Sometimes I just want to sit down and write a book about what the heck it is like to navigate your 20s having recovered from anorexia and while managing anxiety.
It's like you have a plan until you stop being able to function like a human, you ditch the plan and get help, you start to think you are able to handle having a plan again, you make a plan, and then the real world hits and you try desperately to keep hold of said plan while keeping your head above water.
Everyday I am so proud of myself for having come this far, for being able to even think about moving out on my own, for being able to not only function at a basic level, but to succeed and start looking at the future. However, at the same time, I struggle like a lot of twenty somethings with knowing what it is I want to do with my life, where I see myself in 5, 10, even 15 years, how to get to into the career I only think I want because I haven't actually had any experience in, or even how to navigate the simple grown up things like taxes and budgeting.
REMIX!
I stumbled on this draft almost exactly one year after I started writing it and *spoiler alert* only some things have changed.
2017 was a year of intense learning curves. My boyfriend and I went to Europe, celebrated one year together, bought and renovated a house, subsequently moved to a town where neither of us have family, and got a puppy.
There, I've done it. I successfully moved out on my own without any catastrophic implications.
We made a budget, have an accountant to file our taxes, manage a household and a puppy, and are still best friends. In fact, sometimes it is like he is my only friend. It as been very difficult to maintain friendships while juggling a full time time, an hour commute, and living an hour away but thankfully I have the most amazing friends who bend over backwards to come visit me or make time when i am back home.
Despite all of the changes in my life this past year, so much of how I was feeling back when I originally wrote this piece, is the same. I am still struggling to figure out what it is I want to do as a career, I still struggle with anxiety that at times is all consuming, and I still don't know how to do my own taxes (hence the accountant).
There are times when I look in the mirror and I repeat over and over again, that it's progress not perfection that matters. And to be completely honest, sometimes I just have to fake it till I make it. There are still times when I feel so uncomfortable with my body that I change my clothes 10 times only to put on an outfit that I have worn a thousand times before because it is in my comfort zone. I sat outside of the gym everyday for a week before I gathered the courage to go inside. I am not afraid to admit that I am not in the place I thought I would be at 25 but I am moving at my own pace, moving forward, taking steps for me and that is what counts in my books.