So, I’m putting together a project involving my photos from the past 20 years, and I’m only 1/4 of the way looking through them at this point in time. It’s a project I’ve been wanting to start for years, but I get overwhelmed when I start going through my pictures, there are a lot of painful memories.

An interesting thing I noticed is that the photos of me seem like they’re not me, and I really don’t remember looking like that. I don’t remember much from those years, which they say is normal with eating disorder patients. Apparently you need to eat regularly for your brain to work! Who knew?

I think back and I’m ashamed of nearly everything. Mostly how I treated others. I hate that my eating disorder was always top priority for me, and I had decided to just wait around until it’d kill me. I hate that I let it take over everything.

Your real life, your relationships, they get blurred so that your disorder can stay in focus, and it’s fucked up. I’m still working on not blaming myself for that. I’m still working on not thinking I’m a selfish piece of shit.

But now that I’ve been working on integrating myself more, and practicing self compassion (barf) I see this person much differently than I used to. I don’t hate her anymore, I’m not disgusted by her appearance, I can’t sit here and pick her apart, because I honestly can’t think of much.

I just want to help her, because I know she’s really hurt, confused and lost. But I also know she is stubborn and likes to learn things the hard way, and get hurt, and fuck everything up on her own damn time.