On Monday it will be a year since I returned from Remuda LIFE. It seems so strange in some ways. It feels as if it was only yesterday and it feels as if it were a million years ago. I am glad I went and at the same time regret the decision.
In reality, I was NOT ready to go when I did. It was job preservation and in the end I came back to PT work. Had been ready to go I would not have pulled the crap I did when I was there. The last time (almost 4 years ago) I came in and after my "grace meal," pretty much was 100% compliant with food. The first week I had two meals I could not finish...but the rest of the time I ate...even when I struggled through half portions and "gentle eating." By the time I got to LIFE I was used to family style, fairly used to full portions and only spent 4 days on meal support.
Comparing me in 2000 and me in 2003 is pretty silly...but in 2000 I went for the RIGHT reasons and was really on the road to recovery until I moved to IN. Looking back as I prepare to head back to IN for Triennium...it wasn't alll the move. I think dropping my grandfather off at the Indy airport on 9/11 and having him on the next plane to take off from O'Hare and then being stuck on the tarmac for 3 hours and then "stranded" in Chicago for days didn't help. Here is this major traumatic event in the history of our nation and I am all alone in a new state and city...2500 miles away from friends and family. I think I turned to ED behaviors to cope and then the church ending up being a bad fit escalated it. I have been thinking a lot about that and think this trip back to West Lafayette is going to be a good one for me.
I am slowly pulling myself out of the hole I dug after getting back from LIFE last year and I am scared spitless. Do I want to spend the rest of my life starving, purging and overexercising? No. I really don't. But, the disorder...like youth ministry has become such a part of who I am that the thought to be without one or the other scares me to death. I have been out of YM as a profession for over a year and now to let ED go...ack!
But, I also believe that YM is not going to happen for me again until I "divorce" ED and not keep taking "him" back with the promises that never materialize or that come at a high price.
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