The Life of a Mourning Dove

Being a human is hard. There’s a lot of pressure on people to do Things That Matter but sometimes that isn’t something you can do. We’re not supposed to compare ourselves to other people, we’re supposed to find our own ways to be content in life, we’re supposed to be happy, we’re not supposed to be angry, sad, depressed, etc etc etc. But everybody is just doing the best they can.

I think I’ve done a decent job proving that I am FAR from the perfect woman I tried to be and I know I’ve tried to worry less about perfection. I’m trying to feel my feelings and find ways to be myself no matter who is watching. That’s hard too though so don’t take Trying Not to Try too Hard to a place that makes you feel like you aren’t good enough. You are. You don’t need to be effortless, you don’t need to be Exactly Who You Are With No Apologies every second of every day. Just find ways to live.

Everyone is struggling with something. I am drowning in twenty feet of water and you might only be drowning in ten or fifty or a hundred but we’re both drowning. We both deserve a life raft.  (not my metaphor – Monica Lewinsky’s, watch her ted talk it was awesome).

I haven’t been posting much recently, I haven’t had the words.

I think I’ve said this before and I’m gonna say it again.

I’ve been avoiding seeking help from my university for as long as I’ve been diagnosed but I finally went to the disability center. I set up an appointment because I wanted to work the system and get a dog (an emotional support animal and I do GENUINELY think having one would help my mental health!).

But after talking to the nice disability resource guy, he asked me if all I really needed was a support animal. Was I sure? And I said I was managing my classes just fine. How were my grades since transferring? Well, not great honestly but I don’t need that kind of help. Well, major depressive disorder makes it hard to make it to class sometimes, do I struggle with that? Well, sometimes. Okay, I’ll give you extra days off then. Just make sure you email your professor when you feel up to it that you were taking a day off to deal with a disability flare up. And do I get overwhelmed in class sometimes? I guess so, yeah. I’ll let your professors know you might need to step out sometimes.

It’s hard to ask for help and even harder to ask for help when you don’t think you deserve it. The disability resource center doesn’t sound like the kind of place I should go. Is mental illness even a disability? Honestly, I’m not sure. It’s apart of who I am and I won’t let it stop me but it does make it hard to be a person. I’m going to be grateful for the help I’m getting and I won’t be ashamed that sometimes I need it.

 

No one is perfect and that’s okay. You are at fault sometimes and that’s okay too. Try again, do better next time and accept that you can’t change the past.

It’s finals season and I’m almost positive I’m going to fail one of my classes. I don’t fail classes, that’s not something I’ve ever done before but here it is and it’s my fault. Last semester I blamed my grandmothers passing for the classes I dropped and it would be easy to blame my break-up or the transition to a new school. But it’s my own fault. I didn’t plan enough, or study enough, or work hard enough and I skipped too many classes because I didn’t want to go. It’s my fault that I’m going to fail and that’s okay. It sucks, but it’s okay. I will do better next time and I won’t let it happen again and that’s what matters.  I let my idea of self-care get in the way of what I needed to get done and I am going to fail. But I will retake the class and I will remember that what I want and what’s best for me are two different things. It’s a lesson I’ve already learned but I’m learning it again.

Happy finals prep college students/professors! We’re nearly there! I’m planning on getting a support dog this winter break as my surviving-the-semester-reward, what are your rewards?

 

I have always loved the holidays and I totally support celebrating for celebrations’ sake but this time of year can be hard for people with mental illness and people without.

I’ve lost people I love this year and sometimes it feels wrong to celebrate without them. My grandmother was Christmas to me, every memory I have of Christmas has been at her house with her smiling face front and center. Her house is gone and so is she. It will be painful to have this holiday without her but I’ll be spending it with family who all feel her loss. We won’t celebrate in spite of loss, we will celebrate for her because that’s what she would have wanted. She’s been sending me lots of pennies lately and I know she is with me no matter where I go.

Feel your feelings this holiday season and don’t put on a brave face for anyone but yourself. Acknowledge your loss and revel in the world your loved ones helped create.

If you haven’t lost anyone but someone you love has, let them tell you stories and make sure to hug your people extra tight this year.

 

I wrote this a while ago when I wasn’t as far along in my recovery as I am now.

I can tell you how to gain just enough weight back before a doctors appointment to not be suspicious. I can tell you how to lie to your friends and family about when and what you’ve eaten. I can tell you how much you need to exercise to work what you just ate off. I can tell you how to quiet the voices in your head that wonder if maybe, just maybe you’re taking weight loss too far. I can tell you how to kill yourself so you feel thin and in control. But I can’t tell you how to be happy with your body no matter how much you weigh. Lowest and highest weights, I’ve looked at my body exactly the same way. Disgusting. Not strong, not beautiful, but fat and ugly. I remember looking in the mirror and desperately trying to squish the fat off my body. Maybe if I rake my nails across my skin, the fat will fall away and I will get to be beautiful. I stopped the destructive eating habits after realizing that I really was killing myself slowly. I broke down crying to my freshman year roommate and admitted that I thought I had an eating disorder and she agreed (she was the first person I ever said those words out loud to. The second was Camp Boy – two people I loved who left my life AND YOU WONDER WHY I HAVE TRUST ISSUES). That was roughly when my suicidal thoughts came to a head so I started seeing a counselor and a nutritionist through my schools wellness center. I had a full check-up with the nurse to make sure I wasn’t in any real physical danger and she and the nutritionist concluded that my body was breaking itself down. I needed to start eating like a living person or I may never fully recover. My muscles were virtually nonexistent because my body had been breaking them down so I could keep functioning. But I never looked ‘eating disorder thin’ so nobody knew. Lots of people suspected, I’m sure, but no one said anything to me because it’s easier to assume nothing is wrong than to ask hard questions. Ask hard questions. Ask yourself, ask the people you love. It’s all too easy to be a victim. 

