The View from the Other Side

Recently, I came across something that has really got me thinking. I stumbled upon something that a friend wrote about me, with no intention of me ever seeing it. It really touched me, because it was something written straight from her heart when I was gone in Arizona that she never intended for me to read or to see, but I did. There’s not very often that we get to see ourselves so purely through the viewpoint of someone else, but I was blessed to be able to do just that.

It really made me reflect on my journey in relation to the people in my life, my tribe, that I love and that love me. I often think of my journey as something I’m doing alone, and I admittedly get a little self-centered at times. Yes, it is my journey and they are my choices, but that doesn’t mean that the choices I make and the path that I’m on does not impact the people around me. Especially the ones that care about me the most.

Reading her thoughts and feelings about me struggling and going back to treatment really helped me to consider how my wellbeing and decisions affect other people. When I was really struggling, especially the times right before I went into treatment, I got very selfish. I was so consumed by my eating disorder, eating disorder thoughts, behaviors. and compulsions that I literally could not see anything else. I was unable to see the havoc I was wreaking on my body and mind, the breakdown of my body, the warning signs, or the helpless despair of the people that love me and that had to watch me suffer at my own hands.

This summer, I was faced with just how much my struggles have affected my parents, my family, and my close friends. My parents and I were lucky enough to participate in Family Week, and during that week, my parents were encouraged to explain to me the effects my eating disorder and mental health struggles have had on them and the rest of my family. Let me tell you, this was a humbling, humbling experience...to hear firsthand from your parents, the people who have loved you since birth, how much you have hurt them and worried them with your decisions and sickness. Was it important for me to hear? Yes. Was it easy to sit through and listen to? Not at all.

But through my many conversations with my parents, and then my friend’s post, I’ve come to the sobering realization that although my life is my own, there are ramifications to my decisions and the things that I choose to do, do in fact affect the people that love me.

Over the past few years, I’ve tried to do this life thing on my own. I’ve mentioned this several times in previous posts. For some reason, I keep telling myself that if I isolate, if I don’t ask for help or admit that I’m struggling, if I suffer in silence and keep things to myself, that I will protect the people that I love. In my mind, that was the best choice. If I could keep quiet and keep to myself, then the people that I love the most wouldn’t have to suffer alongside me. Did that work? No, not at all. But for some reason in my mind, I kept telling myself that it would work this time around. Hearing my parents candidly talk about what it was like to see me so sick and feel as though there was nothing that they could do about it was utterly shocking to me. I never let myself think about what others were feeling when things got really bad in my life. I honest to God thought that I was protecting them all this time by keeping things to myself, until hearing them talk made me realize that shutting them and the other people that love me out was hurting them a lot more than letting them into the world of pain that I was in. Coming across my friend’s post a few weeks after I returned home had the same effect on me. It truly helped me to see that doing this thing called life alone hurts not only me, but the people that love me.

In saying all of this, it seems as though God has been teaching me some pretty intense lessons the past few months. One was realizing how my actions affect others through hearing them share their feelings, and the other, well, God knows how stubborn I am. Yes, I reflected on everything my parents shared with me during Family Week, but He knows that it takes multiple times to truly teach me a lesson.

So, during that same week, I was faced with being on the “other side” as I've heard it called. Although I was in treatment, I was feeling fairly encouraged and optimistic about the future. I was feeling more in control and was planning for when I was going to go home. In other words, I was in as good of a place as you can be when you’re in a treatment center in the middle of the desert. In this good place, I received a letter. A letter from a friend that I love dearly, that is struggling with that ED monster that I know all too well. And I got a taste of what it’s like to be on the other side. The side where you can see hope and light and grace and possibilities. Standing on this bright side, looking across at a friend that is still stuck in the darkness, in such a dark place that they can’t see the light on the other side. I found myself on the other side, sitting in a place of awareness and clarity where I could see how sick she is and how dire her situation is. I found myself in the place where my friends and family have sat, staring across at me in the darkness, yelling across the void only to have their words of love and encouragement fall on deaf ears. Yes, hearing how much I worried my parents hurt. But being able to metaphorically step into their shoes, and feel the helplessness and fear and worry firsthand? Well, I get it now. I so entirely get it now.

Yes, this is our life to live. We all have our journey. We all have our path to walk, our struggles to work through, our decisions to make. We all have free will and make choices every day that affect our future. But what I’ve realized this summer? The most beautiful thing about this life is that although we all have our own individual paths to walk, we never have to walk them alone. As human beings, we are going to make mistakes. We are going to hurt the people that we love. It just comes with being a human.

Luckily, I have amazing people in my corner that have stuck with me through it all. Every time I’ve pushed them away, they’ve come back. They’ve called out to me from across the void and still do sometimes when I venture too far from the light. They know what to say to encourage me and lead me back out of the darkness. Thankfully, although my decisions and actions have been hurtful, they have stuck by me and loved me through it all.

Will I still make mistakes? Of course. Will I hurt the people that I love the most again? Unfortunately so. But knowing what I know now, hearing it and reading it and living it all this summer, I can now see the light. When I fall too far into the darkness, I know that I don’t have to remain there alone anymore. I now know that suffering there doesn’t do me or anyone else any good. Instead, when I find myself in that darkness unsure of where to go next, I know that all I’ll have to do is use my voice to call out or reach out my hand, and I will have a plethora of people waiting to pull me back up and out of the blackness and back into the light.

I'm finding myself spending more and more time on the other side basking in the sunshine and the hope and the grace. And you know what? The more time I spend over here, the more I'm falling in love with the view. 💜