Set Me Free

I've heard a lot of experts talk about the brain and how there are so many different areas, functions, chemicals, sensors, and whatever else we have going on up there. In my experience though, my brain only has two parts. Half of my brain is manufacturing crap…and then the other half is buying it. I don’t just have good and evil relentlessly combating against each other…they’re running a business. And I don’t know about anyone else but the business I have to deal with destroys every facility it rents out space to. Everywhere that my brain goes my body will eventually follow. 
As a teenager I struggled with an eating disorder that overtook every area of my life. The term “you are what you eat” took on an entirely different and very real meaning to me because that was literally all I was…exactly what I ate. When I started drinking and using drugs it was for a very distinct purpose. I would have traded the relationship I had with food for anything at that point and I honestly thought that a life controlled by substances would be better than a life controlled by food. In a way I still somewhat believe that because we all have to eat in order to survive. When I quit abusing heroin I didn’t have to learn how to shoot up only three times a day in order to maintain my health…with food I do.  I don’t have to see heroin on a daily basis as a constant reminder of the unmanageability my life takes on because of it... with food I do. I don’t have to take a portion of heroin every day then pray my way out of the compulsion to abuse it… with food I do.
I read one time that struggling with an eating disorder is a lot like being in a fatal car accident. If you survive the accident, it takes months if not years of rehabilitation just to learn how to walk again. So you fight and you try and you take it one day at a time and eventually you do learn how to walk again only now you have a limp…and it’s very likely you’ll have that limp for the rest of your life…but that’s not what matters. The important thing is that you can walk again. I still have a very perceivable limp…but I’m walking. I remember a time when I couldn’t even stand without falling… so how can I possibly be ungrateful for the way I walk?
It’s not about what’s stopping you. It’s about what keeps you going.