My ED Journal: Rain

After two separate inpatient hospital stays, during my junior year of high school, I was pretty damn deep in a relapse. During this time I kept a daily journal in the Notes app on my phone, constantly updating nobody but myself on my emotions and troubles and daily encounters. To this day, when I can't fall asleep, I scroll through these entries. I dive back into the darkness of my past. My words were so powerful, capturing my pain so perfectly to the point that I find myself clutching my pillow beneath me, desperate to make it stop. You may be wondering why I even bother doing so in the first place, if it only puts me in pain. But it's not the same pain. It's my way of grieving for a lost past, while at the same time reminding myself how thankful I am to have lost it.

I recently came across this one little blurb from an entry dated May 16th, 2015. According to my recap, I had gone out for dinner alone with my dad on this Saturday night, when a thunderstorm broke out halfway through our meal. I looked up at my dad and told him I loved the rain. He asked me why and appeared surprised. My entry captures what my response would have been, if only I had the courage to say the words out loud.

"I guess some people really don't seek comfort in sad things like I do. Not that that's a good. But the rain is so dark and sad an makes me feel okay about being dark and sad too. The rain is validating and liberating and most of all just comforting."

My ED was a terribly dark time in my life. Not only was I malnourished, but I was juggling an exercise addiction, anxiety disorder, OCD, and depression as well.

The point of this post is to let those of you who are struggling with any of these demons, or even combinations of them, know that I'm here and I know what you're facing. During this point of my life I was sad. I could make that sentence sound elegant and colloquial and dress it up in words and intellect and paint you a descriptive picture. But isn't "I was sad" ten times more powerful? I was sad. The lack of effort to even enhance that sentences perfectly captures where I was at that point. I had lost all motivation in every area of my life. I saw no point to any endeavor I began. The sentence is empty, and so was I.

I was sad.

Damn.

This post is me reaching out to you. I want you to know that I was there, and I'm out now. There's a light, there's an end, and it's sure as hell not where you're at now. So keep chasing it.

Reading my entries floods me with feelings that had been suppressed over the years of recovery. My words, my cries for help and my exclamations of self-defeat are so vivid. I spent the majority of high school career with a dark storm cloud over my head. Each day felt like it was masked in a grey filter, making it impossible for me to see color. I constantly felt like I was struggling to breathe, and had to run into the bathroom between classes to lock myself in a stall to cry, I don't know why I cried but I did, like clockwork, everyday. I had six minutes to get to class. I'd spend two of them speed-walking down the walkway to reach my class, the next three bawling my eyes out in a stall, and then give myself one minute to run to class while wiping away tears and catching my breath. I remember skipping lunch and opting to cry in the bathroom instead. When it was warm enough for me to go outside (I'm talking 80 degrees, in a North Face), I would walk along the walkway while classes were in session and obsessively calculate my intake in my head for 45 minutes.

I was preoccupied with what I looked like and what I ate and how much I exercised and that was it. I had no other ambitions. My life shrunk, my worldview dwindled, and I quarantined myself to my room, my classes, and the damn bathroom stall. I was stuck. I was dark. My soul felt so heavy inside of me. I felt like I was carrying around a bowling ball in my chest.

I know what it feels like to walk through life drowning. The rain cloud is relentlessly pouring down, challenging you to rise up against it but making it impossible to do so. Some days are more hopeful than others. Some days you feel capable, maybe I can do this, maybe today won't be so bad. The next day you wake up and wish more than anything in the world that you didn't, why did I wake up, why can't I bring myself to get out of bed? The inconsistency, the mood swings, the fleeting gleams of hope that are just empty promises in disguise.

I know.

Which brings me back to this peak into my ED journal. I felt so alone, so incapable, so afraid. I wanted out but was at a loss for a way. I felt paralyzed by anxiety, fear, darkness.

And that's why I took a liking to the rain. You see, the rain is dark. It is heavy. These are atmospheres I was used to. The rain is overwhelming, and paralyzing. These are characteristics of my mind that pummeled me each day. The rain is sad. I was sad. I took a liking to the rain because it was the life I had grown to know. The rain was more than rain for me. The rain WAS me. It represented my soul and my spirit and it symbolized everything cultivating inside of me. I was the rain. Thunderstorms made me feel like I wasn't alone. "Look", the rain would say, "You're not the only sad dark thing in the world. Here I am". And though it would remind me of my reality, it was comforting to know it was there too, another sad dark thing in the world.

I'm sorry this was so grim, but it's the reality of life with an ED. When you struggle with disordered eating, you play host to copious other disorders as well. Life becomes a vicious rollercoaster of mood swings, social anxiety, immaturity, irrational fears, etc. I know. I know. But it's okay.

If you found yourself reading about my past and finding it to be your present, please, PLEASE reach out to me, to anyone. I know it's dark right now, but the rain isn't everlasting. A storm rolls through, and so will you. Please find it within you seek the help you need, to rise above the storm cloud and challenge it's wrath. Life beyond the darkness is possible.

Today, I still love the rain. I think it's beautiful and cozy and exciting. I don't love the rain for my old reasons. I love the rain because it nourishes and feeds and cares for nature. Just like I nourish and feed and care for my body, my mind, my soul. It reminds me that not every day will be sunshine, but that darkness is temporary. I love the rain for its ability to communicate this to me.

Love the rain for the right reasons. Love yourself for EVERY reason. Fall so in love with life that the rain doesn't stand a chance at dampening your light.

This post was all over the place, but I feel so much better after writing it. Sometimes, in order to accept your past struggles, it pays to analyze them and truly understand them before you move on. These posts are the closure I need, and hopefully can have a positive impact on those who read them. Thank you, always, for reading and sticking around.

Sending love!!