I Do(n't) Love Life

Life is indescribably hard. It hurts you, it makes you cry, it makes you sick, it makes your heartbreak and it makes you bleed. And it could almost kill you when you realise how much you've missed out on as you've been struck by the lightning that is its events, trauma and people. But I believe that life is meant to hurt so that you can experience the elation that it is to love it. I haven't genuinely loved life for a very long time. I hadn't loved life for so long that I'd forgotten even my memories of times in which I remember being in awe of it. It got to the point where I became so desperate to feel something that cutting myself, starving myself and isolating myself became the expired glue barely allowing the breaking pieces of my heart to stick together. But for the first time in years, I've begun to say I do to the thing I'd missed so desperately... my relationship with life. And these are those moments, these are my hows.

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I used to have the feeling often that I loved being alive until one day it had been so long that the feeling felt not only foreign, but I'd forgotten that the feeling existed. As a child and adolescent, I would fall in love with sunrises and sunsets, so much so, that I would wake up at 4 am just to watch it rise on the water's horizon. Four days ago I was watching a sunset with my girlfriend next to me, my parents in the front of the car and my dog on my lap and I had this moment with myself where I thought: how good life is right now? And how happy I am to be alive? Though my thought was simple, after the fact, when I gained the realisation about how long it had been since I'd felt that way, it became a moment that was in actuality, monumental and heartwarming.

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My connection to my friends and family has never been lost, but over the years it's become increasingly complex. Losing your personality to an eating disorder is a numbing feeling. As an out-of-body experience, you watch yourself fade into a type of darkness within yourself, your spirit leaving, making way for a now-hollow space in your body. You don't just lose your personality and connection with others. You lose the memories you never get to make, the things you never hear yourself say and the choice to do the things you now cannot do. So in seeking to regain the simplicity of a connection I once had, I found the joy and pleasure that it is to truly be with those who mean the most in the world to you. I felt the butterflies in my stomach flutter incessantly over the stupidest things. But they weren't stupid to me. They aren't stupid to me. Not anymore. I will never again take for granted what it is to know somebody, to have them fall asleep on your shoulder because they trust you, because they feel safe with you, to sit on the balcony first thing in the morning having a cigarette and a coffee, to dance at a random hour of the day, hand in hand, looking into their big beautiful eyes and thinking 'Fuck, I love you.' To love is one of the greatest feelings in the world, a feeling I've missed so deesperately, so melancholically, so endlessly. 

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I missed wanting to be a part of situations involving food such as family dinners, dinner dates or the exploration of food at carnivals or events. When I stopped trying to 'get out of' eating and looking for every excuse not to eat, I allowed myself to implement many more opportunities for happiness in my day-to-day. It also heavily reduced the confrontation between my family and me, increasing our ability to be with our friends like family and family like friends. I missed the flurry of being with people, the pleasure of socialising and the freedom of choice and wanting. 

Oh, how beautiful it is to exist amidst the ocean of others.

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I desire to feel free like the birds, bound only to the dawn and dusk, the hearts of those I do life with and the sound of my name. I desire this because, for so many years, I've only desired to reduce my size which has brought me nothing but misery, pain and isolation. I want more, even if it is just for now, in this moment. Don't you wish that too, for yourself? Allow yourself to dream a little and I promise it'll begin to become real.

All my love,

COS x