ANOREXIA: YOU CAN’T BURN DOWN A BRIDGE, IF YOU HAVEN’T GOT A MATCH.

Somebody once said that if you aren’t living on the edge, then you are taking up too much space. Seventeen years ago I truly took that to heart and indeed thought I was taking up too much space, so I decided to live on the edge…my edge was called Anorexia.   It was as close to […]

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Somebody once said that if you aren’t living on the edge, then you are taking up too much space. Seventeen years ago I truly took that to heart and indeed thought I was taking up too much space, so I decided to live on the edge…my edge was called Anorexia.

It was as close to the edge as anybody could get. I roller skated on that sliver of existence with no concept of how very far I would fall if I slipped.

I was “Icarus” and I truly felt that no matter how close I flew to the Sun, I would never ever get burned. The ironic thing is, all my wings did melt off, but for some reason I got around for awhile flapping my bare and “barely there” arms. I think it was the fumes from the anger I held in my stomach and in my heart that made me continue to putter around.

However toward the end of all the craziness, pain, damage I had done not only to myself, but to my life, I began to grow weary and feel myself starting to fall.

                                                                         

I knew that in order to get out of “Hell”, I was going to have to sit down and go head to head with the “Devil.”

Because of my Business of being Risky for so long, people didn’t want to invest in me anymore. I was like that guy you see in the movies, that washed up one who sits at some dive casino in Vegas at the craps table betting his life’s savings away. He just sits there talking into his glass of watered down scotch about how he was going to be something once, as he loses to the table over and over again.

People didn’t respect me anymore, and they had good reason not to. I had taken a match to all my bridges, and was just sitting there surrounded by the ashes.

Welcome to the world of addiction. It’s not just that you destroy your life, you destroy other people’s lives, and that’s nothing to take lightly. I’m going to specifically put Eating Disorders on Blast and say they are very very selfish forms of addiction. I know this because my Eating Disorder made me one of the most selfish people on the planet. The only thing in the whole world I cared about was me, me and me!  My sense of human compassion, and empathy flew out the window along with all my morals and values. I knew deep inside my heart that I was wrong, but my desire to numb out all my pain from my past was causing me to not feel, to not care, to take everybody else’s life as well as my own for granted.

So there I was, sitting in what used to be my dreams, my goals,  and all my aspirations  I was basically alone and nobody wanted to be around me. When that reality sets in, it’s a very jagged pill to swallow. People ask me all the time how I rose above it all, and the only thing I can tell you, is it was a wing, a prayer, and a whole heck of a lot of HUMILITY. I had to sit there and take what they call in the 12-step method of recovery a “self-inventory”, which basically means you start counting all the boxes in your warehouse labeled “BIG MISTAKE.” Then you have to open those boxes of “Big Mistakes” and this is what is called “making amends.” You have to basically suck it up and try to right all your wrongs. The hard part about this is that a lot of those wrongs are not quickly forgotten, or easily forgiven.

                                                                                       

I have a equation I like to give my peeps, and it is kind of my Miss Melissa’ism Golden Rule it goes: TIME+EFFORT=TRUST.

It’s pretty simple.

Talk is very Cheap, it’s the moving that gets expensive, and in my opinion it’s actually priceless. You can sit there and tell everybody you are a “bird”, but until you actually sprout wings and fly, people will see you as a donkey.

There is a big difference between making your mark in this world and staining it. When there is a lot of dirty laundry in your life, then you have to do everything in your power to clean it up.

You can still live on the edge…but do it on the Edge of Glory!

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