Free Bird

I have been writing since I was old enough to hold a pencil. I write anything and everything. I write poetry if I am in that kind of mood. I write stories when I am feeling creative. I write essays because I have to. I write in my journal daily or I would probably go crazy. I have always been able to express myself best through writing. I have been wanting to write about losing my Dad since he died in February, but I cannot bring myself to type it, to put it on paper. Maybe so it won’t be real, maybe because it is. As much as I like to write, I think once and awhile it’s okay to let someone else say what you’re trying to say for you. So, this is for you Dad.

If I leave here tomorrow

Would you still remember me?

For I must be traveling on, now

'Cause there's too many places

I've got to see

But, if I stayed here with you, girl

Things just couldn't be the same

'Cause I'm as free as a bird now

And this bird, you cannot change

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

And the bird you cannot change

And this bird you cannot change

Lord knows, I can’t change

Bye, bye, baby it's been a sweet love

Yeah, yeah

Though this feeling I can't change

But please don't take it so badly

'Cause the Lord knows

I'm to blame

But, if I stayed here with you girl

Things just couldn't be the same

'Cause I'm as free as a bird now

And this bird, you cannot change

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

And this bird you cannot change

And this bird you cannot change

Lord knows, I can't change

Lord help me, I can't change

Lord I can't change

Won't you fly high, free bird, yeah?

Demons Within Us

I sat in supervision at my intern site yesterday, working with my supervisor on different networking ideas to get myself, or my career I should say, moving forward. I was discussing ideas on eating disorder workshops, and how to get myself going on that, when my supervisor asked me why I chose that as a specialty, being that is a relatively narrow field. I made a quick reference to having gone through one myself for eight years, and geared the conversation back to logistics. My supervisor picked up on this and changed topics with me, however, at the conclusion of supervision hour she asked me, “if you don’t mind my asking, we have a couple of clients here experiencing an eating disorder right now, what happens in someone’s life that causes this?”

Everything. Nothing. I have no idea and I have every idea. Who signs themselves up willingly for something that controls their every moment? Who chooses to succumb to something that controls them? Eats at them from the inside out? Dictates their every waking moment, every thought, every work day and vacation, every Christmas and coffee date, every movie or book they read, every run and every nightmare? I have been asked more times than not, “why didn’t you just stop?”

Because I enjoyed it. Because I like hating myself and destroying my body to try to make that feel better. Because I love the feeling of listening to voices scream at me inside my head telling me the grades, the degrees, the hard work means nothing because I’m fat and disgusting and worthless. I like lying to my family and scaring them. I get a rush off of staying home because I feel too fat to go to the movies with my friends. Who wouldn’t want to stare at food on a dinner date with anxiety because if you eat it you won’t have time to go to the gym afterwards and run it off? Is it not fun for people to cry in Burger King because they’re out of salads and you have to eat a cheeseburger in front of people so they don’t find out?

I don’t know why I did it; it started as insecurity, and at some point consumed my life. I don’t know where it started and I am not even sure when it ended. I know there are people closest to me who blame themselves, and I know deep inside they are wondering how someone with half a brain and potential like I have would waste it on worrying about weight. I know people who don’t know me, or anyone who has gone through something like this even try to understand. That’s okay, at one point I would have tried to justify it, but at this point I don’t really care. Why do drug addicts become addicted to drugs? Why do alcoholics drink? Why do people spend money they don’t have and get themselves in debt to keep up with the Joneses? We all make decisions against our better judgment, and my decision just turned into something that I couldn’t control.

To wake up every morning with a routine that is self-destructive, negative, and binding, it makes waking up difficult sometimes. To be in a relationship with someone who sees this happening to you but turns a blind eye because it’s inconvenient for them, it’s isolating. To hate yourself so much you will allow yourself, your own person, to hurt yourself, not protect yourself from being a victim, but being the perpetrator in your own demise, it’s shameful. To be caught up in thoughts so horrible and controlling, and loud, it’s deafening. This isn’t a mental illness you can take medication for and work through how to cope. This is a mental illness that few people have any empathy for, there are fewer therapists trained in this field than any other, and it is something that people who love you cannot understand. The love they do have for you causes the protective side of them to come out, but this is often communicated as anger, or a “why do you do this, just stop doing this”, and you get to the point where you don’t want anyone around you. You don’t want people seeing you like this, you don’t have the time or patience to explain to people what is happening to you, and quite frankly, you know they are incapable of understanding if you tried.

