Difficult Conversations

I'm learning to accept that moving forward means that I have to acknowledge the need for, and then have those difficult conversations that I've been avoiding for most of my life.

There are some conversations I'm not sure I will ever be able to have. As such, those relationships may never be what they could be. Some relationships are too important for them not to be given the chance to be everything they can be. Even if it is the thing that scares me most.

Rewind to this weekend, and a conversation with the person I love most. For weeks, or even a couple of months, I have been spending more time inside myself than I have been with him. I've been consumed by destructive thoughts; thoughts I recognise, and know, to be the Critic in me but thoughts I've still been unable to shake. The feelings of self-hatred, and disgust, and shame that have come from this thinking had put a barrier between us. I couldn't be myself with him in the way I've always been. My heart's been breaking, and I've been afraid of losing him, and it's essentially been because of my own making.

Neither of us had spoken of it until this weekend. He didn't want to make it real, but it has been real to me for a while. I'd been with it, alone, in my head. He didn't want to hurt me, but I have been hurting myself. Alone, in my head.

My fear of losing him by being me. Me, being someone who I've been thinking is totally unacceptable; too sexual, too needy, too fat. I didn't even realise I still think of myself as fat. That hurts me, because I thought I was past this (despite knowing that we don't get past these things, but work with them). I figured because I can weigh myself without falling apart, because I can accept that my weight may be overweight, but that I am still loved, and because I've read a million books and put the hours into therapy and self-help... It'd just go away.

It has not gone away. I am still a work in progress.

I have everything I have ever wanted: A man who loves me and whom I love in return, the prospect of a happy future together, a job which pays the bills and leaves me some to spare. And yet here I've been, pushing it away because I don't think I deserve it and I don't know how to cope with having what I want. It sounds ridiculous, said out loud. How can a person not be able to accept what they want?! And then I think about when I Was very thin, and had the body I wanted, and couldn't cope, so binged back to being big. Being what I knew how to handle.

He told me he loves me for me; for the funny, open, sexy, intelligent person inside. He tells me, and for the first time I hear him when he says he doesn't love me for what I look like, but for who I am.

And, in one conversation, I am able to see what's really been happening, all these years. I am loved, and I am valued, by everyone and everything but me. It is me who has been struggling to accept myself. No one else. It is me who has been struggling to accept that I have so much, so much to be happy about - right now. I've put up the barriers that give me something familiar to worry about (being rejected, for my body or for me).

In one weekend, and in one difficult conversation, I have been given permission - by myself - to start taking down the walls.

It is scary. And it is wonderful.

I am overwhelmed with love, and hope. And yes, some fear of change.

This, I think, is maybe what recovery is all about.