The problem with pain is that we are taught to fear it. Our whole lives we are taught to avoid pain and run from it when it approaches. “Don’t touch the stove because you’ll burn yourself. Don't jump off the swing because you'll scrape your knee.” The problem with that is we forget that pain is inevitable. There is no way that any one of us can skate through life untouched by it. And because we spend the majority of our lives being taught to avoid it, we never learn how to embrace it. So when its inevitable arrival comes, we either run from it or swallow it. This manifests itself in the form of addictions, eating disorders, self-harm, & suicidal ideation. It shows in avoidance, compartmentalization, and fear of living in the present. All those are, are unhealthy coping mechanisms that root from our inexperience of how to deal with pain when it comes.
Emotions are like waves, they come and they go. They pass in and throughout our bodies and either leave dark and ugly messes on our hearts and minds or are expressed in art and creation. One way or another, our pain has to leave our body. It’s our choice to let manifest into something ugly and cruel, or turn our pain into something beautiful. So please, turn your pain into art. Turn it into song. Dance and sing, scream if you have to. Do whatever you must to let it out in a way that will honor you. You owe yourself that much.
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Man oh man I’ve had so many ups and downs with running you’d think we’ve been married, divorced, and separated twice over. It’s truly a love-hate relationship. I don’t know a more fitting example than this. If you’ve read my blog or know my story, you know how much running has impacted my life. It’s taken me through the ringer that’s for sure. Together, we’ve suffered our hardships, gone through couples therapy, and endured enough pain but still have managed come out to see the light on the other side. Running is one of those things that can either leave you crying alone behind a dumpster or jumping and crying (the good kind) for joy. There’s hardly an in between and yes those examples are based on true events.
Ultimately, I love running. I love how it makes me feel. I love the places it takes me. I love the people it allows me to meet. I love how it makes me feel alive. Running has been there for me when I felt that I had nothing else to depend on. It has been my rock and my beacon of hope and for that I am grateful. But it has also been the drug that caused me to fall so far down into rock bottom that I am still struggling to climb back up. It’s kind of like a paradox. Despite all of this, I have chosen to never give up on it (even when I say I do). I can only stay separated for a month tops and then something always draws me back, like a relentless magnet. I’m now able to recognize it’s not who I am, but it’s definitely a huge part of what makes me, me, and has been the soil for me to grow my values from. I can look back on memories and smile without regret or longing and I believe that is a positive. The point of this blog is to give a little update on where our relationship is at the moment. Last year was a tough one for me. Actually, the last few years have been. It hasn’t been easy trying to overcome my eating disorder and life hasn’t exactly given me a break in other departments either. If you’ve ever been snowboarding you know the feeling of getting hit with a bag of potatoes every time you fall. That’s kinda how the last year has been. I’ve either been falling on my face or falling on my butt at every turn. For the most part, I internalize everything and hold things in. I’m a huge advocator for therapy (obviously, it’s my future career path) but that doesn't mean I’m the best at talking about my problems. Instead, I'll talk about the obvious problems that help me skim across some of the deeper and underlying ones. I deny and avoid a lot; it helps me pretend the serious things aren’t real. For some time, my relationship with running has been slowly tumbling toward a downhill slope. For some reason, it hasn’t been making me feel good on the inside and actually been a catalyst for my insecurities. For months, I tried to push past this. I didn’t want to admit this to myself because it would mean that I’d actually have to acknowledge the dark hole that was growing inside of me and that demon was something that I didn’t think I had the strength to fight. Every time I feel that I overcome one obstacle, another darker and deeper one seems to arise. It’s exhausting and for awhile I was feeling too drained to even acknowledge it's dark and looming presence. However, it got to a point that I began to dread the thought of running. It became a chore and honestly that is where I drew the line. I’m not going to say that I have loved every step of every run in my entire life. There were days when I didn’t feel like it, there were runs that I struggled to finish, but none that I severely dreaded to begin. I didn’t want an atmosphere of bitterness to surround it. I wasn’t going to force myself to do something I didn’t want to do, especially when it made me even more anxious to begin with. It wasn’t an easy decision. I cried A LOT while making it, but I finally came to the conclusion that running wasn’t benefiting me mentally so I made the decision to not run competitively this year. This will be the first year in 12 years that I won’t be running on a team (holy crap I’m old). That thought was terrifying but the idea of facing my darkness was even more frightening. I didn’t know if I was making the right decision, part of me felt like a quitter, but the other parts of me told me I was being brave. It’s hard to be gentle with yourself when you have so many inner conflicts colliding in your head. However, I’m here to tell you that months after my decision, I’m okay and I’m alive to tell my tale. By taking away the anxiety factor that running created, I have felt much more at peace and have been trying to fill my new found free time by doing things that make me happy. I took up painting (although I’m no Van Gough), I went on a camping/hiking weekend, I got a job ((so I’m no longer a (pitifully) broke college student). I’m still facing some rough patches; I won’t pretend to sugar coat that for you. My time away from running hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows; I’m still learning the ropes of being an ex-competitive runner. It’s scary facing your demons. You’d think I’d be an expert at it by now at how many times I’ve had to go to the battlefront. It seems like each villain in my story has adapted itself for each time I have overcome it before; forcing me to adapt myself and my armor all the same. I know my fight is far from over and I know there will be many obstacles I have left to overcome in this journey. I am learning to accept that. It’s not a one and done kind of thing, but by removing toxic things and people and replacing them with