The past couple of weeks have not been easy in recovery. I have had increased anxiety and a drop in mood across some of the days and it has been a bit more dippy in the recovery rollercoaster than it was for a while.
Things have been feeling tougher again and the prospect of keeping on keeping on with less positive payback awaiting on the horizon was getting exhausting.
However, today, although not a free and easy day has felt much more positive and it has been a day where I think maybe that horizon does hold a little rainbow (perhaps even a unicorn flying across it?!?) that is just glimmering and I might have caught a sight of it.
Today I met up with a very good friend and we coffee’d and cake’d and then we lunch’d and we chatted…
And it was the most relaxed I have felt, being out eating in a social setting, outside my usual routine, for a long long time.
This made me see that recovery – the anxiety and distress that I have been going through for the past few months, will pay off – if I keep going and pushing and challenging myself and if I keep #EDBashing with all the energy I have!
Alongside, this, some of the external stresses that had been making life harder over the past few weeks are also starting to reduce and slowly look as though they might imperfectly perfectly pay off, with just a little more time.
Of course, this is recovery and recovery is never perfect.
So, it was not a perfect day in terms of my being entirely free of the illness. It is still there, it is still screaming in the background and attempting to lure me back… and although I am trying hard to bash ED with everything I have, it does still get a jibe back more often than I would like.
This just shows me though that I must not be complacent.
Become complacent now and I might as well buy an express ticket straight back to ED island…
I still have a lot of work yet to do in recovery… so many hurdles still to jump, but I know those hurdles won’t trip me for long, if they do at all.
Therefore, today I feel that looking forward is the only way.
Hurdling to the future, hurdling to more relaxing days with friends and more exciting prospects than the life I left behind that was too isolated and too starved of not just food but living & opportunity!
….
After writing the above earlier this afternoon, my recovery rollercoaster train decided that the upward trajectory had gone quite far enough today and plummeted me suddenly and unexpectedly into a black hole of dark, foggy and purely terrifying despair. Out of nowhere, the mist descended on my optimistic and sunny mood and confusion set in with a feeling that I was lost in a recovery wilderness. I am not sure what caused this huge change in mood and outlook tonight, but one thing I do know – I never did like rollercoasters and I definitely do not like this one!
The thing about about rollercoaster rides though is that when they descend they don’t stay down for long before they rise again and at some point the money runs out and they let you off, slightly dazed, back into the real world.
So, I trust this ride is the same and the plummet tonight is just another little blip that will be hurtling back up soon enough!
RECOVERING NOMAD 