Cycles of life
I am still feeling sad for and about Cory, and as a member of fandom I feel like a distant mourner to this man who had so much to give. I've experienced a lot of loss in recent years, which helps in a way - because this isn't as sharp of a grief as I've felt by any means - but also hurts because I know how devastated his real friends and family must be feeling. I'm wishing them all peace... and wishing there were a way for them to draw comfort from how many of us are out here caring, too. But really, when someone is gone, and so young, and for such a tragic reason, is there really comfort to be found anywhere?
Life is unfair. Life is hard.
Meanwhile, I'm struggling with my own demons this week. I don't suffer from an addiction, but I do have a history of disordered eating, anorexia in specific, which for me is like alcoholism, something I will and do manage but from which I'll never recover. I've been repeatedly triggered all to hell in the last few months to a really bad degree - far worse than I can remember in a decade at least - and have been able to control the behavior but not the dark voices in my head. I'm tempted and unhappy, painfully critical, but I'm keeping myself from giving in, though it is taking a lot of energy to do so. I'm okay, really, it will pass, but I'm exceptionally fragile around the subjects of food and body image.
And this week I am at the beach with my family. I refuse on principle to let my body issues interfere with my son in particular, but the thought of being on a beach with a bunch of people in bathing suits had been actually giving me nightmares before we got here. I thought I would have to grit my teeth and hide my feelings behind a cute pair of sunglasses. (See, and that cute doesn't need to be there. It could be an innocuous word, because my sunglasses really are cute, Kate Spade, tortoiseshell and lime green, but it's there because I'm overcompensating for the darker thoughts in my head. Knock it off, fm.) I thought I would come away more triggered.
I am shocked to say that it has been really, really good for me.
It has been a long time since I've been surrounded by so many people wearing so few clothes, and it has actually been healing to see so many real people, not airbrushed, not anorexic, not styled to perfection. Just random, everyday people, some of whom looked like people in magazines but most of whom looked healthy and happy and real in various shapes and sizes. And nobody seems to care what they look like or I look like (though quite a lot care what the museling looks like, because he's very, very popular here from his cuteness), and it has made me feel a lot less hyper-aware of myself. Which is amazing and totally unexpected, I will tell you.
It was just a good reminder that bad and good thoughts and choices can strike when we least expect them, that we don't need to buy into the messages and pressures we hear every day but can't always avoid it. It's hard, I know it's hard, I know all too well, but I'm glad to be forced to face my problems head on now and then.
It seems flip to tie these thoughts into Cory's life and struggles with addiction, but still... Life is tough even when you don't think it should be. Life is hard, filled with choices that aren't always easy to make. And life, thank goodness, is sometimes wonderful when you least expect it.
FWIW, given my levels of being triggered, I may not be able to respond to comments about disordered eating. <3
Life is unfair. Life is hard.
Meanwhile, I'm struggling with my own demons this week. I don't suffer from an addiction, but I do have a history of disordered eating, anorexia in specific, which for me is like alcoholism, something I will and do manage but from which I'll never recover. I've been repeatedly triggered all to hell in the last few months to a really bad degree - far worse than I can remember in a decade at least - and have been able to control the behavior but not the dark voices in my head. I'm tempted and unhappy, painfully critical, but I'm keeping myself from giving in, though it is taking a lot of energy to do so. I'm okay, really, it will pass, but I'm exceptionally fragile around the subjects of food and body image.
And this week I am at the beach with my family. I refuse on principle to let my body issues interfere with my son in particular, but the thought of being on a beach with a bunch of people in bathing suits had been actually giving me nightmares before we got here. I thought I would have to grit my teeth and hide my feelings behind a cute pair of sunglasses. (See, and that cute doesn't need to be there. It could be an innocuous word, because my sunglasses really are cute, Kate Spade, tortoiseshell and lime green, but it's there because I'm overcompensating for the darker thoughts in my head. Knock it off, fm.) I thought I would come away more triggered.
I am shocked to say that it has been really, really good for me.
It has been a long time since I've been surrounded by so many people wearing so few clothes, and it has actually been healing to see so many real people, not airbrushed, not anorexic, not styled to perfection. Just random, everyday people, some of whom looked like people in magazines but most of whom looked healthy and happy and real in various shapes and sizes. And nobody seems to care what they look like or I look like (though quite a lot care what the museling looks like, because he's very, very popular here from his cuteness), and it has made me feel a lot less hyper-aware of myself. Which is amazing and totally unexpected, I will tell you.
It was just a good reminder that bad and good thoughts and choices can strike when we least expect them, that we don't need to buy into the messages and pressures we hear every day but can't always avoid it. It's hard, I know it's hard, I know all too well, but I'm glad to be forced to face my problems head on now and then.
It seems flip to tie these thoughts into Cory's life and struggles with addiction, but still... Life is tough even when you don't think it should be. Life is hard, filled with choices that aren't always easy to make. And life, thank goodness, is sometimes wonderful when you least expect it.
FWIW, given my levels of being triggered, I may not be able to respond to comments about disordered eating. <3