things that bring me closer to the light, I am slowly but surely finding my truth. Before I leave you, I want you to know that I haven’t totally quit running. You can still catch me out here and there, but it’s definitely not something I’m forcing myself to do. I’ve been gradually shifting my mindset and learning to fall back in love with the sport that has brought me so much joy in the past. My relationship from running isn’t over, in fact I think a new chapter has just begun. My biggest adventure yet, a solo (well almost solo) hiking and camping trip in the Adirondacks! Tanner, my dog, accompanied me on this trip so I’m not so sure if it counts as being completely alone but still it’s close enough. When I told people that I was going on a camping trip alone in the woods I was met with mixed responses. Many people just asked me why I would want to do that, some cheered me on, others asked me if it was safe, and a select few told me straight up that I shouldn't go. This was one of the first times in my life where I was really unbothered by what people’s opinions on this matter were. For some reason, I welcomed the judgement and saw it as more the reason to go. Of course, I did have some reservations going in. When I booked the campsite, the thought of me being alone in the woods with the chance of getting killed by a serial killer did arise, but for the most part, I like to say that I believe in the overarching goodness of humanity. That fact aside, I did buy a pocket knife and got carded in doing so (not that I ever think I’d be able to use it if the situation did arise). This adventure was very spontaneous. I booked it only two weeks before hand and did minimal planning. This year, I decided to take off from running competitively for my school. Running had gotten to a point that the anxiety it caused was becoming too overbearing and outweighing the benefits. I wanted to take time off for myself and spend my free time doing things that brought me happiness. One of those things was going on this trip! I realized that there was a very brief window to see all the colors of fall so I knew that if i was going to do this, I needed to do it now. So, in my new found freedom I planned a 3 day hiking and camping trip starting with a short hike in the catskills and then making my way up to Lake Placid in the Adirondacks. My first hike was Overlook Mountain in the Woodstock, New York. It was a 4.6 mile gravel trail with a steep incline. I was very confused when finding the trailhead to this mountain because the beginning was right next to a Buddhist Monastery. It was decorated with rainbow color flags that on this especially windy day were blowing around vigorously and filling the sky with color. The trail was fairly easy, it was only a gravel dirt road so the terrain wasn’t difficult at all, but it was steep. We were immediately swallowed by colors of orange and yellow which decorated the trees. It was exactly what I had came for. Since it was quite early in the morning I had most of the trail going up to myself, which was very peaceful and allowed me to test Tanner’s ability off leash without any distractions (he has a tendency to run away). The overlook at the top was so much better than I was expecting. The forest opened up into a rock cliff that overlooked the plains of Woodstock below us. There was a mixture of green and a few trees beginning to change. Overlook Mountain also had a fire tower. I climbed the 6 story tower and was greeted with a brutally cold wind, which I was very pitifully unprepared for in just shorts and a long sleeve. Tanner and I walked/jogged back down the mountain to attempt to make up some ground for the rest of the drive ahead of us. The campsite I stayed at was in Wilmington NY called the North Pole and was decorated in all things Christmas. I booked a site right on the Ausable River. My goal was to get there at a reasonable hour in the afternoon so I wouldn’t end up setting the tent up in the dark. This is the part of the trip that I was most nervous about. Not that I didn’t think I could set up a tent on my own, I just anticipated a big struggle and for something to inevitably go wrong, knowing my luck. However, I’m proud to say that I set up my tent annnnd built a fire all by myself #independent. However, my biggest struggle of the trip was that my phone refused to hold a charge due to the freezing temperatures #firstworldproblems. Adding to the fact that I didn’t have access to an outlet, my phone held a consistent charge of 7% the entire trip. So that was fun. I ended up sleeping with it off and stuffing it inside my shirt at night to conserve the minimal battery life I had, in order to not be totally stranded on the mountain the next day without any communication to the outside world. Another fun thing that happened that night was as I was cleaning up and getting ready to head in for the night, I put Tanner in the tent to attempt to keep him warm because for some reason he was afraid of the fire. Instead of sitting next to me and warming up, he chose to sit far away in the dark, shivering, and glaring at me. I had turned the lantern on in the tent, so I got a nice visual of tanner’s silhouette tromping around inside. As I was walking over to join him, I got a first hand view of his silhouette lifting up his leg and PEEING ON MY SLEEPING BAG!!! I screamed and ran inside and find out that my worst nightmare was sorrowfully true and he did indeed peed not only my sleeping bag but my pillow as well. Keep in mind, this was the first night. That night temperatures were supposed to drop below freezing so honestly what choice did I have? I threw a blanket over my pillow, flipped my sleeping bag over to the other side, and shrugged it off. I’d take a little dog pee over hypothermia any day. Day two, I hiked Whiteface Mountain, which is actually a mountain that I have skied before. It was a rated as a 10+ mile difficult hike. I started around 9:30 AM and finished around 4:30 PM. I broke this hike into four parts for you. The first chapter was Fall. I walked into a trail exploding of every shade of yellow, orange and red that you could possibly imagine. It was overwhelmingly beautiful but desolately alone. I walked the first few miles without seeing a trace of another human being, which was a little unnerving but not unexpected. Tanner got his fair share of smelling and peeing on every tree and I got a little time to self reflect in peace. The next chapter was Winter. I’m not joking when I say the mountain changed seasons as I climbed higher. It was fairly gradual but very noticeable. In some of the pictures that I took you can see where the shift began to change. Before this I had never witnessed snow on orange leaves before. Beginning with just a slight dusting on all the leaves, the snow was enchanting, however, when my thoughts quickly transitioned from, “aww that’s pretty” to “oh damn this is winter” when we walked into a full on snow