some kind of wonderful .

“The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there.”

Rebuilding yourself is hard. When you have been living with your self destruct button firmly switched on for the last decade of your life, there comes a point where it switches off and the dust around you settles for a few moments and allows you to take in a new reality. You stand around in a hazy mist of stillness and realise that, amongst all of these ruins of negative thoughts and rules that have controlled you for so long, there is a person in the midst of it all. A person who was taken over and manipulated by a disease to become merely a shadow of who they really once were. Once the depression becomes manageable, and the negative thoughts begin to slowly become less automatic, a space begins to clear up inside of your mind where the real you has been suppressed. 

It's terrifying. My reality has completely been altered. For so long, I was plagued with thoughts of self loathing, I lived by core beliefs and values that were all my illness, not me. I wasn't a person, I was an illness. 

My sense of identity was lost entirely. I didn't value myself at all, I hated myself. I had no self worth and measured it entirely by how much I weighed, or my ability to restrict my food intake. I could talk about the "reality" that my illness created both for me, and inside of me, but that isn't where I am now. I am in a state of repair, and healing, and I want to write about that. 

A very wise person told me "It takes so much courage to confront our challenges and insecurities and you are proving that we never have to let these take over our lives." I realised she was right. It does take courage to confront those. An enormous amount of courage, that nobody in recovery (in my experience) ever seems to give themselves credit for. I was so focussed on what I could or should be doing that I lost sight of what I was actually doing and that I wasn't actually letting this take over my life anymore. That in itself is a huge achievement, to pull yourself up from rock bottom, ask for help and give every single piece of yourself to getting better and building yourself into a healthy person again? I think that is possibly one of the bravest things that a person can do, and I did that. 

I am learning who I am and experiencing things without the illness, without a barrage of thoughts telling me that I am not worthy or good enough for anything in life. I am learning what interests me, what I can derive enjoyment and pleasure from and I can feel unadulterated joy without rhyme or reason. 

I am only in the "building the foundations" stage of recovery, letting the real me emerge out of the darkness and be free to think and feel as myself. There is so much work to do each and every day, but I have a small sense of self worth inside of me now. I am enough, and that is enough for now.