Idling. Sometimes in life your foot will find itself firmly
on the clutch and poised on the accelerator ready to go, yet will you manage to
set off on the journey or will you simply stall and have to start again? The
waiting game during recovery from an eating disorder is one of the hardest
things to cope with. You have a yearning to get on with life, but the
limitations within your mind mean you cannot embark on your future until the
block comes away. When it seems that you cannot go forwards, but reversing is
not an option either, then you can’t help but wonder what to do, how to handle
the situation, how to idle by…
Entering the third year of university I have found my life
once again on standby. My reapplication to dentistry has meant that my future
is in other’s people’s hands and I find it very hard to accept I am not in
control of it. I have no idea what I will be doing come September let alone
where I will be living, and this thought scares me. Although I strive for a
life of spontaneity, such is my nature that organising myself in advance is
what I find safest, or else I start to panic; so waiting for a response from
dental schools is a stressful experience for me. Yet again in this situation,
my pessimism shines through and I am almost resigning myself to having to find
a plan B and give up on my dream to become a dentist. I find it so much easier
to cope with potential rejections if I do not hope and set the bar low for
myself than if I allow my head to get carried away and dream. Unfortunately, I
set this barrier to almost everything I do in life and it is a cycle I MUST get
myself out of.
The constant fear of my ‘relative binge’ is still upon me,
due to my obsession with chocolate. I keep telling myself, ‘today it’s ok to
have this extra square because tomorrow I’ll just have a little a less’, yet
this never ends up happening and it’s scaring me. No, I am not overweight, if
anything I am only just entering the healthy range so I have a large margin,
but what if my inability to control my chocolate cravings becomes an addiction
and I can’t stop and I go above and beyond a weight I will ever be comfortable
with? It all sounds so melodramatic written down, but my mind is constantly
whirring around this thought. I feel I have opened a door whereby I have
allowed myself to eat chocolate in an unrestricted manner but it has turned a
180 and I am now eating in uncontrollably.
I have recently started exercising again in the hope to
counteract the fact I am a complete chocaholic and also for general fitness. It
just made me more aware when I was writing that sentence that my primary reason
for exercise was to compensate for extra calories… This is not a great
realisation, but at least I know I am not aiming to lose weight in this situation
but merely to stay in the comfortable weight zone that I am currently in. On
the plus side, my main choice of exercise this time has been yoga, a non-strenuous
form of exercise that has really allowed me to relax and ease myself into a
life with exercise again. I think this is what is best for me, as if I was pushing
myself too fast too soon, I would not be able to moderate my diet to fit around
the exertion I would be putting on my body. But I am enjoying yet again being
healthy enough to exercise and being in a place where I am not afraid to eat
that extra bit so that I can stay healthy.
Most of the people surrounding me currently do not know
where they will be next year so I am not the only one currently stuck in limbo.
However, I find this creates a limitation on everything we do with a reluctance
to commit ourselves to anything or anyone in the fear of having to leave it all
behind; no one just goes for it anymore. It makes these few months we are
living futile and worthless and we are all in the same boat. I am taking it
very hard, as not being busy is one of my weaknesses, as it has always dragged
me into depression. Sitting around and waiting for life to happen to me is not
something I am comfortable with but I don’t know how to get out of my funk
until I can answer some questions for my future but I have to rely on others to
answer these for me. I am not confident in moving into the unknown alone but if
push comes to a shove I will step off that clutch and go the distance.
