Not together; but getting there. Still.

Last year, I packed my Birkenstocks, rain gear, retainers, and all the wrong clothing (because international weather woahs) and went to Poland and Germany. I have a liking towards split-second decision making. When I am folding laundry, I often times look at the map on wall to my left and catch a glimpse of the countries that home the people I met on that trip. . .

Australia, floating on my map brings me to my friend who walked through Auschwitz-Birkenau with me and said my shared thoughts, but with the most pleasant accent. I had been robbed the morning before and didn’t make the time to get money to buy breakfast in Krakow, so, I left for the journey with no food or money. Sometimes I do stupid things like that with the unconscious suggestion that I can go a day without eating.  On the two hour trip back to Krakow, I sat next to my new friend and evidently drooled over his apple and not Subway sandwich long enough for him to force them over to me. What do you even talk about with someone who you met at a tour of a concentration camp? Kangaroos, koalas, and whether or not Americans really drink purple soda.

The young Polish tour guide who walked us through the death camp stood right beside me and told us what happened to the vast majority of babies born in Auschwitz. As if a rehearsed speech, she described to us so many horrific scenes, things you struggle to believe to be fact. While standing next to 3 level bunk "bed", we were told how the SS (Schutzstaffel--Nazi military) roughly delivered human babies of prisoner's and immediately drowned them. In whatever bucket available, forcing the new mother to watch. Two people, the Australian and I, not knowing even each other’s last names, experiencing this unimaginable nature of the human condition, of the depths of despair, the history of mankind. 

Silently panicking on my first night in Berlin, I sat in a tiny red chair in the lobby of my hostel (Circus Hostel, wonderful place) and hadn’t a clue how I was going to interpret my map to locate a place to eat dinner. Stomach demanding I find food, I walked up to a girl checking in and asked her if she wanted to go eat with me. “Yes!” siiiiiigh of relief.  She was in college, and was going to meet up with her boyfriend in London later that week. She laughed at the way I talked but liked that I took pictures of the flowers on the streets.

The two girls from the UK who were 21 and traveling Europe before graduate school. We met some other English speakers and went on a tour of Berlin together the next day. All roaming the streets together, taking pictures at Big Ben, enjoying the togetherness of English-speaking company. How refreshing to sit at a table with people from 5 different countries, traveling independently, and have an understanding for each of our individual need to travel the world. No "why would you travel alone? Isn't it lonely?" But instead, "what country will you travel to next?"

 The girl from France who looked identical to one of my best friends here. She said I looked like an American cheerleader who dated jocks. She told me she liked to go out to clubs until 4 A.M. and dance with her girlfriends. I liked her. I hope I see her again. 

My newfound friend from Columbia who told me all about her dad’s new wife, the one who is pregnant with a new baby, 23 years her junior. Her and I walked through a cemetery that was parallel to a row of remains of the Berlin Wall. I took pictures of the head stones and flowers and she didn't think I was weird; she pointed out better shots, no time line, no reason to hurry. The fear she had about the president of the United States changing the peace treaties with her country. She bought postcards, I bought stationary. She laughed when I had to run ahead to take pictures of German dachshunds. She is just who you want to meet one day when traveling alone in Berlin.


I made a new friend a few months ago. She's from here, from America. She's ten years behind me chronologically, but so similar, still. Before we met, we already knew so much about each other. I was miles ahead of her journey, but on the same path, we shared similar stops. Of course she had on a baggy sweat shirt that swallowed her entirely. Black coffee, drinking it with confidence as those beans don’t create energy by means of calories.

When I was in third grade, I spent so many days crying while trying to figure out the complexity that was long division. It was impossible, pointless, and entirely out of my reach. I watched the other kids (especially my genius best friend) worry-free faces as they worked the problems on their work sheets. I had tear spots on my papers because I just could not get it.

My new friend, she wore jeans, baggy and covered with those frayed holes. She couldn’t sit still. Fidgeting with her straw. “Can I ask you a question?” followed by, “were you scared to gain weight? Did it feel impossible? Do you think recovery is a real thing?”

As I would sit across from her, drinking 150 calories of flavored latte, I wondered if the people who tried to help me during my darkest days felt like I did right then. She was Confused. Scared. Emotional. Alone. I felt the same in regards to the distance her eating disorder created between us.
 Some call it survivor’s remorse. The feeling of “why me”, do I deserve this freedom from the chains that completely held me down most of my life? Offering her suggestions and then seeing her blank stares as they bounced off of her right back at me. “It feels impossible." And I know that feeling...so deeply I know it. It doesn’t seem real.. because misery, misery will find you when you eat 3 meals and then sit. You are surrounded by the vulnerability, the loneliness, the fear of the unknown. Never did I see myself as someone who spoke of "recovery". I never believed in it; why would I? I didn't know what it meant, where to look for it, or how to accept it. 

But. I’ve been working towards recovery from an eating disorder since I jumped on a life boat and checked myself into another treatment center. Hundreds and hundreds of my days spent in a hospital and treatment centers. I decided I live or I die and I wanted desperately to find out how to live. Eating things like bulgur wheat, squash pizza, and morning glory muffins. Learning that my eating disorder was something my mind created to keep me alive. Because when you aren’t old enough to understand trauma, your body memorizes it and keeps bringing it up by way of disordered everything. Your body, it never forgets.  In order to survive, our homeostatic bod creates a strategy. Without knowing it, your brain has been re-wired. Control becomes a way of life. Establishing control over anything, especially your own damn body, is how it keeps keepin’ on.

After my mom died, I ran quickly back to an abusive relationship and hoped for completeness in the return of its chaos. I pushed away family, friends and the frontal lobe of my brain (you know, rational decision making). I got lost in the whirlwind of disorder and dysfunction. I didn’t know how to live anymore. I realized my attempts at actually “recovering” had been incomplete. I hadn’t been able to rationalize recovery.  I was too scared to let go. I needed the control the eating disorder provided me. I needed self-destruction. It fueled me.

My new friend is sick. She knows it. She is scared of who she even is without her eating disorder. She’s 21 and scared of what everyone will say about her when they find out she isn’t just skinny. She’s starving herself to death in order to try and stay alive.

Like many other times, we recently sat across from each other at our favorite coffee shop. I start the conversation about anything I can grasp on to that isn’t her eating disorder. I want to find her, first. When you share your life with a mental illness, it’s crucial to find you first (so, dig if you must, but don’t forget about you). This time, I couldn’t. All I could do was try to stop my tears from falling down my face. My friend checked herself in to treatment last week. The reality of treatment for an eating disorder is gruesome and terrifying. Spending months at a time surrounded by professionals who are paid to discuss your trauma, your underneath-it-all pain. She can do it. She will do it because she won’t be alone.

“If you don’t change your mind, you will never change anything”, said Winston Churchill. We all wander around this world wondering who, if anyone understands our specific pain. Questioning our ability to ever really be “okay”…we compare our joys and fears as if hoping to reach a conclusion. We all have such a tremendous amount to offer and give to one another, but, we get stuck in our own heads; hoping to keep our heads above sometimes murky water. When we stop to listen/see, it’s unbelievable how alike we all are. We have the same needs, wants and so on and so forth. But, what’s even more unbelievable is how different we all are: how unique each of us is and how important that makes us. Spend time getting to know yourself enough to tell your story and be proud of it. To use it as a life raft for someone starting at square one of the struggle you have stumbled through and over.  We were created to be connected. To share our stories and ideas and mystery meat sandwiches. We all have something to say that matters.

So…. Say it. Do it.

Cortney