Over the last nine weeks I have finally been able to commence my clinical fieldwork as part of my university degree. In many ways I have felt happier than I have felt for such a long time, despite the immense pressure and internal hardship associated with this time. Attempting to manage the demands of work, while attempting to manage anorexia and my health has been an exhausting struggle. At times I have watched myself falling short again and again, but my determination to continue on has been stronger than usual. I have wanted to pick myself up and grit my teeth and bear the agony of my mind being torn apart by conflicting thoughts. Last column I wrote of the power of dreams and hope. Being able to connect to my dream of one day being a health professional by learning and working in an actual workplace context has refreshed my tired soul. The context of my placement has also given me more belief in the power of dreams.
Working with children with multiple disabilities has taught me so much about keeping hope and belief in both the beauty and potential of life despite the hardships. The children and their families I have been working with have and continue to endure so many hardships, setbacks and difficulties. Being in that environment reminds you constantly of the beauty of life and potential that each one of us holds to develop. I have had the privilege of meeting children whose parents were told they would never walk or talk etc. But I have heard those very children talk and sing and watched them walk. Each human being has the potential to develop and we all have to keep faith in that. But sometimes the development can be so slow. Yet, even the smallest step forward can mean so much. I think we all get so caught up looking for and trying to achieve ‘great’ things or see significant changes in our own lives or in the lives of those around us. We are so focused on the ‘important’ outcomes we fail to see the small steps, and become disheartened. Even though those little steps are the ones we need to develop and achieve the ‘big’ things.
I know I am so guilty of this in my own life. Sometimes I even choose to be blind to the steps and little changes in my life. Sometimes I get so downhearted and overwhelmed by the momentous task of trying to ‘beat’ anorexia. The last few weeks this has been a real struggle for me. Turning twenty-one triggered an emotional eruption inside of me. For the past weeks, my thoughts have been tearing my mind apart. So much chaos and turmoil inside. There is a lot for me to deal around birthdays. The whole societal pressures of celebration, presents, parties and most difficult of all the food and cake tears at me. This birthday has been worse than all the others I have faced since becoming sick. Turning twenty-one is considered such an important event. Everyone seems to celebrate the ‘coming of age’. Yet I couldn’t. That tore me up inside, because I look at my life and see the darkened clouds. A grey and empty landscape and skyline stretching endlessly before me. A stark contrast to the brightness of the sunshine that the past and future radiates in the lives others my age have. I watched a treasured friend celebrate her twenty-first, the pure elation and excitement she radiated that night, was so foreign to me when it came to facing my own birthday. I guess a part of me mourns that sense of disconnection from the world and people my own age, haunted by the fact that I don’t share in and exist in the ‘world’ I am meant to be in.
For me my birthday has become one such a miserable day, full of torment. I am haunted by the associations that come with it. It seems to symbolise everything I have destroyed by getting ill. All the dreams I had that have come shattering down at my feet. Their fragments scattered into a million tiny pieces that I cannot place back together. Dreams of the past, present and future. I never imagined anorexia in my life, yet now I know nothing else bar it. I cannot help but look at the emptiness and utter desolation of my life on such a day. I feel I achieved so little and lost so much all because of seemingly utter stupidity.
Also, I just am filled with the memories of my Nan. Remembering the pain of knowing she was dying the night of my eighteenth birthday and that I couldn’t be with her, and that I never had the chance to say goodbye. In many ways I am filled with the guilt that I am a disappointment to her. Her death sent me from a slow slide towards anorexia’s arms, into a spilt second free fall. After my eighteenth birthday- the world I knew ceased to exist. When I look back, it’s like looking back at somebody else’s life. I am flicking through a faded photo album of a stranger. All the images and memories that appear in my mind belong to someone else. This stranger’s former thoughts, appearance, joy in life running through my head and I cannot touch it. It is there haunting me, yet it means very little to me.
That is my dilemma. I cannot connect to who I was, so I have no ground in which to stand on in trying to rebuild myself and my life. It’s like trying to build a sand-castle in quicksand. I am told in order to get better I have to create myself outside anorexia, realise my potential outside of anorexia. Yet anorexia is all I am nowadays. It has become my identity and being ‘anorexic’ is all I feel is that I have the capability and potential to be. I have become so aware of this labelling process working on my placement. The children I work with are so often quickly labelled the ‘disabled child’, and that label becomes their identity and defines how they are perceived and treated by society and those within in. Yet one of my greatest joys has been seeing these children be their unique selves. Being able to learn and share in each child’s own personal quirks. Able to watch them just be who they are, regardless of their diagnosis, how they look, behaviours they exhibit. It saddens me knowing that so often our minds close down. People stop thinking and just use their own assumptions as a basis for perceiving and communicating with others, especially those who they see as ‘different’. We are all guilty of this, and cannot stop ourselves doing this. But being aware of the way our mind works and challenging ourselves to think differently may stop us becoming so blinkered and blinded in our actions towards others that are ‘different’.
The way people interact with us, is so fundamental to who we become and whether we can achieve our potential. The interactions we experience give the seeds of potential within us the chance to germinate and take root. The skills we learn and achieve. The behaviours we exhibit and most importantly the way we perceive and think about ourselves are moulded by others around us. For me, I know the spoken word or that ‘look’ I see in some people’s eyes when they look at me is very hard to deal with. All I can hear in my own head is their judgement. My voice echoing ‘all you are is anorexic’ or repeating their misinformed words over and over in my head. I lose myself in that. Lose sight of who I could be. Lost in only being what I can see in the reflection that the world shines back at me. Lost in what others tell me I am or to be. Lost in what my skewed perception tells me I am. What I look like. The fat monster or the skinny rat? I cannot always tell the truth. I cannot see who and what I could be. That is why I often fail to see potential and hope in my own life, despite my heart believing in it and seeing it in other lives.
I am fortunate though to have others remind me that there is potential in life for me. That there is potential in all of us to change and achieve. Sometimes it is a battle just to hold onto that belief. I need others to point out the small little steps when I get overwhelmed and disheartened at the enormity of try to recreate and rebuild myself. I think sometimes, we all need to step back and give our seeds of potential the opportunity to first take root. Instead of getting disheartened that they are not fully developed trees blossoming with flowers.
Just like the children I have worked with, each little skill has to be developed first. That first sound needs to be articulated, or that, first little muscle fibre needs to strengthen, and then the next one and the next one. Thread by thread, the fabric is woven. Each little step forming the underlying basis for the beautiful tapestry that will one day be formed. Sometimes it just takes so much energy and even wisdom to believe that each little thread is creating something. That each individual thread is necessary, in achieving the overall picture and acquiring the end product. We just have to try and stay focused on that. Delight and celebrate in the little things, rather than be disheartened by the perceived ‘lack’ or ‘failure’ to achieve or create something. Sometimes it is the journey and the process that is more important and the learning that occurs along the way rather than the actual end outcome. This is a challenge for each one of us: To learn to believe and hope in our own potential and, also work to see, encourage and develop potential in others around us.