storm. Although, temperatures did drop, it was still beautiful. Thankfully, I had packed Tanner a nice winter coat to keep him warm because I was anticipating some snow but definitely not to this extent. Chapter 3: Mud….. Mud everywhere. Freezing cold mud. Quicksand mud. Frozen mud. SO. MUCH. MUD! Since it was so early in the season, the ground wasn’t cold enough for the snow to stick, so it would melt and turn the trail into a straight up mud fest. The trails were very narrow and lined with tall pine trees on both sides, making it difficult to just walk around the puddles. Keep in mind, that these puddles were made of snow so they were extremely cold, especially for tanner’s exposed paws. This was the part of the trip that I felt most unprepared for. Tanner did not enjoy this part either. I think I can easily say he hated it. As the mud started to get deeper, and harder to avoid, Tanner began to get more frustrated. It finally got to a point where he just sat down, stared at me, and refused to continue. However, in doing so he blocked a line of people waiting to continue behind him. I had already crossed this patch so all I could do was stand on the other side and try to coax him along. He wouldn’t budge. The people behind us were laughing and started to join in. Soon everyone started chanting his name and encouraging him along the trail. I was mortified. Eventually he succumbed to the peer pressure and bregudgedly made his way through it. I made sure to give him extra treats after that trauma. Chapter 4: Wind. This is chapter was when Tanner was done with my shit. We had almost reached the summit, in fact I could see it, and we were slowly but surely approaching the top of the treeline. This part was especially rocky and by rocky I don’t mean little gravel rocks, I mean huge boulders, some so big that I had to lift tanner over my head (which neither of us were a fan of). As we approached the top of the treeline, we were suddenly hit with numbing wind that the trees had so generously sheltered us from. Tanner did not enjoy this. To get to the peak, we had to walk along a road for a little bit before beginning the final climb. The wind here was relentless. It was already cold to begin with, but this wind was so incredibly strong it made it hard to stand up straight. All of a sudden, Tanner ran off to the side of the road, back down into the trees, and started digging. I thought to myself, “For real? You’re really going to do this now? What could you possibly smell?”. Then to my surprise in the hole that he dug for himself, he laid down and tried to bury himself with dirt. That’s when it hit me that he had enough. We were so close that I could see where the final climb was. A sign next to me read that we were at 4,999 ft and I knew the mountain was only slightly over 5,000. I looked around and the snow was heavily coming down around us. I couldn’t see farther than 50ft ahead of me so I knew that when I actually got to the top, there wouldn’t be much of a view anyway. I took another look at Tanner, who was ready to bury himself on that mountain and decided that yep, this was probably as far as we were going to go. I went over to him and cuddled him for a few minutes trying to warm him back up and then started the decent back down. The hardest part of this hike for me wasn’t any of the elements but the mental fortitude it took to keep climbing. On my way up, every time I would think that I was almost there, another hour would go by. This processed happened four times (just do the math on that). At one point I broke down and asked someone if we were close to the top and he gave me this horrifyingly pitiful look and told me I still had a few more miles to go. That hurt. But once I FINALLY made it back to the parking lot it was all worth it. I blasted the heat for Tanner and spent the rest of the day chilling by the fire. I used the app “All Trails” to pick out all the hikes I was going on. It showed me how many miles each one was, their level of difficulty, and even provided pictures from the summits. So naturally, I gravitated toward the most scenic ones. For my last and final day I chose a much shorter hike for a number of reasons. A.) I had to drive 6+ hours home that day and B.) my legs still ached so much from the day before I barely was able sleep that night. The winner was Hurricane Mountain. I woke up before dawn and packed up my tent in the dark because I knew I wasn’t going to be back for check out time. I arrived at the trailhead at 7 AM. This was a much easier trail than the day before. It started out very flat and it was a lot warmer to start out. Like all the others, the trees were exploding with colors. I really tried to take it all in knowing I’d have to go back to a much less vibrant state. There was some mud but definitely not as bad as the day before as well. This trail followed a creek which inevitably meant that we had to cross it a some point. Tanner was not a fan. I guess he was traumatized from the mud the day before and refused to get his paws wet. Except this time, the rocks were big enough for him to walk across, so clearly he was just choosing to be dramatic. The coaxing tactic proved unsuccessful because I didn’t have the cheer team of yesterday; so he just sat down across the creek and stared at me, his favorite move. However, today I came armed with a new ploy of my own. This time I was equipped with a pack of beef jerky, which would shortly become his new found love. To get him to cross, I placed a piece of beef jerky on each individual rock that he needed to step on to cross. It worked. I continued this tactic multiple times up the mountain. The summit of the mountain was exposed rock which made the wind all the more merciless. I again had to encourage Tanner along by dropping pieces of beef jerky behind me to ensure that he’d follow me and not tuck tail down back down the mountain. I climbed two flights up the fire tower and turned right back around because I was afraid of being blown right off the mountain. I later learned that it was called ‘Hurricane Mountain’ because of the extreme hurricane like winds at the summit. Despite the crazy and slightly unbearable windchill, there was a 360 view at the top which made all the windburn worth it. We were blessed with a clear blue sky day which offered spectacular views of all the surrounding mountains. Maybe it’s just me but when I look at a horizon of mountains it always reminds me of a blanket stretching across earth. Each mountain resembled a ripple in the cloth as it touched the ground. I wish I could have stayed up there longer and really gotten to take it all in, but Tanner became so fed up with the wind that he started to climb back down without me! I spent the rest of that morning as a tourist around Lake Placid, walking passed the Olympic Training center which is in the heart of the down town, buying way too many overpriced stickers, jams, and miscellaneous and unneeded souvenirs. It’s such a