November is here, and the air has become chilly, and rain is hopefully about to quench my lovely but drought-plagued California.
I hate cold weather, and by cold, I mean anything below 70 degrees, but it is nice to turn into the darkness and snuggly nights and comfortable sweats.
I will always be a summer baby, sun kissed and hungry for the beach, but I’m more accepting of change now.
And indeed, times have been changing, as they tend to do in my life. I’m in a new job. The eating disorder unit didn’t end up opening, as there were too many problems with upper management. I found a new position and left.
I don’t know how I feel about my new position just yet. It’s similar work: working in a private drug & alcohol rehab, but it’s more of a start-up company and I’m pretty sure my boss has Borderline Personality Disorder, which is fine, except that she is unwilling to examine her own role in anything. To date, she’s been my toughest client. As for my clients, they’re lovely.
I’m planning a wedding, which is all sorts of fun and craziness, and I just can’t believe I’m getting married in less than a year. I never doubt my relationship with my fiance- I haven’t since the moment I met him, and for those of you who have read my blog since the beginning, you all knew that. I do have frequent crises, however, about growing up and maturity and what the “real world” entails.
To be honest, I still struggle with what I want my priorities to be. There are days I want to be the grown-up who can clean her apartment and pay her bills and even do cute crafty stuff. There are days I want to go out and party, just get out there and live hedonistically, out of the FOMO and regret I anticipate I will have if I don’t. There are days I want to lie in bed all day, laptop propped on my stomach, half-alive, but half-absorbed in reading whatever junk-food website I want.
There are days where I do all three.
It’s weird, and nobody really talks about this crisis, except for sugary, existential crises outlined in Elite Daily, but I do struggle with accepting the fact that I’m in this weird in-between of childhood and adulthood, of recklessness and maturity, of structure and spontaneity. Of course, it’s not that black-and-white, but old habits die hard, and sometimes I forget that I can live in the gray.
Halloween is always tough with eating, too, and there have been too many sweets lying around at home and at work, and I’ve been indulging here and there, sometimes feeling guilty about it, sometimes getting a case of the fuck-its. None of my overeating compares to my old, frantic binges, but they still feel uncomfortable and they remind me that I still sometimes use food to combat anxiety, fear, and insecurity. Food helps- temporarily- but in the ten on-and-off years that I’ve struggled with disordered eating, I know that it’s only a bandaid on a broken arm. Knowing, however is one thing. Doing the impulsive and enjoyable thing–because that moment simply calls for it–is another.
I rationalize that it’s not the same because it’s not a secretive, hidden binge, and I’m not weighing myself 2428937 times a day, and I’m not starving myself between meals, and I’m not counting every step I take during the day, and I’m not chugging water like it’s my full-time job, but this rationalization is just a facade, and it’s the sneaky and spiraling thinking that leads me back into furtive behaviors I don’t want to have.
In reality, things are going well. I’m learning about myself. So much learning. So much expansion. It’s good, though. I need to keep writing here. I’m doing the Novel Writing November challenge, but I’m also going to keep posting here. I know I say that a lot, but I want to push myself to follow up with it.
The writing heals. It always has.
Love you all.
Dear Bee 