When someone recovers from something like this, we pat them on the back and say good job. Those of us who have been through it are sensitive enough to the reactions of people to know that most are thinking, “It isn’t hard to decide to eat again”. Oh, but it is. These thoughts don’t just go away because you wake up and decide you don’t think you’re fat anymore. Someone saying “you’re too skinny” isn’t a conviction that can catapult us into recovery; it is a compliment that makes it that much harder to change. Of course we want to stop, eventually. A drug addict eventually wants to get sober right? The problem is the fear that overwhelms us if we do. How will we look if we begin eating again? How do you not work out hours a day? What thoughts will replace the ones were trying to remove? A person suffering from Dissociative Disorder (multiple personality Disorder) has a hard time overcoming the illness because they don’t necessarily want to get rid of the different people living within their mind. They have become attached to them, learned to cope with life through them. It is the same for eating disorders. This is how we live. Whether we like it or not, this.is.how.we.live.

I overcame my eating disorder three years ago. The thoughts, they don’t go away. I have to work every single day at keeping them at bay. I struggle everyday with wanting to revert back to something that is more familiar to me than not.

Who knows how we get to this place. How do I answer something like that in five minutes? It would take longer than people are interested in listening to explain how we get to this place. What can you do to help? Removing the confusion that leads you to expect us to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing is a good place to start. Just love us.

It’s all we really need, is someone to love us, because we’re not doing the best job at loving ourselves.

Staying Stuck

I was driving to work today, reflecting on reading I had done in my Bible before leaving for work, and Psalm 106:25 (“They murmured in their tents, and did not obey the voice of the Lord. “) kept coming to my mind. It made me think of different people in my life that spend a lot of time complaining, making excuses and justifications for why they stay stuck in the situations they are complaining about, but do not take the advice they are given, do not try the suggestions people give them, and most importantly, do not go to the Bible they follow and find the answers in the best possible place to find them.

                As Christians, at one point or another we all turn away from the answer God gives us, because it’s harder, or it’s going to cost us a luxury we don’t want to go without, but eventually, we all realize that doing it our way only cost us greater in the end, and we turn back to God for guidance…but them some of us don’t. I am nowhere near innocent when it comes to this, I won’t get anywhere if I don’t take the hard way, but one  thing I can say honestly, is I don’t complain while I muddle through, and I have eaten crow more times than I count.  It isn’t watching people I love struggle through hard times that frustrates me, it’s listening to days, months, years even, of the same problems being complained about, and not a single step has been taken in a different direction.

Problems don’t fix themselves. Weight doesn’t lose itself,  homework doesn’t turn itself in, car payments won’t pay themselves, these problems are in our lives every day, they won’t go away without being replaced by new ones, but the solutions are as available as the problems. Sitting and complaining about the same thing, all the time, isn’t going to get things done any faster.

Remember in school when you would have to write an opinion paper, and part of the assignment was to include arguments you thought someone would have against your opinion, and then counteract those arguments with statistics, etc.? I feel like I am listening to people write opinion papers about their lives out loud. “Problem, problem, problem….solution, excuse for why solution won’t work….. problem, problem….why solution worked for everyone else but wouldn’t work for me……problem”.  There are times we are in the depths of something destroying us and we truly do not know how we are going to overcome it, and there are times we know exactly what we need to do, but we won’t do it.

Go to God for advice. You can’t lie to him, you can’t justify, and manipulate, and re-word things. You can’t make excuses with Him, all you can do is admit you’re lost and ask to be found. The key to this, however, is you have to actually act on it. At some point, going to God over and over again for the same problem, doing nothing proactive to change things, isn’t crying out, it’s complaining.

