The Trinity. The Three amigos. The Three stooges~
THREE
I left for treatment three months ago. THREE. I can't believe how time has flown. All I know...is I am out here at Capri (the step down after intense inpatient where I resided for 9 weeks) and am so blessed and grateful to be ALIVE. I feel the sunshine. I feel the ground beneath me. I feel joy- fear-pain- love. Emotions. Things I pushed down and starved out in my disease. God is it hard. But God does it feel good. I feel human again. Winter is back~ And not the cold, bitter beast that invaded me before I awakened~
The loving, laughing Winter I knew was underneath the bone-shaking cold and the numb appearance.
I got to live this weekend~ My daddy and his girlfriend Sherry flew down from Idaho JUST to see me this weekend. My daddy held me and told me he was proud of me. That he forgave me. And that he loved me. NOTHING could have felt better than that. I am so blessed to have a family who loves me and wonderful friends here and throughout my life, scattered around the country who I can count on.
And a Higher Power who I am forgiven by and who knows all the details~ Thank you GOD~
I wanted to share the letter I wrote when I arrived at Capri~ My letter to my eating disorder.~
Thank you all for your prayers~ Your thoughts~ Your unconditional love. I am living proof that there is a God and He can do miracles if we allow him to. AMEN~
~Goodbye Letter to Ed~ By Winter Groeschl~
ED:
We met when I was just a child. You began as a subtle whisper, your intoxicating and exciting fantasies of acceptance and love drew me in. We were immediately joined at the hip as you followed me around like a dark shadow. You knew my deepest secrets and my greatest fears. You then proceeded to take advantage of all I confided in you, stabbing me in the back with piercing daggers dripping with perfectionism, worthlessness, isolating, and self loathing. You took my precious innocence- my carefree childhood curiosity and tainted all I did. My once colorful world became engulfed in sickness, oozing with anxiety and fear. As our enmeshment progressed, your whispers heightened into blood curdling screams preventing any healthy thoughts to circulate into my convulsing brain. Tormented by you and you alone every second of every day- all 86,400 of them. I would crawl into bed and hide under the covers to try to drown you out, yet even when I was able to deceive the insomnia, your putrid images invaded my dreams.
I felt such shame and disgust with myself and my body. You convinced me I was worthless, dispensable, and deserving of nothing but death. I believed that I was destined to remain a slave to you forever. Or until my very own hand would end the immense suffering.
ED, I cannot, I WILL NOT, accept this disease as a part of me. I DO NOT equal you. The things I do in my disease are not definitive of who I, Winter, truly am. When I think of the things I have done while cohabitating with you, I am irate. I am ashamed. I have missed out on so much and caused so much pain, confusion, and discord in the lives of those that I love. I believed I needed to punish myself. I needed to starve the bad out of me. To beat my body of all the iniquities I had committed. To run off my feelings of self-loathing. I was running from me. The more weight I lost, the further I was from that 12 year old girl I was so ashamed of. My own flesh tormented me. It was not enough until I had hit bone. And even then you were still there, relentless. My attitude of stubbornness, perfectionism, and need for control drove me to insanity.
Now I must learn to become fluid, like water. Flexible, wiling, and surrendered. Yet I keep returning to you. Taking back the power and handing it to you willingly, without hesitation. It makes me sick to think I keep trusting a vial creep like you. With your sick seductive lies wooing me back to you over and over. Your sweet promises of control, your voice beckoning me, trying to convince me that I need you. That you are all I deserve. “Only thinness cab equal acceptance and happiness,” your voice whispers. Your harsh tricks and murderous tactics of using the reflections around me to remind me again and again on the horrendous image of myself, me the monster that I see and feel.
You gave me a sense of control when my world was in the midst of chaos, a coping mechanism for the stressors and fluctuations of life- a sense of accomplishment when I felt that engaging in your lifestyle was the only thing I was truly good at. You numbed my feelings and erased all emotions, the bad AND the good. You were my only friend when I had successfully pushed everyone else away. You allowed me to scream out HELP, using my body to communicate the pain I was in, when my mouth would not form the words. Verbalizing my needs and wants was too intimidating for me, thus my desperation manifested itself physically. However, this maladaptive way of living has taken its toll. You have shattered everything and left me broken, my life scattered in a million tiny pieces. And here I am trying franticly to glue the shards back together. The process is intensely painful and slow. I have blood all over my hands and torrents of tears escape from my eyes. Doubt and discouragement overwhelm me. Yet you underestimate me. I am a stubborn ass. I want healthy relationships with my family, friends, the outside world, my Higher Power, and MYSELF. Maybe in the future, a man who will love me in ways you NEVER could. I dream of finishing school and finding a fulfilling job that gives me that sense of accomplishment and purpose. My passion in life will now be to give back and help others overthrow your tyrannical reign, you disgusting filth. That is all I feel like with you- FILTH. I may have felt temporary feelings of power, but it is all a fallacy. If I stay with you, I would just acquire more shame and guilt, which I already have quite the collection of thank you very much.
I am exhausted from remaining stuck in this cycle of self pity for years. All I can look forward to in staying with you is isolation and disconnect from the world, myself, and my Higher Power. Mental, emotional, and spiritual deterioration. And an inevitable, gruesome death. I lost myself. I don’t want to do it again. I am choosing to let go of you because I choose to feel my feelings- to take a risk- to encounter the chance that there is more to life than your lies and believe and trust that I am meant for more. Thus, I will be open, willing, and surrendered to my new best friend- my Higher Power. I am letting go. I am submitting to the plan God has for me. Plans to prosper me and and not harm me. Plans for a new and different future. So this is goodbye. I will not miss you. I will not shed a tear. I will not look back. Rot in hell and leave me and everyone else you prey one ALONE. How does it feel?
Sincerely NOT,
Winter~