cute and quaint little town and was very popular this time of year. I definitely could see myself coming back next year to attempt Marcy, the highest peak of the Adirondacks. As I had mentioned multiple times already the fall colors were so vibrant my heart was overwhelmed. To get back and forth from Lake Placid and many of the hiking trails, I had to drive down the Scenic Byway, which is the prettiest road I have ever been on. It cut straight through the mountains and offered scenic views of lakes and rocky cliffs. I had to stop my car every 5 seconds to take pictures of the landscape, but of course they never did it justice. I ended my trip with a stop at my Grandma’s house which is just outside of Albany in a town called Mechanicville, NY, got my fill of homemade mac n cheese and headed back to NJ. I learned a lot about myself on this trip. For instance, not to underestimate my abilities. I am in fact quite capable and shouldn’t doubt what I can accomplish on my own. I learned that you should never underestimate the power of beef jerky, the cold, or my mental fortitude. I left this trip feeling so much pride in myself and honestly what is a better feeling than that? I already started planning my next adventure. You can catch Tanner and I hiking Cascade Mountain in Acadia National Park on New Year’s Day to be the first people (and dog) to see the sunrise in the US this 2019. We’ll be throwing in a few hikes in New Hampshire and Maine along the way. Overall, I’d definitely recommend going on a solo adventure, whatever that adventure would entail. It doesn’t have to be a hiking or camping trip, just doing something completely alone. Putting your independence and capabilities to the test was extremely rewarding for me and I left with more confidence in who I am and with more love for myself. So I can definitely say, the windburn, mud, and pee in my sleeping bag was 1000% worth it. The Instagram Reality
It’s no surprise that we live in the age of social media. It’s everywhere. Forget dunkin, America runs off instagram, snapchat, twitter, you name it. We’ve traded in our morning newspapers for cat videos, walmart yodelers, and Trump memes. Take a walk through a college campus and you run the risk of being trampled by hoards of obvious students with their eyes in their phone. There’s no small talk in waiting rooms, no chats on the bus, just heads lost in mobile devices. Now what is all this buzz about? What is so intoxicating about these social media apps? I’m no scientist, I’m just a regular college student, who really shouldn’t be making all these presumptuous accusations because I’ll probably be the one running into you in the hallway, watching what exactly? I really couldn't tell you, probably laughing at a video of a dog. The reality of it is though, I waste hours doing this, hours that could be spent socializing, actually doing my schoolwork, reading, doing self care (what’s that??), who knows, I could maybe actually finish reading Gone with the Wind (which I have been on page 547 for two months). The point is I am wasting so much valuable time pointlessly over exercising my thumb muscles. But that’s not even the worst part. There are many pros and cons of social media. Blah blah blah, I’m sure you’ve heard this speal before. Yes it connects to loved ones and others who are far away. It allows a community like Strong Runner Chicks to exist (a very high pro) but at the same time it opens up a whole new dimension for us to criticize ourselves. Even before social media existed, we didn’t exactly walk out the door and tell our neighbors that we were seeking therapy because we are depressed. For the most part, we just don’t talk about things like that. We are the “fake till ya make it” species. Forever glueing masks of perfect white teeth, spotless complexions, and store bought happiness, we hide behind makeup and island vacation pictures. Trying to convince both the world and ourselves that we’re happier than you. Then there’s this new trend of making not just one picture trendy and hip, but contorting our entire profile to be as “aesthetically pleasing” as possible. Becoming even more picky with pictures we choose to post because now they have to fit the “aesthetic” of our entire page. We are forever trying to create this perception of ourselves in the eyes of others. Posting, doing, and saying things in a way of exactly how we want others to view us. I was taken aback the other day, when I was talking to a boy that I thought was cute (lol). I wanted him to see me as this fun and happy go lucky girl. I quickly began to notice my mannerisms start to change. Just in this one conversation I was acting completely different from my normal self. I was transforming myself into the impression of the girl I thought he wanted. Thinking, “If I can just come across as this type of girl, he’s going to like me”. I left the conversation, frustrated. I didn’t do anything embarrassing or ridiculous, it was just that I thought that who I was already wasn’t good enough for him and somehow if I acted like someone else, he would like me. When I was thinking about this more, I really started to question how often I did or said certain things to come across as a particular way. How often I post specific pictures to seem like “the beach girl” or the “nature girl”. There have been some occasions where I book a trip, with the thought in mind of “how good this picture is going to look on instagram”. How sick is that? I get lost in how I want others to see me and literally change who I am to fit the mold of how I want to portray myself. When in reality that wasn't me at all. That boy would have eventually figured out that the girl I was acting like wasn't the girl actually in front of him. But why is it so important to make our lives “aesthetically pleasing”? Why can’t we unapologetically be ourselves? The reality is, no one is asking you to be a certain way, except yourself. If you spend hours upon hours scrolling through the lives of these so called “perfect people” you can’t help but notice the difference between your profile and theirs, but have you thought about how they've contorted their own profile to fit the image of how they want you to see them? It’s all this endless cycle. The only way to get out is to log off. Actually take a trip without the intention of posting about it later. Talk to a guy without trying to be someone else. Do things for yourself and not for anyone else. It’s not rocket science, but when this is something that we’ve practiced since puberty, it’s something very unnatural. However, just with anything in life, practice makes perfect (or not actually perfect because we don’t believe in that word- but you get what I’m saying). Just be yourself girl. The only thing perfect in this world is the perfection in the uniqueness in which you were created. Own who you are and don’t hide it. Break the aesthetic, shake things up, be different, be you. When we feel too much……….