This is coming off as harsh probably, but it’s the opposite. To sit back day after day and watch someone(s) you love self- destruct, to watch them live a lifestyle that is self-defeating and robbing them of living life, not just making it through, is hard. It is frustrating and scary and saddening but at some point, something in you shifts and you go from being compassionate and caring, to protective and angry. It is natural to lose patience with someone you love when you care more about their getting better than they do. It is frustrating when you listen to the same excuses time after time, wondering when it is going to occur to this person, “I’ve said this to her before”…. It is frustrating to exhaust every option you can think of: kindness, tough love, yelling, crying, laughing, walking with, walking away, walking toward…. And still watch this person tread water. I am not at all, in any sense of the word, saying it is easy. Life is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be that hard either. We have a tendency to make it harder on ourselves, and then complain about it, but at some point, we begin the walk back up hill. It’s not about comparing how I got back up the hill to how you’ll get back up; it’s a matter of taking that first step. Period.

This is not coming from a place of having had it easy my whole life and not understanding problems. I have dealt with my fair share, and for every problem I was handed I created two of my own, but I have overcome obstacles. I have gotten on my knees before God more times than I can count and asked for help. I have been humbled over and over again, and as soon as I get comfortable enough to put my feet up, something knocks me on my butt again. I don’t stay stuck. I may not be a lot of things but I am resilient. That is why this feels that much more frustrating- because I know exactly what you’re up against. I know exactly how lonely it feels stuck in the pit, and how overwhelming it feels to crawl out. It is irritating to no end, to have someone come to you because they know you’ll understand, but when you don’t enable them like another yes-man, all of a sudden you don’t know “what it’s like to go through this.” Correction, I don’t know what it’s like to go through this without going to God for guidance. Only difference.

I guess what I am getting at, is at some point we have to stop grumbling in tents, or coffee shops, treadmills, work spaces, and listen to the voice of the Lord in our lives. We have to stop listening to our friends tell us to leave our husbands because things aren’t what they used to be, and go before God to help piece back the puzzle. We have to stop disrespecting our bodies, then grumbling in the tents about bad we feel, listen to God’s voice telling you to honor your temple.

It’s easier said than done, I get that. I more than get that. I just think that ignoring the solutions so that we can continue grumbling about the problem’s end up being much harder.

All You've Got

“Don’t compromise yourself- in the end you’re all you’ve got “– Janis Joplin

                I get where Janis was going with this, and considering she made a career out of doing exactly what she wanted when she wanted, it isn’t a philosophy I’d argue with her. What’s sad, is people really, at the end of every day, feel this way. When they lay their head down at night, despite how many people might inhabit the very same home they are sleeping in, they feel alone, and entirely responsible for themselves, making themselves happy, carrying themselves through the hard times, working through problems and life’s struggles alone.

                I get that this is a society that rewards self promotion, a society that is all about me and how I can achieve things on my own, I don’t need anyone’s help. It is considered a weakness to ask for help, and whether it costs you a marriage, friendship, or family time, climbing that ladder and having stuff to show for it outweighs saying, “sorry I can’t stay to work that overtime tonight, my kid has a soccer game”.

                I get it. I am working on a second masters, I want a career as well. I would be lying if I said I didn’t sacrifice to get through school. Often times I had the attitude that if people really loved me they would support me; but when people walked away from me because I wasn’t available for coffee, it hurt like hell.

                I expressed that hurt. I was okay with saying I was hurt by the fact I had lost friends because I was working towards a dream I’ve had since I was kid, but I know there are people who would think this was weak, that this was immature or made me look needy or dependent. No, this makes me who I was created to be. I believe in God, but whether you choose to believe God’s word is the absolute truth, or you prefer to follow what science tells you, it has been proven we are created as human beings with a need for connection. We are created to connect, and need that connection from others. Studies have been done to show married people (happily married) live longer; people with a large social circle get sick less often, do better at work, suffer from depression less. There is something to be said for the statistics that show when someone loses the partner they have been married to for 50 or more years, they go soon after.  Because we need to fulfill that need inside of us to be connected to other humans.

                I don’t want to be all I’ve got in the end. I want to know I have my God to go to for anything at anytime, to be loved unconditionally by him, and know that no matter how I feel at the time I am never alone. I want to know that I can call my mom for any reason at all and she will do whatever she can, whether I need advice, money, or a kidney, to help me. I want to know I can gather my girls up on a Friday night to grab a bite to eat and laugh the week away, so I can let go of enough stress to face the week ahead. I want to know I can love someone, so entirely it scares me, and have them love me back.

