ever feel like life is trying to tell you something?

the other day, on a break from classes, i went to D'Angelo's to get a veggie grinder. This boy behind the counter kept checking me out. i thought this was all in my head at first, because i don't get checked out much these days anymore, but when he gave me my sandwich he gave me this real swoon-worthy look. you know the one. like he looked deeply right into my eyes and he gave me this nice smile. some guys really know how to do this look properly, in order to melt a girl into a puddle of girl ooze. this boy did it for sure. then he was like, "have a great night" (nice smile again). i left on a cloud, because like i said it's been a long time since anyone has given me any indication that i was attractive. oh, there was this guy at walgreens a couple months ago..but that was just a creepy experience.

anyway. i stopped off at the supermarket after class tonite (geez, i'm always buying food, huh? wth)... and who is standing at the deli counter but D'Angelo's boy! at least, i think it was him. and gosh, do i look like hell today. i think i'm getting the flu.. i've been feverish all day.. i'm all decked out in sweatpants and a hoodie, barely alive, and i see this cute boy again. i practically run away to the other side of the store. about 10 minutes later, i am gazing into the freezer with all the frozen veggies in it, trying to figure out what to get, whilst practically passing out from fever. and i get that feeling like someone is looking at me. you know that feeling right? i look at the reflection in the glass, and he is walking behind me, clearly trying to decipher if i am the same girl from a couple days ago..or whatever he was looking at me for..but he definitely was looking.

he kept walking, and that was that. for now anyway.

stuff like this weirds me out. first of all, it makes me uncomfortable that i should feel good about other guys possibly (unless it's all in my head) finding me attractive (i have a boyfriend!). is it wrong to be happy about that? should i be immune to normal laws of attraction because i'm in a relationship? should i want to be found attractive by other men other than my boyfriend, or is that kind of like wishing i was still single? is this indicative that maybe something's missing in my relationship? hmmm...

I was reading a blog earlier today of a woman around my age, who fought with Leukemia for two years-- and this past July, finally lost the fight. A couple months before her death, one of her blog entries contained these words:  "...at a wedding I saw a bunch of guests smoking outside.  I felt so bitter that they were actively/knowingly damaging their bodies and they aren’t the ones dealing with cancer."

I look around at people here on xanga, at my friends, at my classmates, my boyfriend, and of course myself-- and I feel so ashamed sometimes for the things I do, that so many of us do. We knowingly poison ourselves, cut our lives short, take our healthy bodies completely for granted, and destroy them in a myriad of ways-- whilst physically ill people are doing everything they can to try to keep their bodies healthy, to stave off life-threatening illnesses they did nothing to deserve. Why are we so jaded? Why don't we appreciate our healthiness, our life?

As you know if you've read my blog, I'm more than guilty of causing my body great amounts of destruction just as much as anyone else; so I'm not one to judge anyone's actions by any means. I have had an eating disorder for years upon years. It's been going on so long now I can't even remember how or when it started. It has seemingly come and gone to various degrees. I have been in "recovery" for the past two years or so, and have been trying very hard in that time to adopt a healthy lifestyle and drop all my old habits-- and I have indeed succeeded in many areas-- but a couple of my habits do persist and haunt me at times even still.

When I think about all i've done to my body, i am so utterly ashamed for treating it so carelessly. But I have learned to channel that guilt over past mistakes into continuing to fight for staying as healthy as possible.

Let me back this up a little bit and tell you about my parents. My father passed away when i was eight years old. I found out years later it was a drug overdose, and I harbored alot of anger at him for that for a long time. I felt he really should have been stronger, that he should have known better than to make such poor choices and do such risky things when he had four children that needed him. I felt like he should have loved us more than that. Of course, things like addiction aren't that simple. But in my younger years, it always felt that black and white to me.
Fast-forward to six years later. I am fourteen, and I get the news that my mother has throat cancer, directly caused by her heavy cigarette-smoking habit. For the next four years, she undergoes chemotherapy and radiation; but she never quit smoking. She received a possible death sentence, and had the opportunity to at least try to reverse things by dropping her addiction, and I honestly felt like she didn't even care enough to bother. She eventually passed away from the cancer, shortly before I graduated High School. I distinctly remember standing with her on the portico outside her hospice room, about a week before her death, as she smoked a cigarette. I will never forget just staring at her, wanting to knock it out of her hand, wanting to scream, "how could you let something so stupid take your life?!"

I never really thought of my eating disorder as being on the same level as my parents' addictions until recently. I held a good deal of anger regarding their choices for a long time-- for not taking care of themselves, for not valuing their life, for poisoning their bodies. And now I recognize I am guilty of the same error. The ED was threatening to steal my life from me, just as their addictions did them; with the behaviors I engaged in related to my ED over the years, I very well could have died. And honestly, I'd have had noone to blame but myself if that had happened. I grew up completely healthy, with no health concerns whatsoever, not even so much as a cavity. And I chose to attempt to destroy that health. Seems so utterly ridiculous sometimes when I think about it now.

Don't get me wrong. I recognize entirely where these types of actions come from. I know that a large majority of EDs(and quite possibly other addictions) come from places of extreme emotional pain and suffering. So it's certainly not as simple as saying "hey, I'm just going to stop this and be healthy now", because it's so entwined with so many other internal factors. For me, the ED behaviors served as a coping mechanism, a way to achieve emotional relief and numbness. A lot of tragic things had happened to me, and I was desperately trying to push that pain away. I understand that feeling, that tendency to want to relieve that sense of hopelessness.
But this technique only goes so far. At some point, you end up in a much worse situation emotionally than where you started. And you recognize the only way to heal is to deal with all the pain inside; no amount of starving or purging or drinking or anything else will ever make it go away, I promise you that. Your temporary relief will lead to much larger problems in the end. Before you know it, years will pass; and you will wonder where the hell they went. You will realize you spent them counting calories, taking pills, leaning over the toilet, guarding secrets, isolation, or engaging in many other manners of self-destruction. You will come to realize you devoted those years of possible health, happiness, and achievement to something that was worth nothing, that gained you nothing, that solved nothing. Maybe you will be lucky, like me, and you will still be young enough and strong enough to reverse things, you will still have a good shot at getting better. Or maybe it will be too late, and you will be physically unable to repair the damage to your broken body; broken by your own hand.

Obviously, everyone can live their life as they see fit to do so. Whenever I have tried to encourage anyone I know of to consider quitting smoking, it's never been met with positivity. Their response is always something like: "Why should anyone else care? If I want to kill myself, fine, I'll do it, it's my life." Doesn't that seem absurd, though? Why have such a blatant disregard for your own life, for your future, for your physical wellbeing?

No matter what the reasons for your addictions are, everyone still has a choice to fight them. Is slowly killing yourself and neglecting your body worth whatever you're gaining from it? Is it worth someday leaving your children without a parent (far too soon), or perhaps your parents without a child? Is it worth giving up your dreams, your goals? Is it worth risking your health, risking destroying your body which now runs so efficiently? If it isn't, then make that choice not to trash your body first, and deal with the other underlying issues later. Do everything possible to elicit a change. Don't wait until it's too late, when your body has given up on you. When you trash your body, you trash your life. There's really no getting around that.

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." e.e.cummings