What is your favorite part of life?
Falling in love. Even beyond just falling in love with a human being. Falling in love with anything in your life. Falling in love with your life. Falling in love with friends and new experiences. The moment when you hear a new song on the radio and you immediately fall in love with it, and then constantly play it on repeat for the next month. Falling in love with every season, the fall, the leaves, the trees, the snow, the flowers. Each season has something different to offer. Instead of being sad that one season is over, get excited for what this new one will bring with it. There are so many new adventures ahead of you that only this season has to offer. Take advantage of it. Love it. Enjoy the moment you’re in. Falling in love with a book is one of my favorite things. When you become so consumed in this other world, and these other people’s lives. You are so invested in it that you feel you are a part of it. It is truly beautiful. Falling in love with an animal, a pet or a bird you see every morning on your porch. How they in some shape or form depend on you. The thought that without you they wouldn’t be able to go on. The feeling of being needed and wanted is so comforting and so uplifting. It fills you with a purpose. Falling in love with new places, habits, and colors. Everything is so new and so beautiful. Falling in love, getting your heart broken, and then learning to love again. It's beautiful. It's pure. Falling in love with you and your life. Being able to look in mirror and be happy with the person who is staring back at you. Being able to understand that there is far more to yourself than just the reflection in that mirror. That there is love, compassion, generosity, adventure, purpose, attitude, wit, independence, and humanity beyond what the mirror can reveal. When you can do that, you can fall in love with the person who shares all those qualities. Falling in love is such a fulfilling emotion. It makes you whole and complete. I love being in love. It’s just lovely.
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MS or multiple sclerosis kills thousands of people every year. It attacks the body’s immune system which causes difficulty in mobility of the body. There is no known cure. On September 17, 2016 my mom and I rode 50 miles in honor of Judy Storck who fought her battle bravely for 40 years. Together my mom and I raised over $1000 towards research for a cure. Here is Judy’s story: Judy Stork fought her battle bravely for 40 years. She was diagnosed at the age of 28, just after giving birth to her last of 3 daughters. She experienced many symptoms that are common to victims of MS, such as fatigue, tingling, numbness, and spasticity. She was later diagnosed with secondary progressive MS which has a slow decline. Being diagnosed with this illness is very scary. Although Judy and her family were scared of the future ahead of them, they were not going to let this stop them from living their lives to the fullest. Woody Stork, her husband was her main caretaker. He stood by her every step of the way, being her own personal “cheerleader”. He always tried to make her feel that she was special and shower her with love and support. When symptoms started to escalate for Judy, Woody was there to brush her teeth, help her eat, make her feel as comfortable as possible. MS is different for everyone. The symptoms vary dramatically from patient to patient. Judy’s particular type of MS, secondary progressive, meant that over a long period of time, her health would slowly decline. In the beginning, she was able to carry on with her normal life. In her free time, Judy loved to spend her day outdoors. She loved flowers, birds, and art. During the fall she would ride an electric scooter around their neighborhood or would have Woody drive her through the Watchung Reservation to admire the foliage. At the point where Judy was in a wheel chair, Woody would have her sit outside on the porch, where she called to the birds by names. He even installed a wheel chair accessible lift to help assist her in and out of their pool, so she could go for a swim in the summers. Woody and his three girls did their best to make Judy feel as comfortable as possible while at home. They made a point to involve her in as many family occasions as possible but of course there were just some things Judy could not do. When Judy was unable to be there for her children, Woody stepped in to assist in her role. He was the one who took his three girls prom dress shopping. “My girls grew up tough, they were there to support each other when things got hard,” explained Woody. Although the girls never knew their mother without MS, they still loved her immensely and she them. As time progressed so did Judy’s MS. The last few years of her life were the toughest for her. This was the time when she lost most of her mobility and control over her bodily functions. She had to be put on an oxygen mobilizer to assist her breathing and her immune system became highly susceptible to illnesses like pneumonia and UTIs. “Through the whole thing, she never was the type of person to complain. She fought a lot longer than everyone expected, she never gave up,” said Woody. The last month of her life was the hardest. At this point her body began to shut down. She was no longer receptive, and would her body refused food or water. Judy died, September 1, 2015. She fought her battle for 40 years. She was 68 when she died. I’ve thought about writing this article for a while now. I was very unsure if I wanted to share this experience with others, partly because I didn’t think people would understand and partly because I just didn’t like thinking about it that much. When I hear the word “rehab” the first words that come to my mind associating with it are “failure, loser, and weak” (side note: I really don’t want to offend anyone at any point in this article, these are just 100% my true feelings and obviously now I’ve learned otherwise). I mean you can’t really blame me for thinking these things. The way social media portrays teens or individual in rehab isn’t pretty or flattering in anyway. People that are in rehab are at the lowest of the low points in their lives and I always thought that I would never be a part of that group. I just didn’t. Obviously that all changed.
