Perennial

Plant me, 
watch me grow. 
Water me, 
nourish my soul
with
love and tenderness. 
Let my leaves and
petals fall;
I am meant to wither
from time to 
time. 
Give me your
blessing,
allow me to 
be reborn.
I will always 
push through the
constraints of 
the gardens of life.
Shine your sun
onto me, 
as I sprout through
the tightly packed
earth formed
by my mind.
Be patient with me, 
I need time to 
come home. 
But I promise, 
I always will. 

You Can’t Love Yourself Until You Like Yourself

Over the past four months, I have been on a journey to self love. I am sort of considering this to be an extension/the next chapter of my eating disorder recovery, and let me tell you it has been anything but easy. I’ve engaged in some wonderful communities through social media and I have found such positivity, I have challenged myself to look at my body in ways I hadn’t previously, I have examined the thought processes I engage in and challenged them, and I have been working to see positivity in all things about me.

But recently I have had a thought. When you’re starting to date someone, you almost never truly love them right away, you like them first. Perhaps a journey to self love is not so different from the journey of engaging in a romantic relationship. I can pinpoint a few specific parts of myself that I love: I love my legs, my sense of humour, my ability to empathize with people, and my smile. But when I look back on my life, I didn’t wake up one day and immediately love these things. I remember when I discovered that I was funny. I had always like to joke around in school, I enjoyed it and I liked it. I was never the smartest kid in the class, but I knew I could tell jokes and be funny. I liked this about myself. I was in the second grade and there was a girl in my class named Gabrielle. We weren’t great friends by any means, but we did happen to be the two tallest people in our class. It was our school picture day and our class was being organized by height to take a class picture. We were waiting for our class’s turn to go up for the picture and Gabrielle and I were joking around, something I did regularly, and she told me she thought I was funny. She said this while laughing and with a smile on her face. I realized that my humour had the ability to make people happy, and I liked that. I realized that this was something positive about myself. I may not have been very smart, but this was something I was good at, and I realized then that I loved that. This whole scenario led to me loving my sense of humour.

When I look back on my life with regards to the things I love about myself, each of these loves has their own origin story. My legs, smile and ability to empathize with people each started out as something about myself that I liked, and then they each had their own defining moment and grew into something I loved about myself.

So I’ve been thinking about all of this lately. There is a lot of talk on social media these days about self love. There are amazing social media campaigns encouraging people to embrace the parts of their minds and bodies that have been deemed by society to be unworthy; and I think that’s great. But the thing that people don’t seem to talk about as much, is the fact achieving self love is not something easy.

We live in a world that is constantly telling us that so many parts of us aren’t worthy of love, and that is harmful and it is detrimental to our mental and physical health. But what if we looked at self love from a simpler lens, what if we changes the way we looked at it? What if we started out with liking things about ourselves? If you go out on a first date, and you like the person by the end of it then there is much more of a chance that you could one day grow to love this person. In my opinion, the relationship we have with ourselves is the exact same.

Let me give you an example. Throughout my life (this was heightened during and after my eating disorder), I have really hated my stomach. I remember being maybe 10 years old and thinking to myself that if my t-shirts were tight that I had to suck my stomach in all day because it was too big. This has followed me throughout my life and when I developed my eating disorder my stomach was the part of me I hated the most. I would search Youtube endlessly for videos of ab workouts and I would work out until I could not stand. Now that I am in recovery I have gained a fair bit of weight, and (lucky for me) most of it went to my stomach. Despite this new weight being a symbol of my recovery and a symbol of being healthier, I still could not embrace it. I couldn’t even fathom loving this part of myself that I viewed as disgusting. I decided recently that I did not want to live a life where I am constantly hating myself and constantly putting myself down. I thought that self love was something I could just jump head first into. I saw all of these beautiful women on social media of all different body types and they were embracing every part of their bodies- even their stomachs. I thought that I could be like that too. So I sat in the bath tub and I just stared at my stomach, waiting for that light to go off that would make me love this part of me. Spoiler alert: The light never went off. I felt so discouraged, I just didn’t understand why I couldn’t love myself. Then a little over a month ago, I was shopping and as is normal when clothes shopping, some items I tried on didn’t fit right or didn’t fit at all. The thing that surprised me, was that I was okay with this. If this had been even a couple months earlier, I would have immediately engaged in extremely negative thoughts about myself, but I just shrugged it off. It was that moment when I started to like my stomach.

