Passover in Recovery

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Jewish holiday of Passover, allow me to tell you the basics and why it sucks to celebrate with an eating disorder. Passover is the story of when Moses and the Jews leave Egypt and the plagues happen. In a nutshell. Point is that for eight days, we cannot eat bread. Or anything with the five basic grains in it. This makes not losing weight (especially when exercising) nearly impossible. Usually I use this holiday as a means of easy weight loss. I mean it isn't my fault we have this tradition. But this year was different. I didn't want the weight loss. I know what it would mean to my life right now if I lost weight and the consequences were not worth it. Needless to say that after the first five days... the scale was not happy with me. So, I was then faced with an important decision: keep Passover and possibly lose gymnastics or break Passover early and gain the weight back. I will admit that this put my mind in a very weird crossroad. I felt immense guilt over the idea of breaking Passover early. It is a huge deal to not keep it. But the weight loss scared me and so did the thoughts that were coming with it. So, that night I made the decision that the idea of Pikuach Nefesh (preserving life above all else) was able to come into play here. If I lost more weight and went down the rabbit hole again, I might not make it out alive this time. And that wasn't worth it. That is what made this year's Passover so special for me. The breaking of tradition and dealing with the guilt was me proclaiming once more that I can get free from all of this. After all, Passover is about freedom and keeping the Jewish people alive. If I had kept it both of those things would have been gone for me. I know it.

Holidays and traditions are important but don't let them take away your recovery

Stay Strong
xo Aria

The Season Has Ended

Since my last post was over a month ago...you can pretty much assume a lot has happened. So, I am going to quickly catch you up and then talk about why the end of season was so interesting.

This last month has had ups and downs and lefts and rights and all that jazz. I got a prom date, had two meets, met my roommate for next year, and can finally say I am like 90% more comfortable with myself than I ever have been. All of those things have been absolutely wonderful. I've also had to deal with Passover (next post), triggers and recognizing how far I have come. None of those have been fun. In fact that pretty much sucked.

Anyway onto the end of competition season. Championships were held at my gym and that was really nice to recognize so many faces and feel at home. I fell on two of my four routines, which were bi disappointments. Especially my fall on beam. It's my favorite event and I would have gotten my highest score if I hadn't taken that fall. But it happens. I pulled my highest scores on all the other events and at the end of the day was extremely proud of myself. I will admit that it was frustrating and upsetting and I felt awful about most of what I did. Like I had let everybody down. But seeing my coach be proud of me and smiling after my routines, helped me realize that it didn't matter that I had fallen because I had made it. I accomplished my comeback. And someone was proud of me. My all around score went up about three points. And minus missing a skill in my floor routine, I only received .5 in deductions. Basically, after a lot of thought...I am proud of everything I did.

The interesting thing is that not only did I grow as a gymnast over this season...I grew as a person. My symptom usage went down significantly, I am almost a year and half self-harm free, I remembered that the best things in life take work and don't come easily, my friend circle is starting to change, and I now feel like I have a place in life. I had missed out on all of this for so long. I had forgotten about all th hard work and the camraderie and the adrenaline. That is why I love this sport. That is how it has now saved my life.

Now, I leave you with a couple new pictures and couple old. Enjoy!

Stay Strong
xo Aria

Calories Are Life... Great.

In news of the exciting world of me: my team has decided that I am trustworthy enough to get weighed every two weeks. Woot! Except that if I fall more than x number of pounds out of my range then I can't practice till I gain it back. And to make things more exciting... the two weeks leads up to a meet week. So, I actually cannot afford to lose weight. At all. Now because of this,  I have to make sure I hit my calorie amount. Which means counting calories. Which means having to pick up an old behavior. Which kinda sucks. Like I was pretty much over counting calories but now I have to or I'm so screwed. And I don't reach out to my team anymore... so I have no accountability?!?! Pretty sure I messed this up badly. But at least my anxiety can rest a little since I know the calories. Positives?

Try not to pick up old behaviors.

Stay Strong
xo Aria

Let's Take a Step Back

Some of you may have heard of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. And I'm assuming most of you that have heard of him, have also heard of his daughter, Neshama. She is a singer and speaker that travels the country not only to speak about her father but about her own beliefs. This weekend, I was fortunate enough to listen to her sing and speak and get to meet her at my synagogue. First off, she is incredibly talented and so so nice. Second, she brought some really interesting ideas up. One of which is the focus of this blog. (For those who know about her father and don't agree with things you've heard, this is not a post about him. This is simply about Neshama and something I took away from listening to HER.)

During the Saturday morning service, the idea somehow came up that without Jews and other believers...There isn't really a G-D. Stay with me here. Religion is based on the belief of a higher power that has been named. Nobody (alive) can say that they know G-D is real. We believe it to be true. But if nobody believed in a higher power then technically it doesn't exist. Until there is a belief and a name in a concept.... there's nothing. We have G-D because we believe He is there.

