I used to look at some eating disorder recovery professionals and lack trust in them if I deemed their bodies too big for my goals. If I was going to recover, it damn well wasn’t going to be in a bigger body.
This was the unspoken truth.
And now I am aware that I may be that person, the one you don’t wantto look like. The one who has squish and a big bum. I would have looked at my midsize self as someone who could be thinner, but must not try hard enough to do it.
And I didn’t want to recover to look like that.
I both understand this perspective and transcend it.
Here’s what I think now, based on my personal experience with it:
I think that you can stay stuck resisting your body at the expense of living.
If you choose to reject life in favor of size, you might very well stay disordered, and that’s a choice.
I no longer pity people who chose living.
I no longer believe they are the ones missing out.
Instead, I see people who put their lived experience first as the ones who understand something that I didn’t. That we have one brief life, and if we aren’t living in it, we’re missing the point.
I now get to be the person who says: I am really living. I am not wasting more time believing anything else is better than that.
My lens on admiration has changed.
Don’t let anyone convince you that you chose wrong when you chose yourself.