It took me two years to wake up from my daydream. Two years to come to a full realization that I was in some serious shit. Up until that moment I was in complete denial about my mental state. No way did I have an eating disorder. I didn’t throw up my food and I was certainly not anorexic, because I perceived myself on the heavier side of “running girls”, I wasn’t incredibly skinny. I just really liked food but I also really wanted to be skinny; to the point where that’s all I ever thought about, being skinny, eating, and losing weight. Even when I was having a conversation with someone or hanging out with my friends my body was there but my mind wasn’t. I’d be thinking about the last meal I ate, how many calories it had in it, how many calories I had to burn off to subtract that difference, and then what I was going to eat next; always making sure that what I was eating was healthy and would help me lose weight. These thoughts consumed me 24 hours a day. For a long period of time I would not let myself consume more than 800-900 calories per day while also running 7+ miles each day. I would hold this pattern throughout the school week, distracting myself with homework, but on the weekends when I had more time on my hands I’d completely fall apart. My mind would lose control of my body and I’d just eat everything that was in sight. No matter if it tasted good, if I wanted it or not. I was so hungry by this point that I would eat until it hurt. Until the point where I’d want to cry. During these binging episodes it was like I was no longer me anymore. Similar to being drunk, or high, anytime in which all your intuitions just drop. I literally would become a monster. Some people witnessed the beginnings of these episodes, but the majority of the time I would do it in private. I would wait until I was alone and then have a free for all. Then I’d feel so utterly ashamed of myself that I’d not allow myself to have any food the next day or severely restrict and start the whole process over again. I’d even run outside of practice, convincing myself it was for the athlete in me rather than the “ED” eating me. So cut back to March of 2016 when I finally came to terms with my demons. I realized what I was doing wasn’t right and I didn’t want to be living in this personal hell I created for myself. I wanted to actually enjoy being with my friends without thinking about my weight, I wanted to be able to go through a single meal without thinking about how many damn calories I was consuming, and I wanted to see running as something other than weightless. I lost who I was through my eating disorder. It literally ate away the person I once was. I wanted her back. So in my lowest of lows I admitted myself to rehab. I requested full 24 hour stay because I wanted to get better as soon as possible and I just didn’t trust myself with less hourly care. I didn’t want to live with the devil inside of me anymore. But boy oh boy did I not know what I was in for. The first day was honestly one of the worst days of my life. I’m sitting in the lobby waiting to be shown to my room and am just stunned to see the amount of sick girls that are there- like really sick, like you can see their bones and everything sick- and immediately I was like “oh god I’m in the wrong place, I’m not sick enough to be here”. Within 5 minutes of sitting there I see one girl in a fetal position lying on the ground with her head tucked between her knees, but the most shocking part is everyone just walks on passed her, like this is nothing new and she obviously doesn’t need any help. A minute later a girl sits next to me wrapped in a blanket, looking not older than 15 (I later find out she’s 24) asks me about myself. I think, “finally someone is here to make me feel better”, but then she goes on talking about how she’s been in 5 different hospitals, telling me in-def. about her horrible experiences at each one and how horrible the staff treated her there, but she assured me this place was top of the line. Then before I can even process what she just said, another girl comes and sits across from us and just starts sobbing hysterically. At that moment, not even 15 minutes into my stay, I was ready to leave. Lol girl, you still have 30 more days of this to go. The next couple hours were filled with nonstop tears and discomfort. I had to watch as they went through all my bags taking away anything sharp that I could use to harm myself or others. I was only allowed to get my shaver, tweezers, etc twice a week at 6am-7:15am. They took away my laptop, my cellphone, anything I could use to communicate with the outside world. They even freaking took away my pimple medication because it contained alcohol as an ingredient and people could use that to do I don’t know what, get drunk or something I don’t know have a blast. Meal times were just as bad. I was given a tray with my food wrapped up. I had to raise my hand for a counselor to come watch me unwrap my food, hand her my garbage before I