Back to the Pointe: NEDAwareness Week 2016

…Aaaaand I’m back!

Apologies for the long hiatus I took from blogging.  I’ve been at Castlewood Treatment Center for Eating Disorders since October, which has made it hard to post — not just because of time constraints, but also because of how rapidly I’m learning and changing.  I wanted to wait to post again until I felt comfortable that I was posting for the right reasons.

(On a related note, I think that it’s wonderful how many people are sharing their recovery stories on social media this week!  That being said, it’s important to be mindful that we communicate with either facts or the non-physical aspects of our eating disorders.  Eating disorders let us communicate with our bodies what we can’t say otherwise, and recovery involves finding a healthier way to communicate than expressing how “sick” we used to be.)

So, back to today.  What better time to return to blogging than during NEDAwareness Week?  (None.  There is no better time.  I’ll fight you on this.*)

A couple of weeks ago, I was jumping out of my skin with joy when my treatment team gave me the go-ahead I’d been waiting on for a year: the chance to take class again.

Yeah, it’s definitely okay to make fun of me in this pic… I was crazy excited!

That class was the most important thing I’ve done in treatment — and that’s really saying something, considering how much work I’ve done at Castlewood (and Renfrew, and Timberline Knolls…).

(Note: I’ll be using Internal Family Systems terminology ahead.  If you want a quick primer on what that means, it may make more sense.)

I walked into the studio and my eating disorder saw bodies she would kill to have.  My eating disorder looked at our reflection in the mirror and shuddered.  My eight-year-old self looked at me with hurt in her eyes.  “See?” she said.  “They were right.  We can’t do this.  What were we thinking?  Who do we think we are?”

I took a deep breath and mentally picked my eight-year-old part off the ground.  I imagined myself putting my arm around her shoulders and facing the mirror with her, side-by-side.

“You’re right,” I mentally tell her.  “We don’t look like Wendy Whelan.  You know what, though?  Just watch this.”

I let my inner, brokenhearted eight year old watch as class began: plies, tendus, the usual.  I let her watch as I stretched our long body out all over the floor, taking up all the space it needed.  She watched our soul sink into the music; she saw how everything made sense in the studio, how our body overflowed with something nearly transcendental that can only be expressed in this art form.

“See?” I told her. “Look in the mirror.  Look at us.  We don’t look like company dancers.  There’s something that matters even more than that.”

I imagine that Little Olivia wrinkled her nose at this point, but I didn’t let her interrupt.

“We love this.  This is how we understand things that can’t be put into words.  That mirror that you hate is the one that I use to see us doing what we love.”

At that moment, it was like I could breathe again.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I was instantly recovered or anything.  Still… for the first time in forever, I looked in the mirror and didn’t see negative core beliefs, past hurts, self-hate, or someone I wanted to change.  (Spoiler alert: the mirror can’t actually show you those things anyway.)  I saw myself speaking the language that my soul understands.

*I won’t really fight you.

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/139929789″>Portrait of a Dancer: Lauren Cuthbertson – NOWNESS</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/nowness”>NOWNESS</a&gt; on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Walking and Falling

I recently had the great privilege of working with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.  One of the pieces they performed, “Bad Blood,” featured a spoken-word/song track by Laurie Anderson that reminded me of an important recovery lesson.  Some of the words are:

You’re walking. And you don’t always realize it,
but you’re always falling.
With each step you fall forward slightly.
And then catch yourself from falling.
Over and over, you’re falling.
And then catching yourself from falling.
And this is how you can be walking and falling
at the same time.

---

In ballet, you have to keep your balance tilted a little further forwards than what may feel natural.  I once had a teacher spend the first few minutes of every class having us pace around the room.  Instead of placing a foot in front of us, shifting our weight onto that foot, and then balancing atop that foot to take the next step (the way most of us walk down the street), we had to consciously think about tilting our weight and balance forward, so that each step was less of a push and more of a catch.  In other words, had we stopped mid-step and not put the next foot down, we would’ve fallen onto our faces.  It was just like the poem says — with each step we fell forward slightly, and then caught ourselves from falling.

