Arielle's Word of the Day #17: END

The eating disorder has to end so that you can begin. There is no other way around it.

The world is waiting for you. It's waiting with open arms and a smile. All you have to do is live.

Though this attempt to live can be the single greatest thing you ever do, it is in fact probably the most difficult thing you will ever do. You may even think you are living right now. And perhaps you are. But I can tell you, if you do not feel "alive," you are not living. If you are not nourishing your body and your soul, you are not living. If you are not being honest with yourself, you are not living. If you are hating yourself, you are not living. If you are not breathing, you are not living. If you are weighed down by a variety of things, you are not living. If only one of these things is true, you are not living.

This is not to say that "living" requires complete happiness every moment of every day. Living life means experiencing the bad with the good, but when the bad consistently and greatly outweighs the good, you are not living. You may be trying to live, but you are not living. 

Do not confuse existing with living. The two are very different indeed. 

Somehow, we forget to live. Really live. It's difficult to even pinpoint exactly how this happens, but it does. All too often. And before we know it, we are lost in the crowd, lost in the troubles, lost in the pain, lost in the life we think is a life simply because it is a reality. Maybe no one ever told you this, but...

You can change your reality.

So today, I invite you to live.

Going Through the Motions

The longer you "go through the motions," the easier recovery becomes. Soon you do it more naturally and you discover things that are unknown to you right now. You learn about yourself. You will get where you want to be, but it takes time and effort.

You are probably giving a tremendous amount of effort right now. And you're probably thinking, "When will something give a little?" or "When will I actually be free of this?" Keep reminding yourself that the best is yet to come. You can do this. It will get easier.

Setbacks are going to occur. Don't let them stop you in your tracks.

No one can tell you what you are feeling and experiencing. Don't let anyone define it for you. And it really makes no difference what you call it--a relapse, a slip-up, depression...whatever it is, it is real and you can change it if you want to or live it if you don't. (And who wants to live it?) The only word that matters is Recovery. If you feel you are going through recovery, good. If you don't think you are but want to, then do something to change it. If you think you have a recovery mindset but lack the drive or the will to care 100% of the time, you can change that too.

Change one thing and you end up changing a lot.

Recovery doesn't mean you are doing well 100% of the time. It just means that you WANT to be.

No matter how many cons there are to your dilemma, one big pro outweighs them all: you getting better, you feeling better, you learning to live life again.

You don't have to define what you are going through with a word (relapse, recovery, slip-up, setback, etc.). You just have to know where you want to go.