I think it’s a pretty common thing right not to be struggling. We are going through a pandemic and life is so uncertain. People are scared of getting sick or being a carrier and getting someone they love sick. They are lonely at home or if they live with others unable to take time for themselves. Our routines are completely different and it’s hard to figure out a sense of normalcy. Almost everyone I know (at least in the US where the pandemic is still hitting us hard) is struggling with food or weight. I don’t know anyone who says they are doing just as great as they were before.
Struggling sucks. Even when you know that you aren’t alone in the struggle, it doesn’t necessarily make you feel better. And I know that I’m struggling right now. There’s no question about it. I’ve written about different struggles I’ve been having and I think that having an outlet to write about it has helped. But it hasn’t made it go away.
I want to say that I am ok and nobody should worry about me. I’m safe, I’m healthy, and I’m going to be ok. I am not worried about myself or if I’ll be ok because I know I will be. I just sometimes struggle randomly or my brain doesn’t want to remember that this time is temporary and eventually it will be done.
But even though I’m ok, that doesn’t mean I’m ok every day. I don’t believe that I have depression, but I know I have symptoms of being depressed. I am not enjoying some of the things that I know make me happy. There have been days that I wished I could just sleep away the day and thought maybe somehow the next day would be more interesting (even though my days don’t have much variety). I deal with loneliness a lot. The lack of physical contact or touch with others is a big struggle. I crave some of my normal life back and that’s just not possible.
I am working on being more social with friends and family in ways that I can be safely social. But even when I’ve had weeks where I was talking to someone on the phone or had a Zoom hang out almost every day, I still feel lonely. Being alone in my house isn’t easy. If I lived somewhere bigger, I might have asked a friend if they wanted to stay with me during this time so we didn’t have to be alone. But that’s not exactly an option for me right now. And I don’t know if seeing a friend from a distance is going to be enough for me. I know it helps because it has given me a boost when I have done it. But I also wonder if I won’t get the same boost now as I did before because I’m struggling more.
And I know my physical health is struggling too. This time is exceptionally hard for anyone with an eating disorder. I know I’ve gained weight in the past few months. Some of it is possibly stress-related, but I also know that I haven’t been eating the way that I should and my workouts aren’t as hard as they normally are. So it would make sense that I would gain weight. But I hate it. I feel really uncomfortable in my body right now. I want to get my weight back to where it was. I would prefer to work on losing weight again, but just to get back to where I was in March would be so nice. I’m trying to do the right things to get myself back on track, but then I slip up. This feels so much harder than any other time with my eating disorder and I wish I could figure out what I need to do to start getting back to the old me.
I remember seeing something on social media about how we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves now to ourselves before the pandemic started. We aren’t the same people that we were before. We are dealing with things that we never have had to go through. We are trying to live our lives through a pandemic and it’s a mix of normal life and everything being crazy. Struggling right now is normal. And it’s also normal to reach out for help. I have reached out to my therapist to make sure that I shouldn’t be worried about how I’m struggling. And I’ve been told that I’m doing ok, but if I feel like I need some help then we can discuss medication. I don’t want to go that route yet (just because of how often I deal with side effects), but I’m glad it is an option I can explore if I feel like I need it.
Hopefully writing this all down is going to help me feel a bit better about things. I can tell that it does feel like a bit of the weight holding me down has been lifted. I don’t know if this post will help me find a way back to the old me or a way to get back on track, but right now all I want to get to is to feel like I’m not struggling as much. It’s a small goal, but it would make me feel so much better.
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