The same goes in recovery.  Every day, my eating disorder is telling me a million things while my desire for recovery is telling me a million other things, and it feels like I’m falling.  Recovery first is a process of learning how to take the times that I fall back on behaviors, then waking up the next day and realizing I’m still alive and can learn from that specific situation, thereby taking a step forward.  An even greater part of recovery is when my ED makes me want to fall back, but I’m able to remind myself to lean what feels unnaturally forward.

And this is how I can be walking and falling at the same time.

A Letter to My Eating Disorder

Hey ED,

How dare you?  How dare you come into my life just as my prime began and take those years from me?  How dare you know me better than I know myself?

Thanks to you, I can’t wake up without feeling sick.  I can’t make it through the day without an embarrassing amount of medications and self-soothing techniques.  I can’t look in the mirror or walk across campus without your thoughts taking over my head.  You’re not good enough, you say.  Nobody really likes you.  You’ll never be successful.  You’re lazy.  Why can’t you just be normal?  You’re so awkward.  Nobody feels bad for you.  Nobody feels anything towards you.

You’ve taken over my mind.  You kidnapped me as a child and I’ve been captive ever since.  You’ve given me Stockholm syndrome, thinking the only place I’m safe is in your grasp.  You’ve invaded my faith, the only thing that’s authentically mine, making me think that food and weight have some kind of moral value.  You’ve made me hate and feel alien to myself — my personality, my accomplishments, my experiences, and especially my body.

Speaking of which — you’ve ruined my body.  You’ve taken it over and made its weight plummet down and skyrocket up over and over again.  You’ve given me constant nausea, tremors, aches, bruises, crushed bones, and even heart palpitations.

You’ve stolen what could have been a great life.  You’ve decided when I have enough energy get out of bed, when I look acceptable enough to see friends, and when my brain will work well enough to study.  You’ve taken the well-meaning words of my loved ones and twisted them to mean horrible things.  Even when I’ve tried to get rid of you, you’ve taken away opportunities to study abroad, to hang out with friends, and just to have a normal life for the sake of treatment.  You told me I couldn’t do ballet, stealing the only dream I ever had.  Unfortunately for you, I don’t need a dream to define me anymore.

So, ED, once again: how dare you?  How dare you control fourteen of my twenty-two years on this earth?  How dare you take the time others were using to make the grade, score the job, or date the perfect guy and make me spend it either in your grip or in treatment? How dare you use my body and my face and my voice to turn friends, family, teachers, and coworkers off of me? How dare you call yourself Olivia?  That’s MY name, and it’s MY turn to use it.

(deep breath): an introduction

(deep breath)

Hi.  I’m Olivia.

And I have an eating disorder.

If you know me, you probably already know about my ED.  You may not know much other than that I have one, and that’s fine.  I don’t want my writing to be an outlet for rubberneckers or the morbidly curious.

What I do want is to share.  I want to share resources, experiences, insights, and hope with all of you readers.

I’ll soon (like tonight soon) create a separate post detailing my story, along with a post that is a letter to my ED.  I also hope, as this blog progresses, to post entries related to helping a friend, recognizing ED behaviors, getting help, and chronicling my own journey.

As far as this intro goes, though, I’ll keep it short and sweet.  Ballet is the love of my life, and I once had a teacher say that dance is the ultimate way of claiming space.  I love that idea — I can take up space.  I have a right to inhabit space.  I don’t have to shrink.  I can fill up an entire stage, and I can make it look beautiful.  I may have to go through a lot of pain to get there, but there’s something transcendent that can only be portrayed by a real, physical body in motion.  If I can ever use my body that way, it will be a huge step towards full recovery.  (See my “About” section for a quote that perfectly captures this feeling!)

So this is me, talking to you.  It’s weird and awkward.  My words will never come out perfectly right, but if you bear with me, I promise to make those words count.