Wallowing around in my little pity party yesterday was very cathartic. I feel fresh as a daisy today. Which is ironic given I had bugger all sleep last night. There never seems to be a direct correlation between the amount of sleep I receive and my energy levels the next day. Bizarrely.

I credit a lot of today’s freshness with the writing challenge I commenced this morning. I signed up for a seven-day writing challenge a while back and today was the big day. I had no idea what to expect, but it was not what I expected. I was excited to log on this morning and be taken to the first exercise which was rather entertaining and very thought-provoking. Not my best writing by a long shot. And could quite possibly win prizes for my worst writing ever.

Once finished, we were tasked with going back and finding keywords or phrases that jumped out and spoke to us, and these were the few I was most comfortable with:

• Bald as a baby’s new butt
• Maternal love demands eternal protection and she’d failed – he was dead
• A child that grew in the family, but never grew in life
• The constant fear of living with her. The constant fear of living without her
• He was fat and fair and round
• While my husband and I indulged in the carnal delights of obligatory marital sex
• Despite a relationship fraught with angst and animosity, the natural safe place to fall was the bosom of her own mother
• We were swept off the only earth we had ever known. Our physical home was swept up into the heavens and held in the palm of a godly hand. And the earth was cleansed.

What does it all mean? Absolutely nothing 😀 The point was not to find meaning or be clever or deep. The point was just to let words flow and see what happened. And a lot of words happened, of which the vast majority were meaningless drivel.
That little exercise got me off to a merry little start to the day. And beginning the day in a merry way always feels nice. It also sets me up to succeed, and as I frequently taught my lovely little students, success breeds success.

Today is the first day in (umm… anybody been counting?)… let’s call it a very long time… that I have not binged, or purged, or restricted. Or weighed myself. Or self-harmed. None of those things. Not one. And while clearly I am still awake, which does offer me the opportunity to fuck up before the day is over, at this point in time I’m fairly optimistic I can see the day through successfully.

One day. Just one.

Maybe there’ll be another. Maybe there won’t. Who knows? None of us can predict the future. But getting one whole day under my belt has felt like an impossible dream. So if I can do it once, perhaps there’s a chance I could do it again. And then perhaps, the sky is the limit. It may be possible for me to find that elusive freedom.

While I was feeling fresh and daisy-like, I not only steered clear of eating disorder behaviours, I also indulged in some self-care. Not exciting things like bubble baths and painted toe-nails – I did boring things like physio exercises, imbibing ghastly tasting medication for chronic constipation, and doing stretches for my neck injury. Boring, boring, boring. Necessary – but boring. I also indulged in the fun self-care stuff as well – I went to gym, had lots of cups of tea, caught up very briefly with a lovely friend, and did lots more writing. All this self-care stuff seems to make a difference. And more importantly, I think I’ve almost reached a stage where it doesn’t feel selfish.

I’m not sure about that though? It could just be that external demands upon me are not huge right now, so there is more time for self-care. I won’t test that theory by wishing for more external demands though…

If daisy-inspired freshness is something to look forward to on a regular basis in the land of freedom and recovery, then that would appear to be quite a motivating factor for getting my butt into gear and walking a lot of the talk, that I have carried on with for so long.

I’m not sure why I am so resistant to change – I know many people who finally get themselves into recovery start making really big progress really quickly. My progress is slower than a lethargic snail with a nasty case of the flu. Mostly bedridden and asleep. It’s time.

This fresh little daisy is going to wake again tomorrow, and work hard to keep this recovery gig a happening thing.