Wholeheartedness is a precious gift, but no one can actually give it to you. You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it
impeccably....It's like someone laughing in your ear, challenging you
to figure out what to do when you don't know what to do. It humbles
you. It opens your heart.
Pema Chödrön
The Wisdom of No Escape
This quote found its my to my inbox this morning. It prompted me to think about what it is to live in the fullest sense...and how that relates to my eating disorder.
When I was in college, I took a philosophy course my second semester and loved it. I thrived in that course and with that material. It just "clicked" with me. I can easily argue, or at least, see both sides. Maybe me ED taught me that, maybe I had it before. Knowing what you should do and believing with your brain that doing X is the best course of action, but finding yourself not doing X, and then getting upset with yourself for not doing what you know to be the best course of action. Is it any wonder I pursued philosophy?
[Funny aside: it was only recently, when talking with my psychologist, that she pointed out how philosophy, for me, had a healing affect on me.]
It was Socrates who challenged the demos of Athens with the line "The unexamined life is not worth living."
And indeed. Who wants to just go through the motions, and not embrace the feeling of rain on your skin?
When I was in college, though, I cannot say I was living a full life. While intellectually, I was living a very examined life...that was about it. I stuck to my safe routines, food wise. And this of course carried over into all my other routines. Brush teeth at this time, go to bed at this time, blah-blah-blah. I didn't vary. And when asked, I honestly just didn't see a point in "frivolity."
Ouch. It's hard to write this and it's hard to think about this. I was very depressed throughout college, but didn't even realize it. I mean, I was taking anti-depressants--I couldn't still be sad, right?
I suppose I was fortunate that my treatment-resistant-depression kicked in hardcore during the first semester of my senior year. Fall 2001. That's what I remember: fighting and working with doctors on various combination of non SSRI anti-depressants. Cognitive behaviour therapy for my depression. I still took joy when translating Plato's Symposium, or writing a challenging paper on Aristotle's Metaphysics.
To remember this time makes me sad for me and who I was at that time. I wasn't happy. I didn't understand what it was like to be spontaneous or to allow yourself to have fun. That was something my eating disorder stole from me, and I had to fight even harder to get that joie de vivre back.
The right combination of anti-depressant helped tremendously. I was hungry. For food, but more importantly, for life. For interaction and relationships with people. Friendships, political activism, staying up late and solving all the world's problems in our pajamas.
And it is now this thought that motivates me and keeps me on the right track, healing-wise. I want to live my life as fully as possible. I'm not going to let it pass by, nor do I think of spontaneity of frivolity as bad things. These are awesome things, and are very much a part of life.
It is so fitting that I met someone in the spring of 2002, when all the flowers were blooming and green was replacing brown, and it was this person who really helped me--in part by example, and in part by gentle, loving challenge--to blossom myself. To stay up all night watching movies, and sleep all day. (I had never done that.) To walk right in to the tallest building in the city, acting like we "belonged there", and go up to the top balcony. To take pleasure in trying new restaurants instead of just reading about them. To shrug when things didn't work out how we planned and laugh at how things did turn out.
This person really helped me find me. It's probably inevitable that I would have found me anyway, but he was a catalyst and the reason why I can safely look back and say, "I missed out on my teens, but I fully lived in my 20s."
Not only do I hope to continue to learn to live more deeply, more fully, every day, but I am finding myself in a strange place--the situation is reversed. My fiance definitely enjoyed his teens, but seems to think that the joy and spontaneity is over. When I met him, he was stuck in at least a two-year old routine. And there I am, dancing about in the kitchen while making breakfast.
It's funny how these "quirks" of mine are just so innate to me. My family is so used to them, but this is part of why they love me. I forget that most people probably don't dance in the kitchen. Why not? And so, when I make him spin me around, he wakes up a bit...before having his coffee...
And I feel so grateful that I can help remind him to more fully live life, because that's our plan: to live our lives out together.
Being whole-hearted. Living the examined life. Embracing all of life--the joy, the pain.
Take a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Be grateful for all the cells in your body, hard at work, making that breath possible.
Live your life. For me, that was the hardest part of recovery, and the part no one could really teach me. How to live a full life.
2 comments:
**my previous attempt at a comment didn't work out so well!**
you brought me to tears!
i'll always feel like you saved a part of me senior year. i had a class with a handful of people who at one point i'd envisioned being a huge part of my life for the rest of it. four have now gotten married and none of them, even the one i'd called at the time my best friend invited me to their weddings. anyway, none of them bothered to see why i was missing so many classes (had they maybe they'd have seen i was unconscious in my single dorm room). none of them bothered to notice that i was indeed wasting away, from over medication (read: codeine addiction developed from intense and constant pains which were the earliest signs, misunderstood as they were of my forthcoming relapse) instead of any sort of ED. no one thought to say, "she doesn't miss class unless she's sick," or, "i'll go up one floor to see how she is," and that is what a friend would do, isn't it?
because that is what YOU did. even though your routine hadn't really included the same locations as mine and so in those three years we'd not gotten to know one another----or so i thought. YOU before all others came to bare your soul to me because you could tell i was floundering, gasping not just for air but for some form of life. you with whom i really can't think of having had many conversations with before came to me and had the most important conversation for me at the time. one of the most important ones of my life thus far.
while i hate that we've both had such struggles and such major, oppressive struggles in our SOOOOO, SOOOO, SOOOO young lives (i like to pretend we're super young because it makes me feel less like the years i spent making failed attempts and the extra time it took me and catching up i feel i have to do still has not left me with so many years spent with so many things to do) i am incredibly thankful that we have each other and have recognized in one another a shared struggle.
each of us is an amazingly talented, gifted woman with more to offer the world than many might know. i find comfort in knowing that no matter how far away you are, how your days are spent, or how long it's been since we saw one another or even spoke, we're going through it together. the day you came down to my room i took a deep breath and i was able to exhale.
thank you for that. when feeling like the most extreme freak in the world, someone that no one cares about, someone who feels so very alone--- something that seems very small can make a huge difference.
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