Saturday, June 18, 2016

A final post, and thanks

All good things come to an end, and I've realized it's time to close the doors on my blog.

I want to thank everyone, particularly Fairy at Organised Castle, Megyn S., EcoCatLady, Cindy at Growing Her Worth and Nicola B. for your support and readership over the years.

The motivation to write disappeared with the magic bipolar drug cocktail. My ability to write fiction as well has disappeared, but I'll take that in exchange for losing the horrible emotional swings. My readers also deserved responses to their comments, and yet I couldn't get the motivation to do that either, so I made the decision to stop writing.

But it's also something for me to celebrate. The blog was my therapy. It was about getting the house organized and decluttered (done!) and about reducing my impulse-shopping habit (much improved).

My eating disorder is largely under control. Binges only happen about once a month. I'll never be fixed, but I can live with one binge a month. That doesn't destroy my life. Neither does restriction. I can't remember the last time I counted calories. A few weeks back I was at the supermarket behind a woman who had piles of exactly four food items in her cart: rice cakes, lettuce boxes, tuna cans, and plain greek yogurt containers. Not only wasn't I triggered, but by the time I'd paid for my own groceries I'd forgotten about it completely.

That's recovery.

I've let family back into my life. A lot of cognitive behavioral therapy has helped me to forgive both of my parents, understand that they are never going to get help, and realize that I can still have them in my life for very short, controlled periods of time.

I still have a lot of hard work with the bipolar. My emotions still swing. I still have a lot to improve on and I'll always have to keep working on myself and working on not over-reacting. But for now I want to work on having fun, on learning to ice skate, on having the ED-free life that I was denied in my twenties.

Thanks to everyone for your support.

Zoe.