January 10th

January 10th

The date, cemented in my memory. 

January 10th. Exactly four years ago, to the day, that I was admitted to Inpatient Hospital for treatment for my eating disorder. Four years on, and although the date looms upon me with the same waves of nausea and anxiety I had prior to my admission, and the memories of hospital still appear in my nightmares.. They are bearable in comparison to the nightmare of a life consumed by anorexia I suffered prior to this date 4 years ago.

As the anniversary of my admission comes around, each year I have reflected with different emotions. At first, the illness was still present in my mind and would make me feel guilty, for starting to get better and ignore her more and more. But this year as January 10th comes around, I am reminding myself to be proud, to be grateful to myself for saving myself, for learning to be kind to myself and stop the daily torture. I am writing a letter to my younger self... If I knew then what I have learnt through this journey of recovery; this is what I would say. 

Dear 22 Year old me,

I know you are in pain, I know you feel hopeless, that life is testing you right now. Since your teenage years you have suffered at the mercy of your own mind. You have cried too many tears, you have been given too much medication from doctors who don't know how else to help you than to numb the pain of living with pills and send you off for weekly sessions with a therapist who you will see for years and years and never get anywhere. I know this makes you feel even more hopeless. I know you starve yourself to try starve off the pain. I know life has tried to break you, I know you swallowed too many of those pills to try stop the pain, I so wish I could tell you how much you are worth. I wish you would believe it when your friends and family try to tell you, you are loved. You will loose many friends during these difficult years; you will want to curl yourself up and hide from the world, and people won't know how to deal with that. You will loose the person you love right now... he loves you, but he isn't the one and this illness will  break the two of you. He will walk away when you need him most. You heart will ache for many years, but don't worry... one day you will find a love that makes all of this pain worth it. Your journey will lead you to someone who will make everything fit into place. That person is a woman, but don't worry about that either.. your true friends (you will discover who these ones are along the way) and your family will love her too and nothing will get in your way of enjoying the purest, deepest love. 

I know right now your entire existence centres around food and calories and weight. You will count every single calorie for many years. You will have notebooks and Apps full of numbers and figures that only somebody consumed by anorexia could understand.. calories versus calorie expenditure, weight, measurements, numbers, numbers, numbers. You hate maths, yet you will spend hours of your day adding up, checking and re-checking these figures to be sure you have not had too much. That you will not gain weight. It will become obsessive, you won't be able to stop and you will have panic attacks when you feel out of control. Your heart will feel like its going to burst out of your chest. And sometimes your heart will stutter and palpitate, you will think this is a sign from your eating disorder that you are doing well, that what you are doing is working. Your mind is so distorted right now. You even see yourself as big when you weigh less than a ten year old girl. The struggling heart, sleepless nights (more pills), the way your bones ache from being constantly cold, the emptiness... none of that will stop your relentless attainment for perfection. A perfection that doesn't exist... darling you, one day I want you to learn that we are all imperfectly perfect.  

You have struggled with this pain for many years, it has gradually got worse, and now you must be admitted to an impatient unit for help. You will admit defeat and let them take you there. You are exhausted from the daily battle with yourself. 

Let me tell you this; its going to be hard. The hardest thing you will ever go through in your life. You will resist treatment, they will fight with you to try to keep you alive. You will refuse food, even water in the end, until you become too frail to even stand, they will not allow you to walk and your family will cry when they come to see you and have to wheel you about in a wheelchair. Your heart will nearly give up and they will tell you you may not survive another night if you don't begin to try and save yourself. And that very night as you lay in your hospital bed, you will see a light, you will reach for your journal and you will write 'I want to live' and that will be the beginning of your recovery, of your awakening to yourself. 

It won't be easy. Recovery will be long, and painful and you will slip many times... but you will keep fighting. From that point on, nothing will break you. You will get stronger, you will leave that place and go home and go on to do great things. You will return to modelling and have some of the most successful years of your career now people can see the sparkle in your eyes. You will get to travel the world and live in London, Paris, Beijing and Barcelona. You will fall in love with the latter and in that city you will really learn to find yourself. You will live in model flats sometimes with many other people, sometimes completely alone, but all will teach you a lot about yourself. You will face situations through your modelling career that most would crack under, but the strength you have learnt will armour you, nobody will break you. 

You will begin to practice yoga, and through your practice you will learn to appreciate your body, to be kind to it, to show it love. You will learn to quieten the voices that try to harm you, you will learn through this yoga and meditation that once you have found peace within yourself; nobody can steal that peace. You will eventually feel so passionate about this the you will go to teacher training and became a certified yoga teacher. You will then begin to share what you have learnt with others.. your struggles and journey will have purpose. The hard times you are experiencing now will later help you appreciate life and teach you how you can help others. This will become your life work; to lift people up. To elevate themselves to see the highest potential in themselves. 

I know waking up each day right now is difficult, but trust me one day, you will wake up everyday and smile, you survived, and whats more.. then you will be able to appreciate how beautiful life is, one you allow it to be..

When you focus on the beautiful, magical parts of life, the universe will keep providing you with them. And one day you will no longer feel pain, you will feel peace, you will feel bliss, you will feel.. love. 

With Love, 

Your older, wiser Self  x