Happy New Year! I’m hoping 2018 will be one for the books. I learned so many lessons in 2017, especially with friendships and self-love. I want to take this blog further this year. I want to discover more. I want to save more money because it’s about damn time I start facing the future. Further, more, future – all these ambitious expectations…

The past few months I’ve been wrapped up in the future. I’ve been projecting and planning and wishing for a fortune teller with a crystal ball to tell me that everything I’m hoping for will come true. I’ve been thinking about business, babies, retirement. But, I had a dream about going back into treatment last night and I coincidentally read a blog post about that treatment center (you can read the post here). I forgot that this is a gift, a life I almost didn’t have.

I went to rehab for anorexia in October-December 2013. I was in outpatient, therapy, what have you for a little while after that. I’ve been clean since September 2014 and I’ve been working my butt off to have a life worth living. A few years ago I wasn’t thinking about babies, let alone able to have one. I wasn’t concerned with taxes or BPAs or clipping coupons.

I used to worry about passing out while driving. I used to worry about how I would cope with the feelings that went along with eating more than 500 calories a day. I used to worry about my heart giving out and dying in my sleep. I had no future. It was like that saying, “dead but not buried”. In retrospect that all scares the heck out of me.

Something shifted, I hit a spiritual bottom and some power greater than myself helped me reach help. I had just enough hope left that was able to change the things I was doing and in turn the way I was thinking. Sometimes I feel like I’m behind my peers, or just behind in general. That diseased voice squeaks “not good enough”
whenever it gets the chance. But when I compare where I am now to where I was for my late teens, I’ve grown immensely. I’m pretty damn happy, which is more than anyone can ask for.

My point with this post is not to belittle the problems or worries I have now, but to remind myself about the power of perspective. I think perspective is the most valuable tool for those of us in recovery. So, that’s going to be my word for 2018.  I’m going to treasure the time I have with others, my last months before the wedding, the quiet moments when God seeps in. I’m going to soak it in. After all, it doesn’t have to be this good.

Wishing you every happiness in 2018.

 

O.