8:20 p.m. - 08/10/02
there's a line in beyond codependency...(oh, that'll bring the readers rollin' in...)
There's a line in Beyond Codependency where a man compares his recoveery to plodding through a dark tunnel where, each year, a trap door opens and a cake falls in. This month will mean 1 year of abstinence from - something - from bulimia, I suppose, from the binge/ purge craziness. And of course I'm glad about this. Of course I'm proud, but reading that line I felt such relief that I acutally allowed myself to think about what my true feelings are...
I am glad. I am proud. I'm certainly more peaceful this way, and I don't want to conceive of the pain that could convince me to consider bulimia again. I would give so much to explain to someone on the visceral level how much better it feels to recover from an eating disorder than it feels to have one. But that isn't the whole story. That version doesn't account for the almost guilty reality I face each day that brings me closer to one year. I do feel some guilt about not being more grateful for my recovery. I have the good fortune to be "coasting" away from my bulimia (and really, in many ways, the anorexia as well) and I'm not feeling celebratory? What's the matter with me? What sort of example do I want to set?
It's silly to be more concerned with the example I'm setting than I am with whether it's an honest one. Because honestly there's a lot of beauty in the work I'm doing but there's a lot of pain, too. Honestly, I have reason to rejoice at how far I've come, but I have reason to be frightened as well. I have reason to feel pain at a year.
Most obviously, there's grief. The first year of recovery is a lot like grief- learning to accept the loss of something I couldn't imagine losing, learning to live in a new and different way. It means living again, but losing an illness is still losing something after all, and just as my recovery and my illness are separate in my mind, the everyday agony of bulimia and the help that finally came "because of it"* are separate as well. The anniversary of the day I quit purging is also the anniversary of the day I was admitted, and certainly there's pain that I'm not there. What's more, it isn't pain I've learned to deal with the past year. The first time I brought it up since coming home was roughly three weeks ago. Only three weeks. I've barely begun to safely feel that pain.
Similarly, there is the grief of having lost Tracy (the nine-month anniversary of which is the same day as the 1 yr anniversary), and -in other forms- having lost the majority of the other girls as well. There's the grief of not being at Rogers right now, and there is also the grief for everyone who made up Rogers. That's a lot of emptiness. This is a feeling I often remember having as each month marked following Tracy's d__h. The idea that every day put more distance between us, like time resided between us, pushing us further away. I know that isn't true, but I am further away from a year ago than I was a month ago. And in some ways that distance is a gift, but in others, it brings pain. There will come a point when I'm happy with how my RED-relationships have transformed, but for now, I haven't had the time to reach such peace inside myself.
Which brings me to my other truth: it hasn't been a year. I didn't recover 1 year ago this month, - I didn't "quit bulimia" or purging or anything else. I can tell you the last time I purged, I can point out the times anorexia has slipped back in, but none of that means much. When did I recover? is as nebulous as how? - it makes no sense. Asking when I recovered is like asking when I lived - the answer is always at the same time it's not yet. I've lived every day but never as I will tomorrow. I am always recovering but I will never be so fully recovered as next week.
And they say that alcoholics/ are always alcoholics/ even when they're dry as my lips/ for years/ even when they're stranded/ on a small desert island/ with no place in 2000 miles to buy beer...** And I wonder if maybe the terminal nature of a recovery is one of those curse/gifts where we don't quite see the gift. If I'm always in reocvery, I always have more of myself to look forward to. And I like that.
I've decided while writing this that August 21st is the anniversary of my admission to Rogers, (Tracy's d___h), and - of the first day I didn't purge. It's not the day I quit purging (I'm still quitting) and it's not the day I started quitting (I was so uncertain, scared, confused) but it was the first day I needed to purge and didn't. Despite the fact that I did that occasionally at other times. It still feels right to say that was the day. It still feels right.
Maybe that is a day I quit. Maybe I quit every day.
Sometimes living has too many beginnings to name.
chord
*I hold to the fact that I was given the help I was because I deserved that sort of caring; my illness did not bring me help so much as my goodness did (not that I had any clue of my goodness at the time...)
**Ani lyric "Fuel"
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