Finding My Voice

"With addiction, you figure out how to lock the tiger in its cage and keep it there. With an eating disorder, you have to figure out how to take the tiger out and walk it three times a day"  – Tennie McCarty

Recovering from Anorexia Nervosa is a piece of cake Hell. 

I planned on starting this blog after I recovered.  You know, keep things tidy and pretty to protect my image in case someone I know <gasp!> actually reads it.  I planned to wax philosophic about “making it" or to share the Top Ten Secrets to an Easy and Full Recovery from your Eating Disorder...

F**k that.

The fact is, Anorexia isn’t tidy or pretty.   She ("Olivia"...more on that later) wants its prey to suffer endlessly on the inside while looking tidy and pretty on the outside, so nothing (or no one) blocks her charge to sabotage all that brings us joy in our lives.  To protect with iron-cladness, all of the pain and negativity and self-hatred/doubt that feeds her.  She wants her victims to keep it all inside of a shiny, hard-candy shell whose appearance promises a familiar, satisfying and sweet inside that in reality, is abandoned of its former lively, joyful self and is now as hollow as a cheap chocolate confectionery that disappoints everyone who get close enough to experience it.

I wish to share this journey of recovery with you~ failures, relapses, successes and all.  It likely won’t be tidy or pretty, timely or linear.  Postings will be erratic and unpredictable at best, like the recovery I am so tenaciously seeking.  It won’t be one of those blogs that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside after you read it.  You ( hi mom!) might even read things that make you cringe or cause you to want to order me a life-time supply of those pretty (white) jackets that zip (up the back and force me into a perpetual self-hug). It’s a story I feel compelled to invite you to participate in, if you have the stomach for it, because candor is “Olivia’s” kryptonite. 

It’s the story of my fight against something I never asked for or dreamed would become public.  It might make you feel something.  (It might make you hit the back button faster than I can pass out weak from a lack of food and drunk at an important family event). It is the journey I am on, as I find my way back to the “me” I know, the “me” I deserve to be and the “me” my friends and family might once again trust and respect.

Like in my life so far, my hopes for this blog are that:

Some of you might drop in and stay for awhile, leaving me with a piece of you before you go.

Some of you can take something from me that resonates with your own life.
 
And some of you might stay forever, no matter where my journey leads.