Build A Bridge, And Get Over It

The one thing that people seem to be most interested in and curious is how I was able to survive such a terrible and devastating disease as anorexia and bulimia, and how I have managed to maintain my recovery. I know everybody is looking for that magic answer, trying to tap into it, and sometimes it makes me feel like the Oracle from the Matrix. They stare at me holding their breath just kind of waiting for me to give them the key to the door they have been trying to unlock for so long.

I find it funny sometimes how curious people are when it comes to my life. I mean don’t get me wrong I am quite fascinating, but I chalk it up to partly the fact that I lead a very crazy and exciting life,and partly due to the fact that I lived to tell about it. The one thing that people seem to be most interested in and curious is how I was able to survive such a terrible and devastating disease as anorexia and bulimia, and how I have managed to maintain my recovery. I know everybody is looking for that magic answer, trying to tap into it, and sometimes it makes me feel like the Oracle from the Matrix. They stare at me holding their breath just kind of waiting for me to give them the key to the door they have been trying to unlock for so long.

You can imagine every body’s surprise when I look them smack in the eye and say  ”It all boils down to this… after 17 years “I was ready to get better” “Yes..Yes..they say..but really was it because you were so sick, or because you hit rock bottom, or because you were scared, or because you finally found the right therapist right?  Oh no I tell them, all that stuff happened, but it never made me stop. I mean I lost my friends, I lost my family, was planning my funeral everyday and was picking out burial plots. I went to more treatment facilities than I can count, had the top experts in the field trying to tap into my head,was on all the latest meds, and had more therapy than you can imagine. None of that ever did much, in fact sometimes I think it added fuel to my fire.

It honestly was because one day I was sick of being in a hole, and I was tired of sitting in that hole constantly trying to figure out how I got there. In fact the more I sat in that hole and tried to figure out how I fell in the deeper and deeper it seemed to get. I had been in that hole for way too long and it had become my home. I had decorated the hell out of that hole, I didn’t know any other way of life, but being in that hole. One day I woke up and kind of realized I hated that f*cking hole! I hated the way it smelled, I hated the way it looked, I hated that I was there all by myself. I hated the fact that the only thing that hole had ever done for me was make me look pathetic, made me look like I had lost, made me look like the disease had won. I might as well  have been living in my own grave, because I looked and felt like a friggin’ corpse. It didn’t take me long to decide that I was either going to spend eternity in that hole,or I had to figure out a way to get myself out of the hole. I decided it was time to figure that way out, and from that minute on, I concentrated on nothing else, and doing nothing less than making sure that happened.

I know it seems like it has to be more complicated than that, but that’s honestly it. I was in that hole for almost half my life, and I wasn’t about to spend the rest of my life there. I also wasn’t going to waste much time climbing my way to the top either. From that moment on it clicked for me, The light bulb came on in my head and I decided I was going to vacate the premises of this permanent hell.

The sad thing was the amount of support I always had been given to help me get myself out. I had countless numbers of people reaching out their hands, sending down ladders, ropes, helicopters, you name it to help get me out. I always turned them away and pretty soon they stopped coming by. It’s not that they didn’t care, but they were tired of me turning my back on them, so they called off the rescue team. I pretty much had to rely on me and me alone to climb out of that hole. In all honestly I think this is exactly what I needed. I had been given free rides my entire life, it was time I payed my own toll and this really made me appreciate the value in my journey out.

So that’s it, nothing complicated, nothing that you could read in any book, or google on the web. If you want to change, you will change, If you want to get out of the hell that had become your life, then you are the only one who holds the key. Sure you need support when you get out, and most certainly on the way up, but you and you alone are what decides where you reside.

If you want to stay miserable that is your choice, but sitting there trying to figure out how you got to be so miserable isn’t going to make it go away. Coming up with a plan on how to get happy is what you should focus on. Figuring out what you want to do with your life, figuring out who you want to be out of that hole. It can be scary believe me. Sometimes it is actually easier to stay in a difficult situation then leave it. We become comfortable with the pain, numb to the throbbing, immune to the sorrow, the lonely, the despair.

After all the world is a big, bad, scary place. It’s just too much to handle. It’s much easier to stay in the hole where we know everything is familiar. Or….you can take a chance, take what I like to call a “leap of faith” and see what else is out there. Look if you are always afraid to jump in the water for fear you are going to drown, how in the hell are you ever gonna find out if you can swim?
I finally just trusted that my way wasn’t working anymore, and I trusted that as tough as it was gonna be, it could only get better.

So here it is plain and simple. Sometimes you just have to do what you don’t want to do. Sometimes you just gotta grin and bear it. Sometimes you gotta just put your “big girl panties” on and buck it up.

I can’t give you any promises, but if you wonder how I’m so happy, and why I’m so happy, and why I love each and every single day of my life now, it’s because I finally made my mind up to get myself out of that damn hole.

There Is a Hole in My Sidewalk
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
By Portia Nelson

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep whole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in…it’s a habit…but,
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately,

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five
I walk down another street.