What are emotions exactly? Does everyone experience them in the same way? Why do some people cry and others just “shake it off”? Does that mean we both aren’t in pain? Is there a spectrum to how we endure our suffering? Is each person’s anguish created equal? Is it possible to ‘feel too much’? I don’t know about you but I’ve always known I was an over-emotional girl (or at least that’s what others told me, so naturally I believed it). I knew that I felt things at more significant level than any of my friends. SPOILER ALERT- I mean I cried for a week straight when I read that Dumbledore died. I knew this wasn’t necessarily ‘normal’, yet back then I also really didn't care. However, as I started to get older and the world began to offer me more bruises and scars than just a death of a character in my favorite book, I began to become aware of how strongly things affected me. “Sensitive” is what people call it. Sensitive and weak is what I called myself. I wasn’t the kind of person to cry in public, that was exhibiting too much weakness for me. Instead, I mastered the art of internalizing my pain. For instance, internalizing it in my eating disorder. I quickly learned to internalize everything. Now, I didn’t have a life that out of the ordinary. I haven’t suffered a crazy trauma. I haven’t endured any traumatic physical injuries. Just the basic ‘growing pains’, I guess you could call it. I was a typical teenager, who suffered from heartbreak, the end of friendships, a parent’s divorce, struggling grades, you get the picture. Yet why did each impact hit me like a tractor trailer going 70 miles an hour? Why did each event blow me so far off course that I would be left recovering years later? What happens when you feel too much? I’m writing this not really sure of the answer. Why do I feel things on such a stronger level than others? When the normal recovery time is a month, why does it take me a year? Why do I allow myself to suffer that long? I really don’t know. I see people who are so resilient. They get right back on the horse after a traumatic event, while I am left struggling in the mud months later. Yes, I always end up getting up and riding again, it just takes me a lot longer than others. The pain overstays its welcome, but I am the one who opens the door. I constantly find myself reopening scars, for what? I’m like a child picking at an old scab, unable to let go of the past. How does the past have so much power over me? I think part of it stems from my inability to let things go. I forgive, but I struggle with the forgetting part. My past takes a toll on me. I don’t believe that our suffering is created equal but I also don’t believe that it’s a weakness. My emotional rollercoaster moves a lot slower than yours but that doesn't make it any less of a thrilling ride. I am really present for every up and every down and because of this, don’t allow life to slip through my fingers. I appreciate the long trudges through the mud because they allow me to recognize how extraordinary the ride was before and how it will be just the same after. There’s a danger in forgetting. It creates the potential for you to make the same mistakes over again. It’s important to remember your pain and not forget your past or where you’ve come from. Learning from your mistakes is what is going to build your fortitude and in the end it’s going to be the thing to protect your heart. I don’t see my pain as a weakness. Because I feel so much pain, I am also able to feel so much love. My heart has extra room for love to fill in. So no, I don’t see it as a weakness at all, I see it as my strength. I was honored to be offered the opportunity to share my story in front of over 140 people as part of Stockton University's Disordered Eating Awareness Month. It was a humbling experience to stand in front of a room over flowing with faces, ready to share the most vulnerable part about me. I am extremely grateful for all the work that Stockton has done in regards to challenging the stigma of Mental Health and starting the conversation of Eating Disorders. If you missed my speech but would like to read what was said I attached it below! Take part in my journey, so that you and others can be aware of how serious eating disorders are and learn the importance of taking care of yourself. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly when my eating disorder began, because it wasn’t born in an instant. It took it’s time, manifesting over years of my life.
A majority of my illness was built off the foundation that nothing I ever did was good enough. I was always striving for more. No matter what I achieved was ever good enough for me, I wanted more, I need more to feel good enough in the eyes of others. Senior year of high school was a very trying time for me, as it is for pretty much everybody. There are many things happening all at once, deadlines, important life decisions, it was the end of an era. All of a sudden many different areas of my life seemed to be crumbling all around me, I was in a really vulnerable state, my family life started to fall apart which is where a lot of this began, I was in a toxic relationship which made me question my value, and I had no idea where my life was going. But instead of allowing those to affect me, I chose to devote all my time and energy into my running, because at the time, that’s what mattered most to me and by doing so, I could pretend like maybe all of this other stuff wasn’t happening. Running D1 had been a dream of mine, ever since I learned what it meant. Running had been a huge part of my life since as long as I can remember. I attached my identity to it. It wasn't just something I did, it was who I was. In my head, I had the perfect idea of what a D1 runner was supposed to look like, and I told myself that I had to be exactly that to (get what I wanted) and be successful. I compared myself to others around me, picking out every single aspect or flaw of myself that was holding me back from reaching this goal. This was when my “diet” began. It started off very innocently, I only wanted to drop a pound or two. However it quickly started to spiral. At that time losing weight became the only thing in my life that I could control. I could control what was going in my body, I could control how many miles I ran, and in the beginning I could control my weight. I couldn’t control my family life, my relationships, my college acceptances. It became obsessive, numbers on scales and numbers on the track began to correlate. As I was losing weight I was also getting faster, my plan was working. Yet, the only thing that didn’t change was how I felt about myself. Even after hitting all these times, winning races, getting straight A’s, and losing weight, I still felt like there was more I could improve. I was never satisfied with myself. I still wasn’t good enough. I was hungry, chasing after something I couldn't understand. College rolled around, and I did get a scholarship to run D1 at a school in Florida. You’d think I’d be proud of myself, but I wasn’t. With college came new trials. Loneliness, not fitting in, and heartbreak. My body began underperforming. I could no longer continue the streak I was on. I couldn’t run those fast times, let alone find the energy to walk to class. And having attached my identity to running, my self-esteem started to drop with it. My weight loss plateaued, so my way to fix that was eat even less. Cutting calories turned into cutting meals, running outside of practice, replacing dinner with a 5 mile run. This is when the bingeing factor took over. My body couldn’t sustain this malnutrition if I wanted to keep living. So for reasons I couldn't understand at the time, I loss control of my body and I would start to binge. I’d eat uncontrollably. I ate everything in sight, no matter if I wanted it, if it tasted good or not. I ate things that were expired just because they were in front of me. I ate until it hurt and I wanted to cry, but even then I couldn't stop myself. And what’s worse is the whole time, I would be screaming inside, begging myself to stop, telling myself I was a worthless human being, that I was a piece of trash, for eating this all food but I just couldn’t find the will. It sounds so bizzare to say that I lost the ability to regulate my own body, but