What if?

What if I am just like everyone else? Folks who are in recovery from something, and maybe even everyone else, will wonder at some point who and what they are without their disorders-be it addiction, eating disorders, cutting, etc. This is a question I have been pondering lately.

My DP will maybe groan at this, but in all honesty I have a hard time seeing what others do about me. Since I was 12, well, 8 really I have been defined by some "issue". Whether it was sexual abuse, anorexia/bulimia, self-mutilation, drug addiction, blah blah blah. Now it comes to light many years later, with a lot of therapy and growth, that I might be getting to the point where the things in my head and the things I deal with are N .O.R.M.A.L.

But what does that mean for me and my identity that has been defined for so.many.years by the negative things I have done? How do I get attention? How do I make my needs known? How do I deal with rejection, hurt, shame if I don't have/use those things?

In therapy today we started talking about sex. Now, I don't talk about sex. This is one of those issues that stays locked away in a tiny box and rarely comes out to play. Something came up and we started discussing this and a conversation that was had last week at a local restaurant with a few friends of mine while out to dinner. Here we are chowing down on our meals and someone talks about how she wants more . . .then it leads into "self-care" . . and it just keeps going. It occurred to me today that I would have liked to be more present in the conversation, but my head was intrenched in why I couldn't be-sex is bad, wrong, dirty, blah blah blah. I know these are my issues, but when it comes down to it I want to have less issues and in order to do that I have to talk about the very thing that makes me want to vomit sometimes.

Where was I going . . .oh, yeah. So what if I am just another patient talking to her shrink about sex? This is normal, right? People talk about this stuff, and other stuffs and they don't allow their lives to be defined by these things. People recover and grow up and want to be contributing members if society.

I know I am rambling, and lucky for you all it is a post-therapy ramble, but seriously. I know I have said this before, but I don't see all the time what others see in me, and I am working at closing that gap, but in the meantime I secretly, or not so secretly right now, am excited about a life that is built on other things and not on the destructive and negative things it has been thus far.

There you have it. I still have a post in me about food issues, but my brain hurts and I need to zone out on some TV.