Get Off The Ice

I thought it was decent of him to meet with me again. I guess in his job you see people at their lowest & feel some sense of responsibility for doing what you can, even when you’re not ‘theirs’, not their patient. To want to give someone who’s struggling that message of ‘we’re all in this together,’ of ‘I’d want someone to do the same for me or my loved one’, that’s a generous thing. 

I appreciated the kindness in that act & it helped to reinforce that I had a problem at a time when I was obstinately adamant that it was no big deal.

I wanted to skip ahead quickly, get ‘better’ by doing it my way and was beyond desperate for the answers to “what do I do?’ He gently brought me elements of realism with some honest examples, indicating there is no quick fix for eating disorders, that no matter what I thought, I wasn’t in control of this illness nor of its’ trajectory & that that wasn’t my fault.

Perhaps I was able to hear him & was open to his advice because the decency & understanding he’d shown me had quickly built trust. In those first few months I continually came back to his advice ‘‘you need to get off the ice first”. 

I wouldn’t say that I gracefully pirouetted off the ice like I’d have hoped, rather I stumbled, crashed through, clung on & literally caught myself pneumonia in the process. But none the less, I made it off the ice.