Time to be Honest

There is a time for everything. Time to be excited. Time to be curled up in a ball crying. And yes even a time to lie. But right now is the time to be honest and just spill your guts. Let yourself have word vomit. Give someone else the pleasure of listening to your innermost thoughts come out. They want to listen and be there for you. Not giving them that chance is detrimental for everyone involved. If you just need to cry and scream about how awful life is, go for it. If you want to smile and laugh how amazing a date was, go for it. Don't hide and numb your emotions. If you lose the bad ones, you also lose the good ones. And good emotions are amazing. I know feelings are scary but running from them is hard work. Energy that could be better spent on enjoying your life and everything it has to offer. Let yourself see where venting can get you.


Stay Strong
xo Aria

Thoughts

Wake up. Why am I so fat? Go to sleep. Why did I eat so much today? Wake up. I am so huge. Got to sleep. Tomorrow I fast. That is how I get up and go to sleep every night. That is normal, right? Well, I don't know. Sometimes I wonder what people without eating disorders think about at those points. Is it all about food and weight? Are there no thoughts at all? Is it all about things they're excited about? What is it? Gosh, I wish I knew. Maybe one day I will. But for now I can only imagine. Is it rainbows and butterflies? Is it all about how to survive? Something tells me I'll never know. That I don't want to. My thoughts are safe. Not for my health but for security. Anybody have an answer? What is life like without these constant thoughts?

Stay Strong

xo Aria

Why I Chose to HEAL

Project HEAL recently started a campaign to get people to share why they decided to recover. Here is mine.

I decided to recover after seeing how eating disorders truly destroy incredible people. I want to help people and show them that they don't deserve to suffer and that it can end. I want to be so much more than a statistic. I want to learn to live life without numbers and restrictions. There is nothing left to get from my eating disorder. That is why I chose to HEAL.

Stay Strong
xo Aria


theprojectheal.org
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Project-HEAL/168349076519864

Time

So many basic words have complicated connotations. Like life, fun, and time. Try putting those three words together. The combinations and feelings are endless. Does life revolve around fun? Or does it revolve around the time we have left? Is fun a waste of time? People read into everything, when the real feelings are right on the surface. Life is a period of time that should contain fun. That’s it. Everybody deserves to live a fun life. Having an eating disorder takes away that aspect of life. It’s all about time, time eating, time starving, time exercising, time purging. There’s no time to just live. There’s a misconception that people with depression and eating disorders just hate life. It’s not that we hate life; it’s that we envy those who truly get to live it. Before you tell somebody to suck it up, remember how hard they’re trying to just survive, never mind to live. If you are only surviving I invite you to step out of your number controlled world for just five minutes. I guarantee you will learn something new.

Stay Strong 

xo Aria

That Little Kid in You

Chasing Butterflies. Finger Painting. Playing with Silly String. Jumping in Puddles after it rains. Just loving life. What time of life did that make you think of? I would guess early childhood when life is carefree and fun. But what if I told you that you have that five year old inside of you, right now, just dying to get out? There's a reason your eyes light up when something magical happens and a reason you get excited over little miniscule things. It's because inside you are just a little kid stuck in a "grown-up" body. Like when you used to play dress up and think you were thirty-five and going to work. The sooner you accept and love that little innocent kid, the more fun you get to have. I'm seventeen years old and my favorite thing in the whole world is watching magicians. Yes, I know it isn't real and it's just an illusion. But magic is magic. My eyes still light up when someone pulls a rabbit out of the hat and I hate when people try to explain the tricks. I would sooner watch a Disney princess movie while holding a stuffed animal than go out and get drunk. There's more to life than wanting to be an adult and working all the time and not letting loose and just having fun. Have you ever watched a three year old eat? There is no regret or thinking or health concern. If they want a cookie, they will eat a cookie. If they want you to eat a cookie, you will eat a cookie. Life as a little kid is all about how to be happy and have fun. We all have that ability inside of us. I think we just lose sight of it too often in the hustle of everyday life. We often hear that age is just a number. Which it is! Some people are alive at ninety and some people are dead at twenty-five and not buried till their eighty. Why be dead for all those years? Go outside, have a water balloon fight, watch a G-rated movie. Just live.

Stay Strong xo

Aria

Body Shaming

I really despise body shaming; yet, I’m the first to shame my own body. I talk about how body shaming is a horrible and terrible thing but I do the exact opposite. I look at myself and I see many flaws. I am not perfect. I pick apart my body and my crooked nose, my teeth and hair, etc. I can come up with many different things that make me unworthy of even being looked at by another person but I can never quite come up with one thing for someone else.

Why is it so easy to pull out other people’s likeable features but so hard to not do that with my own? It’s because my own perception of self is warped. I refuse to see what others see of me because I don’t believe I’m worth it.

I try to wrap my own brain around this: how I view myself and how I put value on physicality. What makes a person worth more than another? Do these aspects of ourselves really dictate what a person is worth? Everyone has worth and everyone is worth being. It’s taken me a while to realize that, to see differently and not dwell so much on all the ‘wrong’ but what I’ve done right.

I try to look past the struggles even on the hardest days to find even the tiniest, shred of hope in someone or thing but more so in myself. We have all come so far. We have all fallen but we get back up and when we do we should look at ourselves with compassion.

Look at that man or woman and say, you’re here and you’re worth it because I love you for you. A body is place we should call home because it is always with us .We must take care of ourselves. Body shaming isn’t taking care but taking strong action against your body like abuse.

We are all beautiful in our own ways regardless of physicality because we are the very definition of beauty.

By: Emme Lisbeth

Our Guest Blogger is back! POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING

I keep the number like a mathematician. The girl who failed functions and could barely deduce ½ into anything other than ½ but when it comes to calories it’s different. Math is easy. I am elite. I am intelligent. I can cut hundreds here and 5 fat grams there. My division is flawless, much like my subtraction. Multiplacation is unnecessary. I add only when I eat more than I should and soon enough that will also be rendered useless.

It was ½ an apple 40 calories, 2 saltines 26 calories, cup of tea 0cal. This was breakfast, lunch, and dinner: a grand total of 56 calories, which puts my other intakes to shame. I am immortal. I am everlasting. I am the god to my own ‘temple’ one that is dissolving. I don’t see it though. I see strength. I see power. I breathe in quickly and blink rapidly to keep from blacking out. It’s a struggle but I manage.

My heartbeats sluggishly inside this cage I call my body. It’s a wondrous though, all bone; the skin that is there clings helplessly to what remains of me. Sometimes I imagine it to be melting and I am weightless but sadly, I am not. I am a massive lumpy heap of girl that must push harder, faster, to keep up.

The room begins spinning and I sink to the ground, lie on my back. I begin to do sit-ups. 25 would’ve been enough to burn off the gluttonous amount I ate today but I will do 100 for good measure. I ache with every crunching of disintegrated muscle. My heart quickens. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and the litany of numbers continues. I am so tired.

I am so weak. I can’t do this. Yes you can. I can’t. You can. Now do it.

8, 9, 10, 11, 12…it goes on and on and on until finally…

Everything stops.

She was always smiling. They’ll say. She was good at helping others. She was great at English but they’re all wrong. I was a mathematician. I was perfection…well, I was when I was alive.

*All credit to Emily Santilli

Stay Strong xo

Aria

Happy New Year!

Sorry guys! I know it's almost a  month into the New Year but that doesn't mean we can't keep celebrating! A new year is a great time to start over and make this year the best one yet! Full of adventure and fun. I am personally psyched to see what this year can bring! What is your New Year's resolution? Mine is to do one thing I love every week.

Stay Strong xo
Aria