could eat. They then watched us like hawks throughout the whole meal making sure we weren’t hiding food in our pockets or throwing it on the ground or I don’t even know what. They repeated the same process when we were leaving; picking up our plates, shaking our cups, unraveling our napkins to make sure we finished 100% of our meal and weren’t hiding it anywhere. Multiple times, I was instructed to lick my knife clean of the smudge of peanut butter or eat the one remaining piece of lettuce on my plate because that was seen as an incompletion. A freaking piece of lettuce people. If we didn’t finish, you were forced to drink an ENSURE supplement, and if you refused even that you would eventually be put on a feeding tube. The tube was inserted through your naval cavity and stretched to your stomach. It was attached to a long pole that you had to carry around with you everywhere, similar to what you see with people in the hospital who have an IV. I also was stripped of my privileges to exercise, at all, period, none whatsoever. They watched how much I walked each day and if I went over the normal amount it was deemed as “over-exercising” and I could get even more privileges taken away from me. A basic day at rehab was similar to taking classes at school. I attended multiple seminars discussing our emotional and physical discomforts. They were designed to help us overcome the demons living inside of us. I was assigned a therapist, psychologist, and nutritionist, who were all a part of my team and were focused to getting me better. I saw each of them roughly 1-2 per week depending on need. As with everything else they closely monitored our weights and vitals. Every morning they would make us get up at 4AM to get weighed, get our vitals checked, and occasionally receive a blood test. If our pulse or blood pressure was deemed too low they would force us to drink a full Gatorade, wait 10 minutes and then repeat the process. This happened to me every morning, because being an athlete my pulse has always been low, but what I was unaware of until now is that is also a side effect of eating disorders. So every morning I would get up at 4, down a miracle 16oz Gatorade as they referred it, and then get back to sleep roughly around 4:45 if I was lucky, only to be waken again at 8am for breakfast and repeat the whole cycle over again. We were only granted phone privileges at certain hours of the day, in which we had to use a phone card to make any outgoing calls. We had to be in our rooms by 11pm. People that were diagnosed with bulimia weren’t even allowed bathroom privileges. The bathroom in their room was locked and the only way they could access it was if a counselor kept their foot in the door while they were doing their business. Rehab was draining. I was so emotionally tired that even my body began to feel physical effects. They wanted us to find the root of the disorder which was inside of us. We were constantly asked to dig into the deepest and darkest parts of ourselves revealing our worst demons. Bringing to life the things that brought us the most pain. Exactly the opposite of what any of us wanted to think about let alone share with others. They wanted us to come face to face with our monsters and fight them every single damn hour of every single damn day. Can you understand why this was exhausting? On top of it all, it would bring many of us to tears multiple times a day because the pain was too strong and we didn’t feel like we could put up a fight anymore. It broke so many of us. I watched my friends as they suffered within themselves, feeling so incredibly hopeless because I could not help them win this fight. This was something they had to overcome on their own. The things I witnessed in there are things that will stick with me my entire life. I won’t even mention half the things that I experienced just out of common courtesy of people’s privacy. They’re just not my stories to share. All I can share with you is what I went through in there. Every single day I was forced to face my worst demons. I struggled through every meal, every session, every hour. It was hell. I didn’t tell anybody where I was. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t think anyone would understand. I didn’t want people to think of me this way, as in “weak” or a “failure”. People always told me I was strong. Even there, the girls all told me how strong I was because they never saw me cry that was because I saved all my tears for moments when I knew I was alone. I did not feel strong. I felt so incredibly weak, I didn’t feel that I could ever overcome this. Even weeks after I was released, I still felt the same feelings of despair and hopelessness. And if I’m going to be totally honest with you, I still experience some of those same feelings even today, months after my release. It will always be an uphill battle. It’s never going to be easy, but I sure as hell am not giving up anytime soon. |
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