                I don’t want to be all I’ve got in the end. I don’t want to go through life having no one there to correct me when I’m wrong, to tell me when I am being a complete jerk. I want to know I have people in my life who can kindly tell me I’m in the wrong and need to correct myself. I want to know I have people in my life to be honest with me and tell me when I am setting myself up for failure, when I am repeating a mistake I should have learned from the first time. I want people in my life who love me enough to smooth my rough edges, even if it’s going to hurt me to hear it. We’ve become a society that turns our back to these types of people in our lives, and then we complain people are fake. 

                I don’t want to be the girl who says things like, “I don’t like girls, and they’re drama”…. I love my girls. I love that I have women in my life who understand me, who have my back and believe in me, who are content to watch me shine and happy when I am there to watch them get their turn. I treasure my friendships with those women with all of my heart.

                I don’t want to be the girl who is so jaded from past relationships that I don’t let myself love again. I don’t want to go the rest of my life involving myself in relationships that only scratch the surface because I’m too scared to have my heart broken again.  It makes me sad that having your heartbroken, being cheated on or lied to, is treated as such a death sentence. Friends will encourage their friends to divorce their husbands before they will tell them to pray and work through it, not to give up on the man they loved enough to marry in the first place. We don’t want to go to our friends anymore and say, “I’m crazy about this guy”, because we don’t appear to have the upper hand that way. I’m okay with being head over heels for someone, I’m okay with admitting that when I love it’s with all I have and it has gotten me in trouble in the past. I will gladly admit that I trust people until they show me otherwise and unfortunately this has caused me some disappointment in the past. I give in to my need to be with another human being, and when I find someone that I connect with, someone whose name gives me butterflies when it pops up on my cell phone screen,  I run with it; and when they let me down, I heal, and I move on.

                I worked hard to earn my degrees, and I am right at that exciting point in my life where the world is ahead of me and I am equipped with what I need to grab hold of my dreams and make them a reality, but I love my family, and I won’t follow any dream that takes me too far away from them. People scoff at that, they think I’m nuts for looking for jobs that keep me in the same state as my parents. I don’t care. My parent’s themselves tell me all the time that this is ridiculous, to go where I want to go. I won’t do it, so they can tell me to, and like many other things they’ve told me to do in my life, I won’t listen. I need to know I can drive to my mom’s house and sit at the dining room table while she cooks a meal when I need that home cooked mom food. I need to know that I can go home and walk into my old room and feel who I am again. I need to see my old dog, and goof around on their computer, and harass my sister, because it reminds me that no matter how far away I feel from myself sometimes I have a home, and I am needed there. No career is worth losing that to me, and I am okay with admitting that. I trust that God’s plan for my life involved me being close to my family, and that’s why I was given a family to love so much.

                Be yourself, yes, but in the end let the people in your life share in who you are, because when that’s all you got, you don’t need anything else.

What Now?

My favorite game to play with people has always been “questions”. Basically it consists of me asking a million and one questions until my nosey apatite is satisfied. When I had sleepovers with my childhood friends, I would make everyone, (I was nosey and bossy) write down questions and put them in a hat. The game then obviously consisted of you answering the question you drew out of the hat. As I have gotten older that game has progressed into what can be a relentless beating until I am happy with the answer. It is not, however, a one-sided game. I am more than happy to answer the questions I am asked. Being an open book has always been one of my best and worst qualities. I will answer pretty much anything asked of me, honestly, except one very simple question, “what is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you?” I will usually say, “I fell cheering during a game once,” or, “I spilled a cup of hot coffee all over an elderly lady waitressing one day”, and while those instances weren’t fun, I don’t get embarrassed over things like that at all.

                If I were to answer that question honestly, which I guess I am doing now, the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me, and seems to continue to happen to me, is my standards. The seemingly ever- descending set of standards I have for myself, and the people I allow into my life. I have had my share of crappy friends (who hasn’t), but why it takes me so long, and so many heartaches, and disappointments,  to get to the point where I have had enough; enough embarrassment and humiliation to remember I matter, and I need to be done, boggles me.

