Self-Analysis v.Appointments
Medical appointments are like the ticking, whirring clock of my life. Everything revolves around my appointments. Which hospital, which doctor, what therapist, what group... those are the first things that get inked into my calendar. Everything else must fit between those gaps. Sometimes I get sick of spending all this time being poked and prodded at and questioned to death, but underneath it all, I would be terrified NOT to have any appointments to go to. For example, living without therapy is a completely foreign concept to me.
Being Anorexic, the girl who's always in treatment, the girl who always has "special exemption" from doing stuff for medical reasons, the emaciated girl, the girl who's always in therapy... that's the only "me" that I know for certain. That's the only constant identity I have had all these years. In some ways I have never grown up past the time I first got sick - age 10. Even though I am a "functioning" adult - I got a degree, I'm still doing more school, I work full-time, I am a mother - there are still traces of the little girl who never grew up. I throw tantrums, I don't cope well with a lot of things, I never really LIVED my growing up or teenage years. I was too busy being sick.
That hopeless, fragile shell of a person was what I knew, was all that I thought I had to offer this world whose idea of a beautiful woman is an emaciated woman. And now I'm 25 years old. I envy other women because they are WOMEN and they have embraced their womanhood, curves, femininity. They are real, vibrant, and beautiful. I want this for myself but I'm scared. What if the Tia I discover does not fill me the way my anorexic self did? What if I can't find anything else to be good at? What if I no longer can use being sick as an excuse for things that make me unhappy?
Being Anorexic, the girl who's always in treatment, the girl who always has "special exemption" from doing stuff for medical reasons, the emaciated girl, the girl who's always in therapy... that's the only "me" that I know for certain. That's the only constant identity I have had all these years. In some ways I have never grown up past the time I first got sick - age 10. Even though I am a "functioning" adult - I got a degree, I'm still doing more school, I work full-time, I am a mother - there are still traces of the little girl who never grew up. I throw tantrums, I don't cope well with a lot of things, I never really LIVED my growing up or teenage years. I was too busy being sick.
That hopeless, fragile shell of a person was what I knew, was all that I thought I had to offer this world whose idea of a beautiful woman is an emaciated woman. And now I'm 25 years old. I envy other women because they are WOMEN and they have embraced their womanhood, curves, femininity. They are real, vibrant, and beautiful. I want this for myself but I'm scared. What if the Tia I discover does not fill me the way my anorexic self did? What if I can't find anything else to be good at? What if I no longer can use being sick as an excuse for things that make me unhappy?