I did, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t control it and I hated myself even more because of it. The best way I can describe it is like being possessed, it’s like an out of body experience. I could see my hands moving but it wasn’t me who was moving them, it was something else. I was just a prisoner inside myself. And after I’d “wake up” from this bingeing episode. The shame and guilt would rush in. I spent many nights crying because of the amount of food that I consumed and I just really couldn’t understand why this was happening to me. I then felt the need to correct this episode with even stricter restricting and I’d not eat the next couple of days and make sure to run extra in order to reverse the damage that I had done, but as you can imagine, this just turned into an ongoing cycle of restriction and binging. I was afraid of being alone with myself because I hated the person I had become. My own thoughts terrorized me and I was making rash decisions that not only hurt me, but hurt others I cared about. I had such low self worth, I thought the only part that mattered about me was my body. How I looked determined the kind of person I was. And through the eyes of my disorder, all I saw was the ugliness that was rotting inside me. The only time I felt good about myself was when I was starving because that meant I was doing something right for once. And anytime I overate or ate anything that wouldn't help me lose weight, I would tell myself that I was a worthless piece of trash and hearing those thoughts repeated one hundred times a day, I started to believe it. My eating disorder began to take over my life. I didn’t just feel uncomfortable in my skin, I despised it, it disgusted me. These thoughts traveled with me wherever I went and as my eating disorder grew stronger and I became weaker, I couldn’t distinguish its thoughts from my own. I didn’t know what it was like to sit down for a meal and not be terrified of what was on my plate and what it would do to my body, or what an apple looked like besides its calories, or what it felt like to not look into a mirror and want to scream. I couldn't hang out with my friends without being terrified of anyone taking a picture of me or losing control over dinner. It eventually got a point where I postponed taking showers because I hated the sight of my naked body. I couldn't even expose it to myself. I would shut off all the lights, hiding myself from the bathroom mirrors, close my eyes and rush in and rush out with soap still in my hair because the sight of my naked body made me that sick. I hated myself that much. It drove me mad. It affected every part of my life and I couldn't tell you the exact moment it transformed into something that destructive. It was just like a time bomb, ticking away, until I finally exploded. I knew there was something wrong with me I just didn’t know what. I didn’t think I had an eating disorder because I didn’t follow the exact rules of what I knew them to be. I wasn’t throwing up and I wasn’t starving myself all the time, but this wasn’t how my life had been. I remembered a time when my life was carefree and the sight of my body didn’t make me nauseous, and I wanted that back. It wasn’t until I had mental breakdown in the middle of a workout at practice that I was forced to face the reality of the personal hell I created for myself. I went back to my dorm and called my mom and just started crying. I was just like mom, I can’t do this anymore, it literally feels like there is a devil inside of me and I really need help. My mom being the saint she is dropped everything she was doing and drove 15 hours round trip to come and get me. I admitted myself into a residential place after that….. Eating disorders are a lonely illness. I hid inside my secret for years. I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on in fear that they’d see me as weak or force me to gain weight. So instead of reaching out, I chose to fight this battle all on my own, until it broke me. What I learned in treatment was that your eating disorder acts as a coping mechanism for the pain you hold inside. Senior year was like my perfect storm. All these different factors that were happening to me, that I couldn't control and I chose not to deal with, my eating disorder was trying to take control of that messy situation. What started off innocently, as a diet the only aspect of my life that I felt I had control over, spiraled into something extremely dangerous. My trampled down mind that only wanted to feel accepted was the perfect feeding ground for this illness to flourish. While in treatment I was forced to be vulnerable and go head to head with all the demons that caused my disorder to begin. It was terrifying facing so much pain at once. When before I had just run from it, literally. It’s like standing in a room full of a thousand people screaming at you, listening to them rup every aspect of yourself apart and choosing not to walk out. It’s doing this over and over and over again until their screams become whispers and even then, you know that you no longer have to be a victim when you can be a fighter. When I got out of treatment, I was afraid of running because I knew it had such a detrimental effect on me, and I knew that it had been one of the things to almost put me there. But without it, I felt robbed and I lost myself yet again. It took many months of sad pity party's on the couch, a lot of deep self exploration, but I have come to realize that there is more to me than just being the runner girl. Yes, running is something I do, but it’s not who I am. It’s not the end all and be all of my existence. I have so much more to offer the world than just those transient things. And I wouldn’t have been able to see that without going through this journey. But at the same time, what you need to understand about eating disorders is it’s not something that comes and goes. It builds its roots in you so deep that even when you think you’ve pulled all the ugly weeds out, it sometimes still manages to grow back. It’s something that can last with a person their entire life, never truly dying, you just learn to live with it. Just because someone is eating food doesn’t mean they’re better, Recovery doesn’t mean I’ve won, it just means I’m fighting back. I still hear those voices every day, I just choose to ignore them now and I know that my worth isn’t attached to their hate. I still struggle even to this very day, in this very moment, but there is a difference in my struggle. I’m no longer powerless to it. I cling to the things I can hold my faith in, they are now the places where I build my value from. My faith in the Lord, my faith in the family and friends who I know support me and love me for who I am, and my new found undying faith in myself. Without these things, I really don’t know where I would be, I just know it wouldn’t be good. I like the woman I am after my eating disorder. It’s humbling to see, how much stronger I have become because of it. It’s filled my life with purpose, something I didn’t think I had. Its opened my mind, made me stand firmer in my faith, something I was on the verge of losing. I am able to handle things that I wouldn’t have been able to with more grace and more security in myself. I am a huge believer in everything happens for a reason. People and battles are put into your life to learn and grow from and without going through all of this I wouldn’t have discovered all the adversity, courage, and strength that was in me all along. I was always good enough, the only person that needed it proven to was myself. I can see now that this illness was a blessing in spite of itself. Life becomes a truly beautiful thing when you can recognize your worth. - sometimes we are assigned these mountains to show others that they can be moved. As a competitive runner it is no surprise I have a competitive nature. Its where I build my ambition. Constantly seeking improvement in myself, constantly seeking to create a life that is better than what I have in the moment. Through this can be found my drive and my desire to succeed, to never accept less than I deserve and to never give up on my dreams or myself. However, sometimes it feels as if I’m constantly running on a treadmill, chasing everything but going nowhere.
