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.
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