Recovery: Phase 1

©Marissa Alessandria-Kweens 2007

“Wanting to achieve, and knowing you can achieve” are two different concepts. The same is true within the realms of any type of recovery.

Wanting to recover and believing and knowing that you will recover are as well two different aspects without one you cannot have the other it is only when the two are firmly enmeshed within one another that you can and will succeeded. Wanting it is simply to me NOT ENOUGH, you must believe you can, you must know you can and you must be patient have infinite patience that it will not happen overnight it will take something we have an abundance of time. Each day it is replenished a fresh new day that has never been lived before a day to start anew or continue with the old, with the safeness that is your insanity that you believe is your life.

This is my own story, you may relate and you may not relate, you may understand and you may not understand, however either that you do this is my story and will differ from your own.

***

I wake up, today is the day, today is the day that I truly begin and I am frightened out of my mind. I’ve seen the nutritionists, doctors, listened to family, friends, my dear husband and even my pets. They’ve seen the unhappiness within me, they know that I know better and they also have finally understood that it must come from me to do what I have to do.

It starts innocently enough, its just breakfast something I haven’t eaten since I was maybe 12 years old, yes it has been that long. I know the concept of why it should be eaten and why it helps however, getting the food within in me is another concept; for I am not hungry the though of putting food within me without hunger is terrorizing to me. But I go and take the bowl a bowl of oatmeal that I have prepared myself. I know that it is good for me, healthy even and has many benefits but I sit in front of it and look into the bowl, I play with it with my spoon, pick up the spoon try to put it to my lips and stop at the last minute and stick it back in the bowl. I turn and look mindlessly at the television set that is blaring. My husband beside me looks at me I can tell without even looking at him that he is shaking his head, finally he says “will you just fucking eat it all ready”. I turn to him in monotone and reply “I’m trying”.

The voice inside me the good one tells me “eat it is so good for you”. The body voice says…”eat that and it all begins, you won’t be able to stop, here comes double-wide Marissa once again”. By this time its cold the food and finally I begin to eat, its tasteless to me, it hurts as I swallow it, I think of it lying in my stomach and never ever coming out and will stay there forever, I think this because my digestive system is so screwed, so slow there is a good possibility it will take a while to come back out. Finally I finish it and my husband leaves to go to work and now comes the fun part, being alone and doing what I must alone.

I have deleted all the dangerous sites from my browser, I have considered even asking my husband to block them from my computer but dismiss the thought as where there is a will there is a way if I want go there I will go there, instead I go to my computer and talk to some of my new friends, people that want the same as me to recover. The belief is coming to me slowly that I can do this and I will do this because though a large part of me wants to die, but there is this spark of me that wants to live, that believes in tomorrow and that there is something out there for me.

I do what for me is impossible I actually eat lunch and eat alone, something else I haven’t done in a long time for unlike many I have met I don’t have a phobia of eating in front of others in fact I have used it as a control, instead eating alone for me is a big step because I am going to eat what I said I would eat and not lie and throw it in the trash and pretend I ate it, my other friend has also left the scale. She was my best friend and worst enemy rolled into one, she helped me be happy and made me punch her face many time, many, many times. Imagine being ruled by a machine…

Many times today I say to myself the things I would when I was starving when I felt I couldn’t take it anymore but in now a positive way… “Go, Marissa you can do this you will do this you are strong, go, go, go” I try to look forward to the halcyon days that I can have if I continue, the eating without guilt, the living without fear of a scale and most of all not caring what I weight or what anyone else thinks of it…

It will come in time as long as I believe and as long as I try and if I fail to pick myself back up once again from my fall.

***

My struggles I have come to realize are far from over in fact they are just beginning. How long will I be in Phase 1? I don’t have the answer, it has gotten better and gotten worse but sometimes we need to have it be worse before we can truly get better.