So, I am 6 months into recovery. And when I tell you I was so excited to get to this point in recovery, I can’t even find the right words to express the anticipation and excitement. But why Beth…what’s the deal with six months? Well, I’ll tell you, if for no other reason, than to help you avoid this elusive mind game that is 6 months. If you are anything like me, and I am hoping someone else is out there, I am always looking for some indicator as to how far along in the recovery process I am. A sort of “mile-marker” if you will. Some type of indicator that I am on track and that there is some type of relief just ahead. That’s where the whole six months comes into play.
As I mentioned before, there were countless nights where I was awake and searching desperately for some life preserver to let me know that what I was feeling was in fact normal and the symptoms and discomforts I was experiencing was on track and completely how they should be. Which, I feel I need to interject here that this type of behavior, although completely normal, is doing us no favors and we should probably knock it off… easier said than done, I know but still. Anyways, everything I read kept coming back to 6 months. “In six months, you’ll begin to feel this”, “in six months, weight will redistribute…blah blah blah”, “in six months, you won’t feel like you are crawling in your skin and every article of clothing you put on feels like a boa constrictor squeezing the every ounce of hope out of you”… you know, stuff like that. EVERYTHING leads my ED brain to believe that relief was waiting for me at the 6-month mark!
So here we are …. 6 Months! We did it baby! I don’t know exactly what I was expecting. Maybe the morning of the 6th month, I flutter open my eyes, as opposed to jumping up and running around packing school lunches and downing liquid energy, i.e… coffee at mass quantities to get the day going! Maybe not today…today I would awaken gently by the sound of birds singing like in Snow White and miraculously all the struggle is gone! I look in the mirror and suddenly appreciate every single thing about my body which is no longer struggling with being bloated and having all the weight distributed to my stomach and thighs in an awkwardly miss proportioned way… everything is exactly as it should be…all is right in the world!!
Oh my God!! WAKE UP LADY!!! Listen, I’m not saying this isn’t going to be your experience…maybe you will hit six months and it will be fabulous for you. I’m just saying, for me, all that hope and all that pressure that I put on poor 6 months, BAD IDEA.. and for what…. nothing looked different. And I was mad. I felt lied to and I felt like surely there must be something wrong with me. Why am I not everything that I have read or seen on Instagram. How am I failing at recovery? And that’s when it hit me. And that’s part of the idea behind this whole blog.
There is no set standard for this recovery process. Let me repeat that for those of you who are still struggling…THERE IS NO SET STANDARD FOR THIS RECOVERY PROCESS!!! You have to let that go babes. It’s not doing you any favors! There are moments when I feel like I am totally dominating this recovery and there are other moments when I feel like it’s totally dominating me!!! The point is, even though it may seem like I am alone in this whole process because surely everyone else is meeting the 6 months mark like a boss and I am the only one who can’t seem to get it together… I would venture to say there is at least one other person who can relate to this feeling…. one other person who is looking around like, now what? I just keep going? I just continue to do what I have been doing for the last 6 months? You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!?? So that’s where I am today… just like yesterday and most likely tomorrow… but you know what I keep telling myself? What if tomorrow is the day I turn the corner. Whatever that means, I’m honestly not even sure. But that gives me hope. The hope I need to continue to work and show up not just for me but for my kids, my husband and all the people who have showed up for me through this process. I can’t possibly be the only one who is going through this. So….. are you out there???