I have run many races in my lifetime; some with huge victories and some with great losses. But there seems to be one that I have been chasing for my entire life and have never even caught sight of the finish line. As I have taken the time to study myself and delve deeper into what makes me who I am, I have come to realize that although my ambition to improve isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it has been fueled by the wrong reasons. I have always wanted to do better, to be better in the eyes of others. I have spent my life looking over my shoulder, side to side, scrolling my thumb endlessly through the lives of others, comparing them to my own. Judging myself, my body, my life to theirs. Wondering if I measure up in their eyes, based on what I have been shown in conversation, or seen online. Without realizing it, I have let envy rot away my bones. In the world of social media, blogging, likes, and retweets, I have built my drive from something meaningless. My desire to succeed has only been fueled by how I compare to others. What I have come to realize is there is no “win” in comparison. Chasing down contentment through envy is a race that I will never complete. It is merely, grabbing hold of things that will not fill my hunger. Envy is as meaningless as a race to catch the wind, because there will never be a finish line. You will forever be stuck on that treadmill chasing after something you will never even see. Now that I understood this, I wondered how exactly I was supposed to cleanse myself of envy and wash away the comparison of my life to another and then I happened to come across a sermon with the message of the dangers of living a life full comparison. The pastor shared this verse: “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” – Ecclesiastes 4:6 What can be taken from this, is it is better to have one hand open to God, ready to receive and give whatever he wills, than two hands closed, grabbing and holding on anything you can. If you live a life with two fists trying to grab hold of everything, you will spend your life, chasing the wind; chasing down something you can never catch. It will be meaningless, because it is a race you will never be able to win. Have your hands open and feel the wind run through your fingers. Be thankful for what God has put in your hand now and you will feel content. And through your contentment you will find peace and know that you are enough; because through God you are enough. You are good enough, worthy enough, whole enough, without the need to compare and prove your worth to others. Everything that I have and everything that I need, can be found through my faith; my faith in God and in myself. I do not need to feel like I have more because someone else has less or find my happiness by seeing my life onscreen appear better than another’s. In the same way I am no less because someone is thinner than me, prettier, smarter, whatever “er” you can think of. I am enough all on my own. Now although I know comparison only leads to envy and envy leads to a life of inadequacy, it is not something that I can just shut off. My brain has been trained to think this way and it will be a battle to rewire it differently. But every time I shut off my phone and see my life with all its bruises, losses, mistakes, laughs, victories, loves, and am still able to smile, I know that I have won. Growth. Like a flower grows from the dirt, we are growing from our despair, reinventing ourselves into something new and beautiful. Brushing off our mistakes, we are planting new seeds to prosper in the our new and unsoiled garden. But what is growth and how do we know that we have grown? Growth is a measure of maturity and the cultivation to understand and accept everything that life throws at us. It is feeling every single last one of your emotions for what they are, whether they're happy or sad, whether you want them or not. It’s understanding that pain is inevitable and it’s going to come out of you no matter what you do. Growth is the ability to transform your pain from something ugly into something beautiful. The ultimate assessment of growth is shown in how you deal with your adversities and the things that have once torn you down. Recovery from your disorder, isn’t the promise of a life without pain. No matter who you are or where you will go, it will always be there waiting for you. Your feelings are going to get hurt. People are going to knock you off your high horses. Life isn't going to be fair. It’s cruel and ruthless. It's certainly not going to give you special treatment or a free pass just because you’ve had it hard already. Life just doesn't work that way. You’re going to get knocked down more than once, you’re going to have many rock bottoms; but that’s where you find the beauty in the struggle. It’s in the discovery of the silver linings and the prospects of hope despite the darkness that floods you. It’s learning how to deal with your pain and cultivate it into something more. No matter if you like it or not, you’re going to hurt again and one way or another it’s going to have to come out of you. Emotions are fleeting, like energy waves they come and they go. Depending on what you do with each opportunity and what you make out of your struggle, that is where your growth can be found. You can choose to let it out in ugly, self-destructive ways (which is what your ED, your addiction, or your overall demons want). You can tear up everything that you’ve overcome in one sitting. Or you can choose to feel pain beautifully. So let it out in words and in poetry. Let it out in screams if you have to. Just don’t try to run from it or swallow it down. One way or another it is going to catch up to you and you’re going to have to face it and that battle can either be bloody or beautiful. You decide. You have the power within you to turn your pain into a work of art. So grow a garden so wide it escapes the horizon. You're hurt doesn't always have to be ugly, because there is always room for the growth of something beautiful. "Just like the lotus flower, we too have the ability to rise from the mud, bloom out of the darkness and radiate into the world" During this Thanksgiving season, I have really tried to take a step back and think about all the components that have gotten me to this point in my life and have made a lasting influence on my character, by shaping me into the person I am today, writing this blog now. It’s extremely easy to get caught in a negative mindset and focus only on the aspects of your life that aren't going they way you thought they’d be. By encouraging these pessimistic thoughts, circumstances can seem to be a lot worse than they actually are.
