I Am Enough

     From as early as I can remember I never felt I was good enough. Not for anybody, and not at anything I achieved or attempted. I went through life a perfectionist (later to be diagnosed as OCD)- always obtaining high grades and high honor roll status, performing well at multiple sports, and maintaining a decent group of friends. From the outside my life was exactly what I wanted everybody to think it was, perfect. But I was miserable. My grades were good, but they could have been better. I was captain of the soccer team, but I could have dedicated more of time to practicing... etc. I never felt I was giving my best effort. I was anxious and high strung and depressed. I felt I had more than I deserved, yet I always wanted more than I had. I developed an eating disorder when I was 16, shortly after being raped by a boyfriend. I began drinking heavily on the weekends. I began using sex just like I used alcohol.  My world was crashing down around me and I needed find balance and control. For a long time, all the way through college, I continued on this way, pretending everything was perfect while using my eating disorder, alcohol, and sex to numb out the reality that was my life.

 

     The summer after college I relapsed with my eating disorder pretty badly. I was lower than I had been in years. I was depressed, scared, my life was at a turning point, and yet it was a stand still. I managed to come back from the depths of the disorder only to find alcohol waiting for me at the other end. That is where my life took a turn for the worst. I went from a functioning human being to a useless wreck over the course a few months. I didn't want to live. I was living to drink, hurting myself and the people I love the most. I hated myself more than ever and I honestly could not see a way out. In my mind my only choices were to keep going on that way making things worse and worse until I had nothing left, or to just end everything. So that is what I decided to do, after one last day of drinking. On June 4, 2013 I called out of work without telling any of my family or my significant other. I spent the morning at the beach and the afternoon and evening at the bar. When it came time to go through my plan to "accidentally" crash my car into a tree on my way home, around 7 pm, I was already blackout drunk. So I don't remember the conversation I had with my parents when I got to my car and saw them standing there about how they found me, and I'm not sure that matters. What matters is that they found me. I am here. That was the last drink I took. I went inpatient for twelve days and detoxed. While I was in the hospital I learned a lot about myself. Since I have been out of the hospital a lot of amazing people have entered my life that have made me feel like these past sixty days have not all been for nothing. 

 

     Every day is a struggle to stay sober, to eat right, to think positively, to get out of bed... But I look at where I was sixty days ago and where I am today and it makes me want to keep fighting. I have grown so much in the past two months, more than I ever thought was possible. For the first time I am actually looking forward to the future.

I don't look at myself and think I am the smartest or the prettiest or the best at anything, I am not there yet and I may never be.. But I can finally look at myself and truly know, I am enough.