What is Hope?

Hope Hope and more Hope-I want it, I need it, when I have it I want more of it, if they sold it in shops I'd buy it in bucketloads! In my experience of living with ED there have often been times when I've felt utter despair and sorrow, leaving me feeling as though I'm living in a dark black hole. Today I feel such gratitude that as I journey closer towards recovery those dark times are slowly becoming a distant painful memory....I refuse to let such despair exist in my present or future life. Looking back on these days I feel such profound pain I can barely breath. That's not to say that things nowdays are perfect (perfectionism is overrated anyway), there are still some days which are unbearably difficult. The difference though is that along the road towards recovery I'm discovering an inner peace and happiness, which overtime I'm training myself to access when I need it most. Therefore when my head becomes noisy with life's busy song, I can find an inner quiet within me, where everything becomes calm enough so that I can feel my own love for myself radiating through every cell in my body. I like to think of this inner love and happiness being my inner child, the pure version of me which is untainted by negative ED thoughts and just giddy for a life where I can reach my potential. It's this inner peace which I believe is the thing which stops me from falling back into an empty black pit of sorrow. That in addition to an unbreakable, unshakable solid undercurrent which flows through my veins, forms a protective barrier around my heart, filters through my lungs, sings in my brain, illuminates my eyeballs, often invisible yet always felt, sometimes it is so small I fear it may evaporates or other times it bellows in my ear like a foghorn, it's always recognisable even though its form may change or its tune may sound different....and it's name is always HOPE!

So over the past few days I've been thinking about hope, what it is and where it has come from. If you think about what hope really is, it's quite miraculous....it's the belief that something better, something greater exists out there for us, even though we've never seen it or never experienced it. Which I believe makes us ED freedom fighters a remakably spiritual lot! At first when I began looking back over the past painful months I thought to myself that those days were hopeless. No hope existed with me down the deep black hole. But now I think that can't be true. Hope must have lived inside me even then-as much as I restricted myself in every area of my life, hope must have been the thing which kept me alive, which forced me to perform any act of self care or self nourishment however miniscule. I couldn't see a future for myself when I was living down that black hole, yet I must have had hope, enough hope so that I continued to put morsels of food in my mouth, enough hope so that I didn't cut myself off from family and friends completely and most importantly enough hope to say "I dont want to live down this hole anymore, but I dont have enough strength or knowledge to find my way out on my own....I need help please!" I can sleep easy tonight knowing that even in my darkest days, hope will always burn brightly enough to sustain me.

So now onto the question of what is Hope? I've been reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the book Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert for the past few months now. Everytime I read it it teaches me a new lesson or the story sounds different depending on where I am on the road to recovery. One of my favourite passages in the book relates to something the Zen Buddhists believe. "They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognise that there is another force operating here as well-the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born" This to me is my Hope. Hope for me therefore is none other than the future me, and the present me is the acorn full of potential and promise. Its this future me which is my Hope, my future me lives within me at all times, it has nowhere else to go because without me it cannot survive, therefore I should never fear that Hope has escaped me. Hope is the older, knowing me (the already exisent oak tree) who is pulling me through all of this confusion and blurryness saying "Yes-grow! Change! Evolve! Come and meet me here, where I already exist in wholeness and maurity and peace and contentment"

Which brings me back to the present and my task at hand......my mission is to look deep inside and get to know my inner child, ME, the real me without ED, the me which is brimming with life and potential. And while I get acquainted with my inner child I must never ignore my future self, my Hope which is constantly within me, nudging me lovingly towards recovery whispering "Come on that's it, keep going, you're moving in the right direction, you're doing great, it'll be worth it, come join me here in the future, grow and become me, pick that inner child up in your arms and keep moving along this path towards me, knowing already that all is well."

All is well xxx