Life is like one giant ripple through water. “Whatever we do in our lives, good or bad, will affect somebody, like ripples on the water- they expand, they touch something, before they slowly vanish... Ripples come in many ways, from love and spite, hope and despair and joy and pain; shaping who we are, exchanging what we lose for what we gain... Sometimes the ripples which somebody has created in your life continue on, long after the person has gone, not bounded by the twilight, but cherished, kept safe, hidden in the heart…” Ripples can be decisions that you make, slowly leading you into the place that you are now. One thing leads into another and the slightest change in time or place will make a lasting difference somewhere further down the road. In fact some refer to this as the butterfly effect, The scientific theory that a single occurrence, no matter how small, can change the course of the universe forever. I wouldn't go as far as saying your decisions will affect the universe, but none the less even small actions you take will lead to changes somewhere else in your life. A lot of times, we look back on our lives and wish we could have changed a few things. We pick a moment where we went wrong and wish to have never gone through with it. For me, that time that I wish I had back was the moments, thoughts, and actions that it took me to attain my eating disorder. It's really hard for me to look back on this period as something that’s changed me for the better, because I can only see the things that it has taken away. It has caused the biggest upset in my life. It took everything away from me that I knew at the time; my aspirations, goals, and hopes for the future. I have lost people and relationships. I lost the girl I was before and no matter how hard I try I can't get her back. But while focusing on the negative, it's easy to only see all the things it has taken from me and be blinded from all the things that it has given me. What I have failed to realize was how much my life and I have changed for the better. No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to get the girl I was before my eating disorder back, but why would I want to? If you think about it, if I became the same girl I was before my eating disorder, I would be setting myself up for getting an eating disorder all over again. I’d be setting myself up for failure. That girl was not someone I want to be. She was impressionable, emotionally-weak, naiive, and weak-minded. If my eating disorder did anything it made me strong-willed and resilient. Yes it tore me down, but it also tore down the parts of me that have no place in my life anymore and in turn allowed me to rebuild my values on new soil. I am not the same girl I was before, I am better. All the things and people I have lost during the span of this journey weren't supposed to have a lasting place in my life and all the people and things that have stayed have shown me who and what really matter. It’s shed a light on what's really important. The life that I had expected for myself, wasn’t what I was meant to do. I have found purpose since then. My worth isn't based off of others, it’s off of the respect I hold for myself. So although my eating disorder has taken away many things, it has given given me perception of my strengths and helped me rebuild my character, into someone I am proud of. Every step in my recovery was a ripple in the water, slowly growing and building me into the girl I am now. So during this Thanksgiving season, I am thankful for my eating disorder because without it I would not be the person I am today, wouldn't be where I am today, would not have met the the people I have met. I wouldn’t be me without it. How to Stay Recovered
The journey of recovery isn’t as easy as a trip down the yellow brick road. There’s always the chance that you could fall off the path and end up right back where you started. Relapse is a scary truth but yet not something you should be ashamed of. Recovery is hard work, and just because you may seem fine on the outside, does not actually mean everything is fine and dandy on the inside. Eating Disorder success isn’t defined by how much you’re eating, or weight gained or lost since being recovered. Success is highly individualized, looking differently for each person suffering with an eating disorder, because each person’s case is unique. One similarity in recovery is the individual's change of mentality in regards to their image, worth, and the food they are eating. It’s the lack of guilt after eating a meal, or the extinction of body shaming, or self-hatred. Its having confidence in yourself and your abilities and not being afraid to do things that might flaunt your flaws. Yet success isn’t always as big as that. Success can still be defined as going out to dinner without previously checking the calorie count on the menu, having one bite of cake without hating yourself for it days afterward, walking past a mirror without body checking, or going out despite feeling uncomfortable. Again, there is no physical measure to success, its all about baby steps in the direction towards a positive mind. Unfortunately, it also isn’t something that’s guaranteed to last forever. Just because you are “in recovery” does not mean you are “fully recovered”. It’s a process and in that process you may fall down a bunch of times and have to start all over again. Relapse isnt something to be ashamed of, its something to grow from. A person in recovery should know that relapse is very common, statistics show that 35% of individuals will relapse within the first two years of recovery. Yet that does not have to mean that all the work you have done is for nothing. You are still stronger than you were when you started, it does not mean that you have failed or you should give up. All it is, is another way for you to come out stronger. There are many ways to fight relapse and stay on your journey of recovery. I have listed a few examples of ways that will make it easier for you to stay recovered and hold yourself accountable.
- Write it out- this is clearly one of my coping mechanisms, you can obviously tell from the creation of this blog. By writing down how I’m feeling, I am able to contain all the thoughts swirling around in my head. Sometimes it’s hard for me to understand how I’m feeling or know what’s going on inside my head. By writing things down, it helps me get a clearer idea of what’s causing me to certain emotions. It helps me understand myself and if publishing my thoughts helps someone else at the same time, then hey why not. - Doing things you love with people who make you happy- this is an obvious one. By surrounding yourself with a positive energy you are setting yourself up for success. When you’re with people who make you happy, its harder for negative thoughts to slip their way into your mind. So try to surround yourself with positive people and fill your free time up with doing things that make you most happy.
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