I don’t love my stomach yet, but we’re still in the dating phase. We’re getting to know each other, and we like each other right now. Things are going well, and I think one day we’ll fall in love. I know that that day won’t happen right away, we’ll have to court each other for a while, wine and dine each other. But one day in the future, I will fall madly in love with my stomach, and I can’t wait for that day.

Surf’s Up

“Ride the wave. One day it will be over.”

The world is an ocean. It is wide, vast, and infinite. Sometimes I feel like we get thrown into this ocean of a world with no tools, no lessons, and no metaphoric flotation devices. Just like an ocean, the world has incoming and outgoing tides. There are times when the waves seem insurmountable, and there are times when they seem small enough to walk over; but the one constant is that life will have its waves.

People tell us about the waves that life can throw at us. They have no problem explaining the potential difficulties we may encounter, but they neglect to tell us what to do when we encounter them. They tell us that all of life’s waves will one day end, and to simply ride the wave until its end.

Which, for me, begs the question: How can I ride the wave if I was never taught to swim?

Before parents let their children swim in the deep end by themselves, they enroll them in swimming lessons. They prepare them for the dangers that the deep end can possess. I think there is something to be said for preparedness. I think that it makes logical sense that people are better equipped to swim through the deep ends of life when they have been given the proper tools and training to do so.

Like the ocean, life is an unpredictable beast. It can throw things at us that we never even thought possible, it will try to drown us. But would we not be better suited to handle these challenges if we were given proper tools? I understand, the unpredictable nature of life makes it hard to prepare for the unknown. I don’t even think that’s what I’m suggesting. It’s impossible to prepare for the unknown, that’s the very premise of unknown things. But when it comes to things like death, and grieving, why are we never taught how to cope? Why are we never taught to swim?

I look at my life and there are times when I would love nothing more than to simply ride the wave. The problem is that the world never taught me how. They never gave me floaties, swimming lessons, or a fludder board. They sent me into the world’s ocean and told me to ride the wave. But I never learned how to swim.

 

When Did “Fat” Become the Real F Word?

Why do we force words to live exclusively from one another?
Why can fat not mean beautiful?

I recently remembered something from when I was in the sixth grade. There was a girl in my class who was a bit bigger than most of the other students in our class. I remember hearing the way that the other students spoke about her, the mean jokes they would make behind her back, and the almost as cruel things they would say to her face. I remember noticing that she was being treated differently and in a negative way because of her size.

I decided then that I would never let myself look a way that would give other people an opportunity to treat me poorly. I wish I had taken this experience in a different way, as an example of people I never wanted to be like. I never would want to be treated like this classmate, but the lesson I learned was not to be kind to people, it was to never become fat enough to allow people be cruel to me.

I used to be so scared of the word fat because we live in a society that equates fat to ugly, or less than. I was scared of the idea of gaining weight because I thought that if I did then I would also become ugly or less than. We live in a society that puts limits on what words can be. I was more scared of being fat than I was of being a bad person, of being considered rude or mean, and I was scared of being fat more than I was worried about getting bad grades.

I was eleven when I learned that our world says that being fat is bad. I was eleven when I became afraid of gaining weight. I remember it like it was yesterday, and one day I hope to not be afraid. But for now, I will remember to be kind, and to stand up for those who are mistreated. I do not view gaining weight as the end all and be all of my life, and there are now many things I consider to worse things than ganging weight, but I am still somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of it. So until the day I am not afraid, I will choose to be kind and to reject cruelness.

Lost & Found

A forest so big

So dark and full of mystery

Where else would I hide?

A Termination Letter to my Eating Disorder

Dear ED,

It’s been a long run, but fortunately, I have decided that it is time we part ways. Certain events have led me to decide that you are no longer an asset to the organization that is my life. You have been with me for much longer than I initially realized; we first met when I was a young girl. But despite the length of our relationship – dysfunctional as it is – I stand firm in my decision to let you go. I am going to explain this in detail to you, in hopes that these specifics will avoid me letting someone else like you into my life.

An eight year old girl should not live her life sucking in her stomach. A ten year old girl should not think that the amount of love she receives is correlated to her size. A twelve year old girl who grew very tall very fast should not have learned to fear stretch marks the same way people fear violence. A thirteen year old girl in Florida should not go to the beach in shorts and a tank top because she was scared to show her skin. A nineteen year old girl should not be throwing up her meals. A nineteen year old girl should not be on the verge of passing out in her office because of how hungry she was. A girl on the eve of her twentieth birthday should not have been looking up the calories in food at the restaurant she was going to tomorrow. A twenty year old girl should not have an Internet history full of diets, workout plans and eating disorder communities. A twenty year old girl should not cry at the thought of trying on clothes in a fitting room at the mall. A twenty year old girl should not become paralyzed with fear at the idea of going swimming. A twenty one year old girl should not avoid seeing her friends and hide in her apartment because she thinks she is too fat to be seen in public. Yet these are all things that I was. These are all things that I did because of you.

