I was baptized today. Into icy waters. Plunging into death, for life. I met the ghost of YES and brought her back to life.
Let me backtrack a long way.
When I was in my late teens I became anorexic, nothing after that ever was really the same. Life lost its lustre, its joy, its colour. Of course there were the underlying issues that led me to anorexia, but subsequently anorexia took me to a whole new level of fear and entrapment and like I said, nothing was ever the same after that. My life became about calories, weight, reserving energy and staying thin at all costs. When that became too hard, I turned to bulimia. After a few years battling the shameful, addictive cycle of bulimia, I was offered a second chance (whole other story). Overnight I stopped throwing up, but my head was still a battlefield of shame, fear and pain. To add fuel to the fire, this was all throughout 15 years of abuse from my former spouse. So life continued to be a war in my head. Until 5 years, by the grace of God, I was taken on a journey and shown a better way.
I would have these faint memories of being a little girl and laughing; free and uninhibited. I spent years longing for that little girl to once again emerge; curious, unashamed and full of life. But I didn’t know how to get her back. I tried so hard, but eventually just drowned out the memories and became numb. I didn’t understand why I was the way I was, why I struggled so hard at life, why I couldn’t just pull up my bootstraps and tromp on into the future. I didn’t do the things I wanted to do, I was paralyzed. It’s been 22 years of living life in a coma. Not actually fully experiencing what it’s like to live, not risking anything. I've had a pulse and not much more.
22 years.
That’s a long time to be asleep. It’s a long time to not do the things you want to do. Over the last couple years, through much heartache and grief, something in me started moving, and the layers of caked-on mud that have kept me stiff, still, and immobilized have started to break off...
And today, I woke up...while sitting in a hottub, surrounded by people I love. And I ran as fast as I could, down to the lake, into the icy waters, and dove under. And rose again, fully alive, to meet the little girl that laughed; unashamed, and dancing.
I met my YES to who I am, who I’m made to be, and I was born again.
