meet u there

I’m depressed, right? I lay awake at 3 am and think all hard and nihilistic. And of course it’s ridiculous–it’s funny to me that I think I’m alone at times like this. This isn’t new to me–it’s not new to you either, dear reader. 

This has been our experience forever, and honestly, shitting on that just isn’t interesting. It isn’t interesting to lean into the notion of cynical detachment as the only way out of hurting.

Irony is not for me. It doesn’t help.

It seems to be our initial reaction to pain, though. And it makes sense. Detached irony to numb out the 3 am panic–easy enough. 

However. It encourages us to hurt ourselves–more importantly though, it encourages us to hurt each other. 

So not ironically, but sincerely. I’ll try to explain where I am right now. I hope this helps someone, somehow. It helps me, at least.

I don’t know how much to share with you, dear reader. Though I hope you’re out there somewhere, my gut tells me I’m talking to myself, who (let’s be honest) is kind of a bummer.

Still, I am hesitant to be wholly open.

See, I want to be reassuring to people who are hurting—to myself. I want, if nothing else, to remind us that there is some other side to eating disorders. To depression. A side where there is less pain, and pain less often. 

That, even so, this is all fantastically hard. 

I don’t feel good, and I think this is my attempt to talk about that. About the fact that this is really fucking difficult—life after recovery. Endlessly worth it, just hard sometimes. 

What’s harder still, I’ve found, is to truly talk about it. To recognize all this pain without detaching from it. 

People find a way however, to get at the pain—to really fucking speak about it. And this is really something.

I try consistently and clumsily to do the same.

I hope you understand that just because I’m hurting, doesn’t mean all this hard work meant nothing. I’m almost sure it meant something.

It meant something, right?

I went on a walk yesterday. 4 miles around a very dark Boulder. It was 9 or 10, and I was remembering all the times I’ve felt worse than I do now. What I found was–we just kinda get through it, you and I. We come out maybe a little fucked up, but mostly just glad it’s over. 

We find some other side. We find it when we choose not to detach. When we sit begrudgingly through the filth we spew at ourselves. 

We find some other side, and it’s better.

I’m in the filth now, but some other side exists. 

I’ll meet you there.