I've gone to therapy religiously for about 5 years, sometimes regarding my anxiety and depression, others for my eating disorder and each time I've relapsed we tried something new. This time around, we are trying a new therapist all together. It's a big change, but when I had my last breakdown a lot of things cleared up.
My life seems to consist of a series of unfortunate events. Lately, I feel like I've gone through all the possible changes one can go through but in all the mess, I've had to keep up with my life and see the positive side, there was never time to stop and let myself mourn.

When my grandma passed I had to be at work the very next day, there was no stopping and no considerations from my boss, so I did what everyone tells you to do. I took deep breaths and immersed myself into a lot of work, hoping that maybe at some point all of it was going to stop, but it's been over a year and it hasn't stopped. 

When my dad was handed his diagnosis I took that day out of work and went with them, I found out everything before everyone else but hid it. The doctor talked about a million options, suddenly my dad wasn't my dad, he became a study case and a part of a growing statistic in men. There was no time to mourn, he had to go into treatment immediately and I had to go back to work.

Everything was a mess, not only did I lose my grandma, but my dad was dealing with one of the most challenging things a person can go through. My relationship with my mum suffered quite a bit, my relationship in general did too and my friends became hyper aware of what I was doing because there was no denying that I wasn't dealing with everything in a healthy way. 

Now I'm becoming more aware of what's happening and learning to let go of the idea that everything is going to back to being the way it used to be, because it isn't. Everything changes and evolves and you either learn from it or give up on it. 

This is one of those moments where life shows you that you can't stay still, you have to keep moving and learning from everything that happens. 

Not only did I stopped writing, I also stopped taking care of myself, I thought I had it all figured it out. I didn't and that only made the fall seem more catastrophic. I let myself free fall for months, spiraled out of control and lost everything I worked on for years. Suddenly everything changed for the worst and everything I learned stopped working. 

One would ask, if you what was going on, why didn't you ask for help sooner? Pride maybe, shame mostly. Once you've gone through recovery, life seems better, more colorful, everyone seems to be really proud of everything you've accomplished, in the end, they are the ones supporting you through your whole journey. 

How was I supposed to tell everyone I failed? I couldn't so, I hid it. I got really good at hiding my problems from everyone. Having gone through it before, I knew what worked, what didn't and manipulation became my second nature. There wasn't anything I couldn't hide from them anymore, at least not that I could think of. 

It was during the next two years that things would really start to get out of hand, I lost myself in the scraps of a person that was no longer in me. I couldn't bare anything to change so I tried to keep everything the same and maybe, just maybe, everything would go back to the same normality. It didn't.
Little by little my eating disorder started to grow and become more and more prominent in my life. I was no longer craving food, I'd go days without eating more than one or two meals, others I'd binge. My digestive system was so confused that I bloated, gained weight and felt frumpy all the time. I was no longer in control.
Anxiety would back my eating disorder up, those grew up to be some great friends. On one hand I felt like I could eat the world, on the other I had this little voice telling me that no one was going to respect me being that fat. I deserved nothing, not the love I had, not anything I managed to accomplish through recovery.
It broke me down again, for the second time in my life I felt like I was a failure, like everyone would be better without me. That was August of 2018, almost two years ago. I've been on and off of treatment since then. I've relapsed what feels like a million times, felt suicidal once since then, gone through some of the worst pain in my life but I'm still here, trying and hopefully succeeding once in for all.
This is my new road to recovery, a bumpy, long and exhausting recovery. We will see what it brings now.