I made a realization recently, and it was one that brought to light just how long you have been a part of me. I realized that I do not remember a time where I have not felt as big as I am now. The weight I have gained since we began drifting apart may be visibly new, but I have long felt that it was a part of me. Why? Well ED, this is where you come in. You brainwashed me into thinking seeing a false reflection when I looked in the mirror. You told me that losing weight that wasn’t there would make me happier, more liked, more deserving of love. But no matter how much weight I lost you always told me to lose more, or that it wasn’t;t enough. I realize now that the happiness, popularity and love that you promised me were nothing but false promises.

You stole something from me. You stole confidence that I never had the chance to develop. Before I ever had a chance to feel good about myself you were there telling me I had never been good enough and would never be good enough. You were there telling me that everyone around me was judging me, staring at the fat I did not have but you made me believe was there. You were there for birthdays, graduations, prom, school, happy moments, sad moments, embarrassing moments and moments I should have felt proud. You stole memories from me.

I never realized these things at the times they occurred because you made me think that I needed you. You were constantly reinforcing the notion that one day I would be worthy of thinness and all the joys that came with it. But what you did not tell me was that one day would never come. You never told me that you were the most abusive relationship I had ever been in. You never told me that you were a master manipulator. You never told me that you could tell a lie with the ease of an Academy Award winning actress. You never told me that I could have a life without you and now I finally see that I can.

I never thought I would see the day that I would be able to leave you behind. I never thought I would be able to tell you these things. I never thought that I would be able to walk away from you. I never thought that I would love myself enough to say, you’re fired.

I renounce you of any power you held over me. I free myself of any holds you had on my mind, body, and spirit. I am in control now, the way it should have been all along.

Goodbye, and good riddance,
Emma

 

Eraser

It will never make
sense to me. The insults
you hurled at me and the
vicious names that you 
called me are stuck to 
me like ink on a page.
The part that confuses 
and hurts me is that out in 
the world, I can get rid of 
ink on a page. But no 
matter how hard I 
try, I cannot erase you
or the marks you left on me.

Power Play

I told them that you did not deserve my forgiveness. I told them that it would seem like I accepted all the things you did: the lies you told, the insults you hurled with the strength of a thousand punches… I told them that I could not forgive you and make those things okay. I thought that if I forgave you then it was somehow providing you with validation that the things you did, that the ways you broke me were fair and respectable; but they weren’t and they never would be. I harboured so much anger and resentment towards you for everything that I could not see that by holding onto so much ill will that I was keeping myself in a cloud of negativity.

But then they explained to me that my forgiveness did not have to be for your benefit. They told me that it could be for me and that maybe it could be just what I needed to finally let you go. That maybe if I forgave you, then I would be releasing you and any power you had or still had over me. They explained to me that forgiving you did not mean that I was accepting your actions, or validating them. They explained to me that forgiveness was not an act for you, but it was for me to be able to admit to myself that what you did to me was not my fault. You chose to control me, to manipulate me, to hurt every part of my being – and that it was not my fault. They showed me that by not forgiving you, I was not allowing myself to also be forgiven.

So when you found your way back into my life after so much time and I saw that you could still install fear in me, I realized they were right. But moreover I realized that I needed them to be right because I had to be able to move on with my life and not have you in it. I needed to be able to move on and to no longer hold so much anger in my heart. So, I forgave you for me. I let you go for the last time, and finally the only person who had the power was me.

Broken Wings

Full, is the feeling
of freedom. It is
what I used to
fear, I used
to crave the
empty feeling;
the lack of
fullness. I longed
to see bones
and I feared
the possibility
of bloating. Full,
is what I am
now. I am
whole and I
am full. Freedom
is not fear,
it is learning
that what was
assumed to be
failure, is in fact
growth. Freedom,
is the feeling of
fullness.

Grandpa

I have the eyes
of my parents.
When I drive,
I am angry like my father. 
I speak in ways
like my mother.
I am blunt and
opinionated like Granny.
I drink vodka,
like Grandma.
Sometimes I am 
quiet like Papa.

People tell me all of
these ways that I am like 
all of these people;
but no one ever tells me
how I am like you
and forever I will wonder.