Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes

A little while ago in therapy we did an exercise where I was forced to imagine my life in 6 months, a year, and five years, still acting on eating disorder behaviors. This is something that I never think about, at least not in concrete terms. When I think of the future, somehow I am always recovered and fulfilled, happy and living a life I enjoy. My eating disorder is never a part of it.

The thing is though, five years ago, when I was thinking about my life five years down the road, I never imagined my eating disorder would still be a part of my life now. I always assumed in some abstract sense that somehow in the time between then and now I would recover, and things would just be different, happier, better. I didn’t know exactly how that would happen; I simply always assumed that it would.

            Now, I am not trying to say that I have come nowhere in the last five years, because I know that I am eons from where I used to be. But thinking about still acting on eating disorder behavior five more years down the road really terrified me. Picturing that future, it is so easy to imagine how I would get there, so concrete and simple. I know exactly the steps I would have to take, and they are very easy steps to take, steps that are familiar and that I am very good at. When I think of the future I want to have, it is so much less clear. It is fuzzy, not as easily imaginable. Although I know a lot of the aspects I want in it, some of the things I want to do and be five years down the road, it is not so concrete as the other future. I don’t really know how to get there, all the steps I need to take. Just that it will be a much harder future to get to.

            This scares me. It scares me a lot. I know how easy it would be to fall into that other future, the one that I have never allowed myself to picture, the one that makes me sick just thinking of. It is the exact same way I allowed the future of five years ago to become the present. It would be so thoughtless, and so easy, and so concrete in my head, and I can see it happening. However, The other future, the one I want so badly, will take so much more thought, determination, hard work, and many many conscious decisions on my part not to let that other future slip back in.  Because I know that if I’m not conscious of it, and let myself be vulnerable to it for even a moment, it will be there, and I will be in jeopardy of losing the future I truly want for myself.

            This activity in therapy was really a wake up call. If I don’t want that other future to become my reality I need to fight for what I really do want. It is so easy to make excuses for the short term. “Oh just this one last time and then I will be done” “No one will know, it wont make a difference” “I will start over tomorrow”. But if you allow these short-term decisions to undermine your resolve, they will easily turn into long term consequences. Suddenly it is just one last time, and one last time, and before you know it its five years down the road and still just one last time. 

            So, I realize that every single action and decision I make must be purposeful, thoughtful, and dedicated to creating the future I want for myself. That is a hard thing to reconcile with, because it is a lot of work, and a lot of farsighted commitment, and it would be so much easier to simply fall into that future that I can so clearly see.  But that is not what I want for myself, and not what I deserve. So, I am going to make the commitment, and try to live more purposefully, trying to recognize that every action I take right now in the present, is working to create the future one, five, or however many years down the road.

            No one can create the future I want for myself except me, and I cannot create it by doing the same actions that have kept me stuck in the past six years. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Thanks for reading!