Good morning, everyone! Hope everyone had a glorious weekend. 
My weekend was beyond fab and pretty much pure glory and shenanigans. I plan on doing a full recap, but until we can all share pictures (we kinda took turns being photographers), I want to hold out a bit. Here is a little preview of photos I took with my iPhone though:
Try 2
Photo courtesy of Justine
So sad it’s over 
Stay tuned for a full recap!
So, today marks the countdown to the big Two-Four. As in, I will officially be in my mid-twenties in 55 days. :/ I have NEVER been the type of person to have a countdown to my birthday, or constantly remind people that my birthday is approaching; however, this year, I am focusing on it.
Only maybe not in the sense that you traditionally think of a birthday countdown.
You see, since my 18th birthday, I have not really looked forward to my birthdays as I think everyone deserves to (as a side, I think you should always look forward to, and be thankful for, a new year regardless of age, but that’s for another time… 
).
Instead, I have felt anxious that on my birthday I will not look as good as I want, will not feel as good as I want, etc. Instead of feeling like I can indulge in, and enjoy, cake, champagne, a birthday dinner (which may or may not be indulgent foods), and a day off of the gym, I would feel like I better try not to eat leading up to it in attempt to counteract any binging prior. Or belittle myself for not looking how I want. Instead of enjoying the day, I would instead feel upset that I was starting another year in my life feeling bad about myself, feeling bad that I was still disrespecting my body. But didn’t know how to stop.
I think I made it worse by succumbing to the media’s portrayal of a twenty-something: beautiful, fit, has it together and is successful but still has a good time. So I would wind up berating myself for being overweight when I should “still look good”, or worrying about covering up my body when, according to the media, twenty-something women should still be in barely-there clothing and flaunting it while they’ve got it.
Since I first made a giant leap forward at the beginning of May, I have made a ton of progress. However, as I’m sure everyone can guess, I tend to sugar coat things on my blog. Which, I don’t really understand since the whole point is supposed to be a journey of my present recovery stage, my past, and my goals for the future.
But, it’s easier to make it sound like every day is easy. Like I just kicked disordered thoughts/eating/exercise to the curb one day and I never again struggled with them.
If only life was that easy. But then it wouldn’t be as fulfilling to overcome a challenge, would it? I don’t think so.
So, I do have ups and downs. I have days, even weeks on end, where I feel great. I exercise a healthy amount, and because I enjoy it, I eat because I enjoy the food and/or know it’s good for my body, mind, and soul.
But, there are also days where I only go to the gym because I don’t like the way I look. Or overeat because I’m tired/stressed/anxious. Or feel guilty for having wine, bread, AND dessert with dinner. God forbid.
About two weeks ago, once my excitement for Fall kicked in, I started getting excited for this time of year. October 2nd starts a long string of exciting celebrations for me, beginning with my sister Karen’s birthday. All the way from now until Valentine’s day, I have a lot of family/friend’s birthdays, holidays, and Jamie and I have our anniversary. As I started to get excited thinking about this, I was reminded that it hasn’t been since high school that I really felt excited about this time of year for the pure enjoyment of the season and celebrations involved. What should have been excitement and joy was replaced with dread at an opportunity to binge on “indulgent” foods, anxiety about feeling the need to restrict food and avoid all “indulgent” foods, anxiety about family/friend “obligations” that might ruin my chance to workout, and self-loathing at feeling all of these negative emotions instead of enjoying the time of year.
Reflecting on all of this got me to thinking about how I want to get my blog back to doing a more realistic job of chronicling this year+ journey I started in May. Obviously, I want this to be a happy, fun place, but a big part of the reason I wanted to start this blog in the first place was to show people how I am working on overcoming years of self destruction.
My intention was, and still is, to hopefully make me more relatable to people going through anything remotely similar. Making it seem like all the sudden I’ve replaced years of struggling with day after day of easy, healthy days is being dishonest with myself.
That said, I decided to count the days to my birthday. I always do better with goals when I have something specific as an incentive, and when I can keep track of the days.
Today I am starting a 55 day countdown to my 24th birthday. Because this year I want to enjoy my birthday for what it is: a day to be thankful for everything I have experienced so far, and for everything the future holds.
In getting to that goal I am going to face my fear of vulnerability once again and discuss my bad days. Discuss my fears. Discuss how my recovery is actually going.
I am also going to use this to get re-motivated to completely heal. Because a year from now, I want to be discussing how I used to dread special occasions because of worries about losing control/not being where I want to be, etc. I am still on a journey to finding my best self.
Let the countdown begin…
Have a great Monday!
If you hear a voice inside of you say
‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means
paint, and that voice will be silenced.
~Vincent van Gogh
Cheers,
L