                I think about this a lot; I pray about it a lot. My question (of course there ’s another question) to God is always the same, how did this happen? When did this happen?  I look back and can’t find Freudian insight into where I was neglected or abandoned, or where my needs weren't meet and I became dependent on someone else meeting them. I was raised with the best example of a woman I could have asked for. Dependency and vulnerability outside of what is endearing in a person wasn’t modeled for me. My mother was incredibly strong, and able to admit weaknesses, but she didn’t tolerate disrespect from anyone at the risk of not having someone in her life. There was a time that neither did I. There was a time when I considered myself the strongest person I knew, and although I was forgiving beyond what was necessary at times, I was okay with that. I owned it as a part of who I was, and it made me feel good to know I was following the path Jesus laid before me….

                What scares me, what saddens me, is that that ability and genuine desire to forgive, has somehow shifted into my accepting what treatment I’m handed, until I reach a breaking point of feeling completely disrespected, demeaned, embarrassed, brushed aside, or the worst out of all of them, afraid to even look at myself in the mirror because I am so disgusted with that I am allowing to take place in my life. I find myself saying ridiculous things to justify another person’s actions. In relationships, “well, he doesn’t hit me or call me names, I wouldn’t tolerate that.” In my friendships, “well, I know my dad just died but she has a lot on her plate so it’s okay she was nowhere to be found.” Why? What purpose does it serve to have people in my life that are counterproductive and don’t seem to appreciate the position anyways? At some point we all have to grow up and stop choosing who we meet for coffee based on wanting to have a date for prom and friends to sit at lunch with. I am not at an age where friendship is entirely based on proximity, and whoever sits next to me in fourth period English is my best friend that year. Boyfriends should not be chosen based purely on the height requirement. I am blessed, beyond blessed, to finally have found a support system of friends that set the standard higher than I even imagined it could be, but I am not so lucky in the relationship world.

                I don’t want to berate the relationships I have been involved in ,or demean their character anonymously because some of them were incredible people and at one point or another in our journey together showed me what it means to be in a healthy, loving relationship; but most of them have been, quite frankly, a complete waste of time. I hate when I hear people say, “Well, they taught me what I don’t want in a relationship”. Really? Did I need to be cheated on to learn I don’t want that? I know the divorce had a larger impact on me than I admitted, or maybe I'm just now realizing for myself. However dysfunctional a marriage between two young people can be, at the end of the day, I really, really wanted us to make it. He was a horrible partner. He drank and lied and cheated and spent money he didn’t have.  He allowed me to work three jobs, go to school, take care of the house, and the dog he wanted that I didn’t, all while driving an hour and a half from a military base to do it. I realize no one deserves to be treated like that, but we made a promise before God to love and honor each other forever, and one of us took that seriously.

                The divorce, well, I guess more so the marriage completely broke me down. The eating disorder was the easy part of those years for me, and it is so difficult for me to look back at the treatment I accepted. I tell myself all the things I would tell my client, people treat you the way you let them, you give people the power to hurt you, etc. etc. It is different when you are the one involved in the whole sloppy mess. That is something I need to remember as a therapist, and it is something I try to remember as a person. I guess at some point in the recovery from the devastation that was that divorce, I let my standards for what is acceptable and what isn’t take a complete nosedive. I will justify it all by saying, I’m busy, I’m pursuing a career, I don’t have time to offer more of a commitment than I already am, but that’s crap, you find the time when you find the person worth finding the time for. Maybe I haven’t found that person, or maybe I have and he hasn’t found me. All I know is, as hard as it might be, as difficult and lonely as it can sometimes feel, being with someone who doesn’t put you in the same position in their lives that you put them in yours is WAY lonelier than having no one at all.

                Maybe it’s time I revert back to myself for that relationship, maybe I need to date myself and remember what it is I am worth before I cheat on myself with someone less deserving again. Maybe those amazing friends that make every single day better deserve the effort I put into wasted space put into them. Maybe I should call my mother right now and thank her for not only showing me what it is like to fall, but that it is entirely possible to get back up, stronger and more ready than before. Maybe I should pray, and ask a different set of questions. Questions like, “how do I move forward from here?” A little less, “Why?” “How?” “When?” and a lot more, “What now?”

