who said it so well. Getting better and being better - I know I can do that here and there. And it's right, being better and being healthy and being the person I'm supposed to be - I know that I can do that in New York. I know HOW to do that in New York. And like, then I come home, I'm forced back into a reality that I don't want and somehow I tell myself that I don't know how to do it here.

The thing is, I know how to do it here. If I can do it in New York, that has to mean I can do it here, I'm just choosing to not, or ... not trying hard enough? Maybe? I don't know. Things are so much more on track now than they were when 2011 came to a close and when this year first started. We're only a few weeks in, but I feel like I've got a better grip on things right now than I did when the year started. It was like, I knew what I wanted to do, where I wanted to be and how to get there. It's like, I knew the way and yet I was still so incredibly lost, if that makes any sense. Like that quote "Have you ever been so lost? Known the way and still so lost?"


School is going really well right now. I'm sitting at a 99.3% average for my biology which I'm extremely thrilled with. I have to sign up for Grade 11 Chemistry and then of course, do grade 12. I'm hoping to be done with high school in the middle of march, if not the end.

I guess that's all there is to update? I don't know. I feel like I lead a very boring life, but I guess I'm okay with that.