Don’t Quit

When things g wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When you’re feeling low and the stress is high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When worries are getting you down a bit…
By all means pray — and you don’t quit.
Success is failure turned inside out
God’s hidden gift in the clouds of doubt.
You never can tell how close you are —
It may be near when it seems so far.
So trust in the Lord when you’re hardest hit…
It’s when things go wrong that you must not quit.

I was seriously afraid of picking up this week. A few nights ago, the thoughts I was having were so real and so intense that I was already visualizing myself sitting in a bar alone, getting plastered, forgetting everything, and giving in to this constant pull.

I hadn’t felt an obsession to drink in about three months (the obsession was finally lifted about a month into sobriety when I came to my acceptance and understanding that I was an alcoholic). However, for the first time, I’ve been getting heavily hit by this need to drink. I raised my hand during a meeting on Sunday, the part when the chair asks if anyone had the problem with the thought of a drink. And then I cried. I cried for 20 minutes in the bathroom to a woman from AA. And it was painful and I didn’t know what to do with myself. All I knew was that I was needing to drink. And that’s not okay.

I began thinking that I was a failure for having urges to drink and use… because at 4 months, I should not be thinking that way… God forbid. But what I learned was that because I AM an alcoholic, those thoughts and urges will come and go. So thankfully, I didn’t drink, I am still 4 months sober. In two more weeks, about, I will hit my 5 months of sobriety. I came very close to throwing it away. The poem above on this post was a poem on a little card that this woman from AA gave to me. She passed it on to me after a woman passed it on to her, so now I want to pass it on to all of you.

Try, try, try

I am not sure if I am getting a fresh wind of motivation, but I decided on my drive to work today, to try my damnedest to fight through my urges to not purge, especially not binge, and to really try hard to eat.

I’m not changing my life circumstances by engaging in my eating disorder. For the past two weeks, I have been in this “denial” that I no longer had an eating disorder and that I was fine. Maybe not fine, but it wasn’t a problem.

I’d purge my food, and block it out, pretending that it didn’t happen. I didn’t tell my therapist how much I was struggling because if I didn’t talk about it, then I wasn’t saying it, therefore it wasn’t a problem.

I may deny this tomorrow or even minutes from now, but in this moment I have to remind myself that I am anorexic, and I have bulimic behavior. I’m trying to reach a goal in life that I can honestly say I HAD anorexia and bulimia. But right now I am honestly struggling with my anorexia and bulimia.

That being said, I laid out a plan for the day, intake wise and while the food intake is restrictive, my goal today is to consume it all, keep it down and prevent a cycle of binging and purging.

I have to start slow, once again, and boy do I hate this part, but I’ll build into my intake. I guess the first goal is to eat consistently and keep it down. So I will try my best. I just consumed my breakfast/lunch. And I will try and eat again in two hours.

You see, I was driving to work and I prayed and I realized that I really am determined to uplift my life and plant a new foundation and I cannot focus and relocate and tackle my first long term goal if I am so sick I cannot function.

I’ve been heading in that “so sick” direction. I know my weight is not ideal, recovery wise due to my behavior this month. But I don’t want a full blown relapse. Well, i guess this was a relapse, but I don’t want the relapse to get worse to where I have a friend driving me to Walmart for BOOST. Liquid calories is how I know I am really, really not doing well.

So for today, I will say this: Today, I will try.

Courage.

I feel like I have been forced to grow up a lot this past year. I’d like to say the past two years, but most accurately, I had no choice but to grow up, fast. When I was 19, I felt like I had to grow up too fast. I experienced things that typically, girls learn and experience in a paced manner, in different stages in their lives. But me? I experienced my first “real” kiss, which was a drunk kiss, my first “sexual” behaviors, my first drunk experience, my first time getting high, the first time I cut.

Then, this past year, I was forced to become an adult instantly. Within the year I had to move out, graduate, get a job, get another job, move out again, live alone, take care of myself, establish some sort of community, get well, recover, deal head on with trauma, relive that trauma, get clean from drugs, deal with the aftermath of a one-night strip show, get sober, maintain cutting and burning urges, work on my eating disorder, get control of relapses, take care of my car, start learning that I have a voice as a weapon. All of these things happened too fast.

Now; I am sober. I have stayed sober. I am dealing with my “trauma” and trying to understand sexuality overall. I am attempting to find a job, hopefully, that will allow me to feel safe and content, happy, and free and to focus on the future and try to figure out where I want to plant myself for a longer time. I am trying to get stable in life. I’m left winded,it’s fucking scary, but I am not giving up… I am growing up.

One more round

Round one was not what I thought it’d be. Round two, I’m struggling to breathe. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times, I wonder why I stepped inside this ring. I may be knocked down and bruised but I am here to tell you that I may be knocked down but not for the count, 1, 2, 3, 4.

So take me one more round, I’ll just keep fighting. One more round, you’re messing me up but I’m still here. One more round I’ll come out swinging, one more round I’m telling now I’m not going to lose it. It’s so hard to get up off the floor again but I know that victory is when I’m pushing through the pain that tries to feed me lies, that I won’t reach the end.

I may be bloodied and so bruised but I’m here to tell you that I may be knocked down but not for the count, 1,2,3,4. So take me one more round, I’ll just keep fighting. One more round, you’re messing me up but I’m still here.

One more round, I’ll come out swinging, one more round, I’m telling you now I’m not gonna lose it. I am not defeated though you cannot see it. I have never won a battle on my own. I find strength in weakness. I find hope in believing God is for me so who can bring me down? So take me one more round I’ll just keep fighting. One more round you’re messing me up but I’m still here.

One more round, I’ll come out swinging. One more round, I’m telling you now I’m not gonna lose it here. I’m not gonna go down now, try to bring me I’ll come out swinging.