08.19.17 // Why I Write
I don’t know if it was a loss of control of a growth of a new routine, but either way I found a new way of consumption to spend my days.
I found the rules replacing my life. It sucked away the spontaneity that used to spark my energy. Weight loss, hair loss, heart beats lost, friends were gone. I found comfort in this routine because it was just that, it was a routine. I knew how it would feel if I didn’t eat. I knew how it would feel if I ran every day. I knew how it would feel when my parents would yell at me, yell at the world, yell at themselves for wondering how we got to this place. It started off innocent enough, as any saga often does, a boy sees a girl in a coffee shop, someone has the picture perfect life before that sketchy character comes into the frame just long enough to think something may go off kilter. It’s the perfect meet cute, a girl faced rejection, load on a life time of anxiety and OCD, core belief, some pre dispositioned biologic factors that made her susceptible to this kind of routine, and we found our plot. It made it easy to follow, the routine that was such a comfort fro all the unknowns in my life. I never liked living in the uncertainty, it was never something I learned to cope with. I so wanted to be the person who could go with anything and everything, and when I couldn’t I blamed myself. It wasn’t my anxiety, but myself. So this routine fit perfectly. I knew what to expect, the feelings of comfort in every missed snack and missed event. I was in control. Until the plot when downhill. I didn’t know this routine included calling my mom a bitch and losing all kind of a social life, but at this point, I was too far in. I knew what this isolated life gave me, and even though it was miserable to the point of despair, it was familiar. And isn’t that one of the saddest parts of this story? The fact that this disease drives you to a point where you’re more comfortable living in a depression then living with any kind of the joy that you deserve to have.
You’ve convinced yourself that it is easier to be in this state, of constant rules and predictable anxiety than the real world. It seems alluring, but every day new routines pop up, you get scared of more and more and more things to need to be put under control. It’s predictable until it’s not. Panic attacks come out of nowhere, more things are unsafe, and the worst part? You think that no one else knows what it is like to live like this.
I write to connect us. I write as a form of therapy for myself. I write to make myself feel less isolated. I tell my story to let people know that they are not, have never been, and will never be alone. Most importantly, I write to let people know that the routine that I have been living in, that they may be living in as well, is not worth the temporary comfort you get when living in the world of the disorder. The real-world, actually living without all your restrictions and all your rules is where the real happiness comes out. When I was in my disorder I thought I cut out all possibility of more hurt, but with that, I also cut out all happiness. I cut out all possible to find new people, new places, I was living in a constant plateau of the mundane. And, surprise, you still get hurt. You get hurt in new ways you didn’t think possible.
I write to remind you, and remind myself, that we don’t deserve to live with this. We don’t deserve to live in this state. There is the world, I’m finding it now, where when you give up control you gain control of your life. There’s more happiness when you face the hurt, there’s more happiness when you let go of those unnecessary rules. They served a purpose to us once, but they don’t anymore. All they are doing is holding us back.