Have you ever had a week where there are 500 things on your mind, you are stressed, you are beating yourself up, and you can’t focus but then you take a step back and realize you are healthy and alive? As you may be able to guess from this lead in, that was my past week.
This past Thursday my head was in a strange place as I mindlessly surfed Facebook. I usually get a kick out of the “On This Day” feature because I get a glimpse at my younger and embarrassing self. This Thursday, however, a simple click on this fun feature sent me deep into self-reflection. According to Facebook, four years ago I had gone to Summer @ Brown and that reminded me that I’ve been free of an eating disorder for four years.
You may be asking yourself, how does some summer program signify the end of a battle that truly cannot be defined by dates and numbers? Well, it is impossible to quantify the time of an eating disorder, as learning to love yourself and overcome body-image challenges is a life long journey. However, for me, Summer @ Brown marked a turning point in my eating disorder and my life.
I was incredibly future-focused in high school. I thought that every move I made would have a direct impact on where I ended up in college and life. With this mindset, I was determined to spend every summer doing something “meaningful.” So, when I was at one of my most emaciated points and my therapist looked at me and said “Cassandra, you cannot go to Brown unless you gain 10 pounds before the start of the program” something clicked. For whatever terrifying reason threatening my future scared me much more than the prospect of not being able to have children due to the loss of menstruation.
In the month leading up to the program, I did not gain ten pounds, but did gain five and my therapist ultimately decided I would be able to take care of myself if I went away for two weeks. I had a long way to go but I was making more progress than I had in months. Fortunately, this progress did not stop when I went away and on the second-to-last day of the program I got my period back. After those two weeks, I continued to be healthy and have not relapsed since.
Overall, this is a happy story and I am beyond proud to be able to say that I have not struggled for four years. That being said, I am bothered by the fact that my focus on the “future” is what caused me to recover. For so much of my life I was so focused on perfection and the next step and would not let anyone get in the way of my success. For two years I watched myself decay and thought that I may never have a family, but that was not enough to interrupt the disorder.
If you have had any sort of interaction with me since recovery, you probably know that I still deeply care about my future and I always will but I care a whole lot more about emotions, feelings, people, and living a genuine life. Of course I want to succeed, but I also want to spend time being a good friend and understanding that life is about so much more than always being perfect.
I’m always going to have days where I feel overwhelmed or sad, but just as “On This Day” reminded me, I’ve come a very long way and I’m lucky to be where I am today.
This past Thursday my head was in a strange place as I mindlessly surfed Facebook. I usually get a kick out of the “On This Day” feature because I get a glimpse at my younger and embarrassing self. This Thursday, however, a simple click on this fun feature sent me deep into self-reflection. According to Facebook, four years ago I had gone to Summer @ Brown and that reminded me that I’ve been free of an eating disorder for four years.
You may be asking yourself, how does some summer program signify the end of a battle that truly cannot be defined by dates and numbers? Well, it is impossible to quantify the time of an eating disorder, as learning to love yourself and overcome body-image challenges is a life long journey. However, for me, Summer @ Brown marked a turning point in my eating disorder and my life.
I was incredibly future-focused in high school. I thought that every move I made would have a direct impact on where I ended up in college and life. With this mindset, I was determined to spend every summer doing something “meaningful.” So, when I was at one of my most emaciated points and my therapist looked at me and said “Cassandra, you cannot go to Brown unless you gain 10 pounds before the start of the program” something clicked. For whatever terrifying reason threatening my future scared me much more than the prospect of not being able to have children due to the loss of menstruation.
In the month leading up to the program, I did not gain ten pounds, but did gain five and my therapist ultimately decided I would be able to take care of myself if I went away for two weeks. I had a long way to go but I was making more progress than I had in months. Fortunately, this progress did not stop when I went away and on the second-to-last day of the program I got my period back. After those two weeks, I continued to be healthy and have not relapsed since.
Overall, this is a happy story and I am beyond proud to be able to say that I have not struggled for four years. That being said, I am bothered by the fact that my focus on the “future” is what caused me to recover. For so much of my life I was so focused on perfection and the next step and would not let anyone get in the way of my success. For two years I watched myself decay and thought that I may never have a family, but that was not enough to interrupt the disorder.
If you have had any sort of interaction with me since recovery, you probably know that I still deeply care about my future and I always will but I care a whole lot more about emotions, feelings, people, and living a genuine life. Of course I want to succeed, but I also want to spend time being a good friend and understanding that life is about so much more than always being perfect.
I’m always going to have days where I feel overwhelmed or sad, but just as “On This Day” reminded me, I’ve come a very long way and I’m lucky to be where I am today.