SERENDIPITY
- Luka
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
When I first heard the term serendipity and learnt of its meaning, I immediately thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. Serendipity means happy fortune, good luck, joyful chance. It's not just about having fate, it's about the fate in itself being positive. Whether or not the events in my life that have unfolded were my destiny or not, many of them involved suffering, like the way I have from mental illness, trauma and bad health. But much of it has been serendipity, and I forget that. If you have anorexia or you are related to somebody who has anorexia, you'll know that it rips up everything good about one's life and turns it upside down. You don't forget the good parts because they're not there; you forget the good parts because the darkness seeps into everything that has light. It is with that in which I write this blog post. It is for myself and others to remember the parts of their destiny that have undoubtedly been serendipity, despite it all.
I grew up with a single Mum. You might be wondering how that fact embodied serendipity for either of us and in all honesty, there were many challenges we both faced as a result. For her, she was incredibly isolated financially and emotionally. And for me, I lacked a father figure. I believe that no matter what, my mum and I would've developed a close bond, but I undoubtedly believe that being raised by a single mum is what brought us close to the extent that we became. As a very little girl, our bond was reminiscent of magic, the kind that would stand out amidst a sea of mothers and daughters. It was just her and me, nearly all of the time. We talked, played, went on adventures, had morning hugs, movie dates and road trips. She didn't treat me like I was a kid; she spoke to me as though I was older than I was, and she took me everywhere she went, even to parties and events, not because she had nobody to take care of me but because she liked to be with me and I liked to be with her. In her arms, I felt like the safest, most special girl in the whole entire world. Although we were mother and daughter, we were on the same level in the sense that we weren't only Mother and daughter, we were sisters and friends. Just as she learnt to confide in me, I learnt to confide in her. In fact, I think I've told my Mum nearly every single thing that has ever happened to me. For the time that we weren't together, I was with my biological dad. But our tainted relationship often left Mum picking up the pieces of my heart that were constantly being broken. From a young age, I learnt that I couldn't depend on or rely on him. It was she, my light, who was the only one who always, and I mean always, loved, believed, respected and cared for me. Her not being with him signified to me what a woman deserved. No matter how alone she felt, how desperate she was for companionship or money, she never once crawled back to him, never once let down her guard, never once put me in the situation where he was a part of our special world. She taught me the epitome of what it was to respect yourself and have healthy relationships. It was the foundation of everything I would ever learn about the world. Serendipity is all of that in addition to every nuance and crevice in between.
My biological dad was there, but somehow he was never really there all at once. I don't think I was ever a priority in his life, a sad truth I never became accustomed to. As he chased other parts of life, I kept chasing him, often beyond the face of the cliff. Heartbreak: something I learned by the time I was seven. I told my Mum that I didn't want to see Dad anymore because it hurt too badly to be left, to be forgotten, to be second-hand news. When I decided to see him again, he was enthralled in the flurry of it all, but it wasn't before long that everything went back to the way it had always been. Except now, it was worse. Now he blamed me, resented me, slowly but surely learning to allow parts of himself to despise me.
He taught me to hate myself, and I truly believe that to be the case.
Our relationship officially ceased when I was seventeen, but it died many years before that. It died the day I turned seven and wanted to die from the agony of our love. Serendipity - the antithesis. Can you imagine what it was like for me when my mum met this strong, good and honest man who loved me, wanted to be with me and spend time with me? It changed my life. Drew wanted to be with me and my mum through the parts where we laughed and the parts where we cried because he wanted to know all of it, everything that came with being a father. And like it is in a family withholding a wonderful father, our good bits were so good that nothing else ever mattered. I'd gone my whole life wanting a certain type of Dad, and out of the blue, that exact picture was right before my eyes. It was the day that came and the one that never left. Serendipity - my now, Dad.
It wasn't until I sought treatment for my eating disorder that I met another person with a diagnosed eating disorder. Throughout the entirety of my digression and all of my schooling, I felt and thought that something was inherently wrong with me as I battled my own mind day in and day out, bitterly alone, left to my own devices. Nobody around me truly understood, not before it was too late. The only things I ever remember being taught about the world of eating disorders were either at school from a clinical point of view, in movies, drastically mass generalised and stereotyped or from recovered influencers online, pro body positivity and struggling significantly less than somebody like me, going through the motions of one. At the point in my life when I founded my blog, I felt hopeless about my position, as though I'd lost so much and didn't have much more left to lose. My two focal intentions for my blog were for it to be:
#1 An outlet for my suffering.
#2 What I wish I'd had from the ages of 9-now.
But #2 was a fantasy, something I yearned for so desperately that the idea that there was a possibility of it happening felt too good to be true. I never imagined when I started my blog that I would help so many people who were a part of this horrible world I knew find a sense of peace or understanding. It's truly inextricable for me to describe the elation I find from reading messages every day that my blog has had the power to change the world. Serendipity is the fact that I made for others, their families and their friends the thing I always wanted, the thing I never had.
To this day, I find serendipity to be among the most beautiful words in the world. I may have my down days, maybe more so than most, but I also have the pleasurable good fortune of saying I find serendipity every day, by the bay with my Mum, my Dad and my blog.
Kisses,
COS x
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