I was trying to figure out if this idea applied to other areas of my life. And I think it may actually apply in an eating disorder setting. For almost a year and a half, I refused to "name" my eating disorder. For 6 years I refused to even acknowledge that I had one. Including during a treatment stay. The thinking being, if I had didn't believe it then it wouldn't be real. Once I admitted to having one. It became slightly more real. Treatment became more than a prison... it became torture. But the real change happened when it was given the name, Ana. It became something I was forced to believe in. It had a name. It had backing. I'm not comparing G-D to an eating disorder but the same belief idea could easily be applied.

So the question being, if everyone lost belief in G-D and that made Him not exist..... could the same be true for my eating disorder? If I take away the name, then it's just an abstract idea. Not something I can ask for help or something I can blame for my problems. I think it's possible that I have to do to "Ana" , the one thing I could never do to G-D.

It's amazing what one little statement can help you discover. Always be listening.

Stay Strong
xo Aria

Anger

It takes a lot for me to get truly angry with another person. But I get angry with myself really easily. Especially if I know that I can do/fix whatever it is. There is one skill right now that I KNOW I can do on bars. But no matter how many times I try, no matter how many different ways I attempt.... it just happen. And at this point not only is my coach annoyed with me but I'm so mad at myself. Like it's such a simple skill. And it doesn't scare me. I know how to do it. I just can't seem to get it to happen. It just makes it worse when not only are you mad and disappointed in yourself but the people around you are just as annoyed with you. Especially when there are consequences. Like rope climbs (I'm absolutely terrified of climbing ropes). I just don't know what to do anymore. Maybe I should just give up. Ughhh. But the thing with anger is that it can also be used productively. So, maybe things have a chance of getting better?

Anger sucks but can be a learning experience.

Stay Strong
xo Aria

Can My Team Move On Please?

Treatment team of course. Anyway I need to vent this before I slap someone. So, when I turned 18 my parents and team made me sign a contract to make sure I don't fall on my butt too often. According to this contract if I fall out of my weight range then I have one week to gain it back or I lose practice till I get back into it. Well the grace period was last week and I'm not in my range. So, technically I shouldn't be practicing this week. But I convinced my parents to let me go because I've been super stressed out and need the outlet or I'll actually go insane. Plus the whole taking something away to make it an incentive doesn't work for me. It just pisses me off which makes me want to not eat. Anyway,  I normally have to add more calories on a day with practice but my dietitian still sends me my meals for the day. So, I assumed my mom had told her I was practicing and therefore she had put in the calories like normal. But I figured I should ask. And I got like a really pissy answer back about how I should know that I have to add calories and that she should have known I was practicing and that I should be reaching out more during the day if I'm going to be confused. Like okay I get it, I broke the contract. But at the same time... I'm making an effort to make sure I hit my calories.  Don't be mad at me. My mom said she would take care of it. So don't be so annoyed when I have a question. I can't wait to not have this team in a couple months. I'm so done with them. They don't even really help anymore. I say I need help and they basically have me help myself because I know what to do but when I don't reach out they get mad because I should be asking for help. Like no. Pick a darn side.

Sorry. Rant over.

Stay Strong
xo Aria

Honesty is the Best Policy

This weekend, I have had the opportunity to be at two incredible events. Where I played the exact opposite roles. The first was being in my final play at the local drama center. I was Alice in Alice in Wonderland. And the second was seeing Demi Lovato in concert...again. I'm going to talk about those in their respective order and then explain the title of the post. So, needless to say, being in your last show is possibly the most emotional event in theatre. Half the cast was crying. But it was more important to me that I leave something for them to remember. Before each show we go around and people say things to get us all in the right headspace. And today mine was different. I couldn't say that we would do amazing and then be ready for our next show. I don't have a next one. So, I left them with two messages that go together. Number one was to make life what you want it to be. If you hate what you're doing then you're going to hate life. You have to have fun. It's just necessary. And number two, don't let the success of show one take away your energy for all the shows after because then you are truly doing yourself and the audience a disservice. To put that into real life terms, put your all into everything you do. At the end of the day you have to be proud and know that you tried your best. I cannot believe this journey is over but it is time to move on. And that is okay. I know it is. Now for the Demi concert.  Demi Lovato has gotten me through so so much. I actually would not be alive without her and her music. Going to her concert and hearing her make a speech and singing along with thousands of other people who love her just as much is the most invigorating feeling. It was exactly what I needed right now. That sense of hope. Here is where the title of this post comes in. Until tonight, I didn't realize how dishonest I was being with myself. I've stopped reaching out and eating is becoming harder and self harming keeps coming up as an idea. But I've been ignoring all of it because everything else is going so well. Even weirder is that I've started to want to ignore the fact that I ever self harmed or that I have an eating disorder. I don't want to recognize it. At all. And it wasn't until Demi's speech tonight about reaching out and reducing stigma and the fact that you can conquer anything...did I realize how far I'd fallen without noticing. I admit it,  I'm not pulled together as much anymore. And that is honesty.

Reach out when you need to. Someone will be there to listen.

Stay Strong
xo Aria