​I’m conscious of a craving - primal, visceral, raw, and real. It’s visual and tactile and goes well beyond any type of desire I’ve ever had before.

I’m hungry for it.
Didn’t even realize it until recently, when I noticed I couldn’t get enough of it.

Not chocolate.
Not sex (although that’s wonderfully primal too).
Not for luxury items or things…

It’s for…

COLORS
Not just any colors.
VIBRANCY

Along with the craving comes the incredible, enormous feeling of being 100% ALIVE.

I’m not even sure I am describing it correctly.

I don’t want to move from this spot on the chair. Curled up in a small ball, I’m afraid I might unravel if I stretch my limbs and move. So I stay still, and wonder… 

Feeling frayed and worn out, would pieces of me begin to loosen and fall into scattered piles? Or would I try and pull the strings taut again into a smile - my usual armor to face the world?

Fighting depression is an exercise in holding onto a tenuous link to joy. One moment I’m giggling. The next it’s as though a tsunami of sadness dropped from the sky and left me drowning in tears. 

Or it can sneak up stealthily, like a spy trying to infiltrate a castle in a land of abundance. Because when life feels so damn good, who would ever expect depression to invade?

Last night I attended my first group therapy session. I’m on a waiting list to be matched with an affordable professional for my individual journey. Hopefully one versed in dealing with anxiety and eating disorders.

But in the meantime, it was suggested that I try out the motivation drop in group that meets online weekly. I was told it might help simply to feel supported, or to listen to what others are saying about challenges they are facing.

It was only recently that I began speaking out publicly about these issues that affect my daily life. In the past, I felt I had to put on a brave face, smile at the world, and never let on that inside was a constant battle. That a relentless conversation went on in my head about whether it was okay to eat, did I earn the right to eat, was I going to be worthy of eating, was it really necessary to eat.

And like the proverbial snake that swallows its own tail, my anxiety - an entity completely separate and stemming from traumatic experiences in my past - fed the eating disorder. While the eating disorder - an issue with roots in my childhood - increased my anxiety.

Last Sunday night I challenged myself to be BRAVE. Not the loud in your face kind of courage that the world seems to applaud when it goes viral on Instagram posts. 

But the quiet bravery. The one that requires a strength no one can visually see most days. But that must be felt in your core.

The task set at hand was a long time coming. I’d been holding on to something far longer than necessary. Twelve somethings it would turn out to be. And three hours of tearing and ripping and trying not to shake and cry and scream all at once.

Last Sunday I tore up my journals. Over 3000 pages documenting scary moments that I would never have imagined, yet actually lived through.

And in doing so, I hoped to free myself from the weight of carrying around visual reminders of a nightmare that I still re-live often in my sleeping hours. But maybe, just maybe, the process of destroying these journals would also sever the link that tethered me to my past.

Maybe I would finally be free to move forward.

But like many good stories, to understand how I got to this place where destruction allowed me to rebuild my life, we have to start in the past. 

“He’s my everything”…

It was all I could do not to roll my eyes as another one of my friends pontificated on how the current man in her life had become the main focus of her world.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if she meant it metaphorically, but it was the literal sense in which most of the women I knew took the sentiment that made me feel nervous.

Having someone be your “everything” is a lot of fuckin responsibility. And for the person expressing the feelings, it seems that all the other joys in life shrink to a very narrow idea. 

If he’s with her, she’s happy.
If he’s not, she’s not.