The Finish Line

I was not the pretty girl in class. I was not always the smartest. I was not the fastest, the nicest, or the best dressed. I had tons of friends, and tried to be nice to everyone, but my own insecurities and issues built a wall around me that was often perceived as snobbiness. I didn’t go to parties and I wasn’t allowed to date. I had cheerleading, and I was a 4.0 student. As graduation got closer, most of my friends were planning summers full of concerts and barbeques to attend before they moved away to college. I got a job and prepared to start the local community college- I had no plans beyond getting money in the bank and getting myself through my bachelors program. I was focused and excited, but I was not prepared to accept life outside of academic success. I wasn’t the popular girl having a difficult time adjusting to being a small fish in a big pond suddenly; I was an insecure girl who had validated myself through grades and winning cheer competitions, only to find myself sitting in a classroom full of smart kids with the same 4.0 I had.

I got a job waitressing. My tip money went to a new shirt to wear to the club and gas money to drive all over Southern California with my friends. I had freedom and took it for granted…deciding my parents had no clue what they were talking about up to this point in my life, and I had been a victim of communist brain washing. Saving money? Pssh. That’s for the birds. Health? Sleep? Not for this know-it-all. Basically, like most kids my age, it took me one year out of high school to go from a 4.0 student to academic probation, I was in credit card debt and had worn myself exhausted and bored with seeing everything I had seen. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

Then I met a boy. I fell ridiculously, recklessly, blindly in love with this boy. Needless to say, the cliché continues and I married said boy. Two and a half years later I packed everything I owned into my Chrysler and moved back home. I took the dog, he kept his girlfriend. The insecure girl was back, this time with an eating disorder and someone else’s debt. I felt like a shell of a person, and to be entirely honest, out of all the things I’d lost being with him, my dreams were the hardest pills to swallow. Where did the girl with all the ambition in the world go? Where did the girl who listed journalist, lawyer, veterinarian, and singer (I can’t sing), all at once mind you, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up disappear to? Who was I and what was I supposed to do now? The divorce destroyed me. I didn’t say it out loud. I got really good at pretending. I was hurt, beyond hurt, and betrayed, and I was embarrassed to admit I missed a man who had treated me so badly as much as I did. I was ashamed I was getting divorced, and the innocence in me was officially gone.

I just muddled through life. I waitressed and continued to hang out with my friends. There were good times. I started to laugh a little more and dated again. I carried emotional turmoil everywhere I went, but at least I was getting out of the house.  I missed him still, I was still ashamed and hurt, but I was treading water like hell trying to get back in the race.

I went for an interview for an internship yesterday. I got the position. I am beginning my internship for the completion of my Masters degree Monday. My Masters. I don’t know what happened. I woke up one morning and told my mom to meet me at Chapman University, I was finishing my Bachelors degree. That was five years ago. Now I have a matching Masters to hang next to it. I will be starting my second Masters next year, and maybe I’ll go for my doctorate one day. I have plans to own a business, and have worked hard to surround myself with a support group that builds me up and lies down with me when I fall. I have a God that I stopped running in embarrassment from, realizing He was with me all along. I have gone through therapy and read books and had endless conversations with the people that love me, and that is why I am here, sitting in the same Starbucks I have been studying in for eight years, realizing the finish line is in sight. It’s here.

I don’t have a tragic story full of obstacles I’ve had to overcome. I have parents that divorced but remarried, I have insecurities that led to an eight year eating disorder, but I have strengths that helped me overcome it. I have a job that has blessed me enough to go to school, and I have relationships today that nurture me.

When I was going through my divorce, I stood in front of the person I had given everything I absolutely had too, and I asked him how. How could you do this to someone who gave you what I gave you without ever asking for anything in return? He looked at me and said, “Well, if someone is dumb enough to give it to you, why not take it right?”

Right.

Except this time I was dumb enough to give it to myself, and by God’s grace it worked out. See you at the finish line. It’s been awhile, so in case you don’t recognize me I’ll be the one on the other side of it.