10.09.17 // For When I Forget

What was better about your life when you were sick?

What was so much better about THAT body.

That body. You forget so quickly how much pain that you were in.

You forget the meal plans, doctors appointments, blood tests, therapists waiting rooms, and hospital stays. You forget that time your heart rate dropped to 11 beats above cardiac arrest. You forget to push your best friend away because you couldn’t handle any relationship besides the one with your disorder. You forget that time you pushed away from the first guy you ever actually liked because your disorder needed constant attention. You forget the first and second time you had to drop out of school.

You forget that time you dropped in the hospital hallway bawling because you couldn’t imagine having to keep recovering for another day. You forget that time that your skin was yellow. You forgot about the guilt of the lies, the never-ending need to stay moving, the guilt you had when you didn’t. Or the time that you hated yourself so much because you literally could not feed yourself enough to live. How easily you forget.

The reality is you are not and never were better in that body. That body was the result of a coping mechanism that was never needed. You don’t need that body to be safe. Let me repeat that because some days you don’t seem to hear it, but you know it and I KNOW you know it.

You don’t need that body to be safe.

You don’t need that body to control your OCD thoughts.

You don’t need that body to be loved.

You don’t need that body to control your anxiety.  

You don’t need that body to be accepted.

http://weheartit.com/entry/186953680 , Rupi Kaur

You won’t be more successful because of that body. There is no scenario where the story ends better because you are in that body.

Remember what the illness does to you. It isolates, hides, and shames you until you can do nothing but become a mechanism for its choices. How many times do you have to be conned by those thoughts until you realize you don’t need them anymore.

You have so much more than just your body.

You ARE so much more than just your body.

You deserve to be kind to yourself, you deserve to feel comfortable in your skin, to feel radiant just because of who you are not because of the person you feel you represent in that body. Because at the end of that day even in your perceived “ideal” body there was nothing that made you better, only things that held you back.

You deserve a life that goes so much farther than the world of jean sizes and calorie counters. Please remember how much you deserve it.

And when you forget, I will tell you every single day. Because you are worth this conversation and worthy of a better life.

You can do this, please remember.

Kate xx