I'm looking for myself, but I can't find her

struggling with presence, my eating disorder, and depression

“Breathe in and out. Just this moment. Yesterday is gone. I love you. In and out. Just this moment. I love you.”

Half awake, still dreaming. Daylight cracks through the gap in the old French doors that cover my bedroom window. The sun trying her best to pry them open.

Whispering, “wake up, Rachel, the day is passing you by.” But I fear the nightmare is worse in the waking, and I don’t open my eyes.

I binged again last night. The time between depressive episodes, eating disorder, panic, and dissociation is getting shorter. Or maybe the symptoms are a part of one mega-disorder—some diagnosis they haven’t created yet but surely will someday because of me.

I’m sick, I think. What if I always will be? What if I never get better? and how will anyone ever love me if I don’t?

I think this is my biggest fear. Bigger than what I might lose if I leave my eating disorder behind. Bigger than if I stop drinking. Bigger than the person I won’t get to be anymore if I really choose recovery, but wrapped right into the grip of the fear of who might want me without the body or spontaneous spirit I so associate with my sickness.

My biggest fear is that no one will really love me, because I’m sick.

That my ex-husband left me because I was too difficult to care for, and therefore always a problem to be solved. And who loves a problem?

Read more about my eating disorder & divorce in my memoir, Where the River Flows.

I called my mom in tears.

“Mom, I just don’t know what to do anymore. I feel like I’m dying inside. It’s intolerable. I’m so angry that this ever started in the first place. It’s ruining my life.”

“How is it ruining your life?”

She asked both genuinely, and in the way my mom sometimes asks these questions when I’m not well—with a hint of disbelief. As if I’m exaggerating or making it up. A story in my head that simply isn’t true.

In a way, it is a story. My mind wraps itself into negative feedback loops where everything is ruined, my life has no hope, and I will be stuck in pain eternally.

The story is rooted in history, and, spins out of reality with my thoughts.

It’s both.

I’m desperately trying to find some relief from the spinning. A way to slow the wheel so I don’t get so far away from reality like I am now. Becuase this feeling, right now, is unbearable. Despite a lot of wisdom, I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop crying, my body feels foreign, and I’m scared. I let myself feel the feelings, but they keep coming. Is it just pre-menstrual hormones? Is it loneliness? Is it grief? What keeps pummeling me into this abyss where I feel like I really might not survive?

This week I’ve been trying to focus on my theme of the season (presence). I’m trying to practice one thing in the moment. I’m trying to model what I preach, and stay with my body when feelings arise. When thoughts get scary. When it feels like too much. I’m trying to stay present and away from the future, away from the past, and with what’s really in front of me.

But what’s really in front of me is clothing that doesn’t fit. Swollen eyelids and a lack of hunger. Hormones raging through my body that feel like a nauseous river inside my blood. Am I supposed to sit with that and be ok? Do I have the panic attack that keeps rising, or try, as both my parents suggested, to distract myself?

I have so many questions and no answers. I just want a hug from someone who loves me.

“Do you want to come home?” my mom suggests.

“I can’t keep coming home when things get hard,” I say. But I want to. I want to be somewhere safe. Where I have physical humans who know me. I feel tired of starting over, and don’t feel like I even know where home is anymore.

One thing at a time. One thing at a time. I repeat this as I walk myself to the shower. I repeat it as I open my laptop to write this story—something once again I feared I might not be able to do because I have no answers. How, in one week can I write so knowingly about the benefits of presence, then just days later lose all my ability to find the peace it’s supposed to offer? One thing at a time. You’re not a hypocrite—you’re messy. This is part of it. You’re messy. You’re ok. One thing at a time.

This is all I have today. One thing at a time. One. Only one. And good god I hope it gets easier.