I’m planning to get back to body issues/eating disorder stuff next week but I thought I’d throw this out there.

Feeling suicidal is terrifying and exhausting and it’s really hard to make yourself feel safe again. Even after you’ve started to feel alright again there’s this dread in the back of your mind that maybe, just maybe, that part of you will come back again and you won’t be strong enough. And I was feeling passively suicidal (not a danger to myself or others, just in a really crap-tacular pit of depression) a few weeks ago so I’m finding things to make sure I have something to hold onto just in case.

I planned a dive trip with my dad for this weekend about a couple weeks ago. SCUBA diving will always be one of my favorite things and everything feels okay in Key Largo.

I’m looking into getting an emotional support animal to live with me on campus. This idea is awesome for lots of reasons because, you know, dogs and I will be responsible for another living creature. I’ll have to take care of myself so I can take care of my theoretical dog and even if I don’t get one, looking at pictures of dogs online makes me so happy oh my god.

I have maybe getting a dog and going diving to look forward to and hold onto in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep and the darkness feels too heavy. I’m feeling better so I’m protecting my maybe less strong future self.

 

I have struggled with anorexia since I was about thirteen and I’m still figuring out how to cope with that. It’s hard and because I’ve never looked ‘eating disorder thin’ very few people understood what was going on. The lowest weight I ever got to was 126 lbs and, for 5’8”, that’s not necessarily unhealthy but I got to that weight by starving myself and pushing my body to the absolute limit  I notice myself swinging back into bad habits every now and again when I feel particularly insecure. My anxiety calms down when I take control of things like my eating habits so by starving myself, I was also soothing my anxiety. This was the opposite of healthy and I’m still suffering from some of the after effects of that – eating disorders wreck your internal organs and my overall health isn’t what it should be. But that’s something I’m dealing with slowly. For the longest time, I didn’t think I had an eating disorder because I wasn’t dangerously thin. But I had an eating disorder because I was starving myself to lose weight. If you’re starving yourself to lose weight, you have an eating disorder.  If you purge or try to purge after eating, you have an eating disorder. I’m not a doctor but don’t pretend you’re less sick than you are because if you have an eating disorder it can kill you. And it can kill you long after you’ve gotten back to a healthy weight and diet. Don’t start so you never have to stop (my mom has this philosophy about cigarettes but I believe it applies here as well). I get that sometimes it isn’t a choice – believe me, I get it – but get help as soon as you can. If you try to tell someone you think you have an eating disorder and they say you don’t because of your weight they are wrong. I was at a technically healthy weight but I couldn’t go up stairs without the little black dots dancing in front of my eyes. It doesn’t matter what you weigh. It never matters what you weigh, it is a mental illness that might be a symptom of something else (I’m pretty sure my mental illness goes hand in hand with my eating disorder). I’m serious. If you think even for a second that you might have an eating disorder, talk to someone. There are so many little ways to get yourself back to thinking in a healthy way that only work in the beginning. If you’re looking in the mirror and HATE everything you see and your solution is to stop eating/purge after eating, you are sick and you need help and that is OKAY.

No one seems to know how to talk about this kind of thing in a way that makes sense. I’m tired of incredibly successful, beautiful celebrities telling me it’s okay to be ‘curvy’ or that weight doesn’t define your worth. It almost never feels genuine to me because like, YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL AND SUCCESSFUL. CLEARLY WEIGHT ISN’T AN ISSUE BUT I AM JUST NORMAL. And I will never be ‘curvy.’ I have small boobs and no ass to speak of but I can’t care how my body looks because she’s helping me survive. I can’t hate her simply for existing. I have big thighs but they help run, and swim, and dance! And I like doing all of those things so maybe the thighs that I think are too big are actually just right for me to do all the things I love. My feet are big and wide but they help me walk my tall body around and I like being tall. So, thank you big thighs and wide feet. You help me live the life I love and without you, I couldn’t be as happy. Some days I wake up and look at my thighs in the mirror and hate them but that’s okay. Because they exist to help me do things and I may not always remember that but it will always be true.

With that said, I am not a body-positive rockstar. I gained about 30 lbs on birth control and my self-esteem went into the toilet. It was more than I could take so I switched to a weight-neutral birth control. My antidepressants are also weight neutral because I’m still too fragile to be on something that makes me gain weight. And that’s okay. Maybe one day I will be comfortable with my body in every way but that day isn’t today. I’m trying not to view the size on a tag as a value judgement. Instead, I’m grabbing whatever I feel confidant and happy in and calling it a goddamn day. I wear a lot of dresses now because (they’re fabulous) they hide my insecurities in a way that makes me feel beautiful and confidant. I guess the best I can give you on body image is that I have no advice. You’ve got to figure out what makes you feel amazing and keep doing it. I hope that one day I will be completely content with my body but if I don’t I’m coming to terms with that and I hope you can too. I am not an ultra-thin, incredibly successful celebrity and I will never promise that being happy with your body is easy or even essential to living a pretty cool life. I think I live a pretty cool life even though my insecurities hold me back from some stuff – I’m working on it and I’ve got some faith that I’ll figure it out.