In a recent post on her Psychology Today blog, The Dance of Connection, Harriet Lerner wrote about how to live a courageous life. Most of her advice was amazingly simple things like speaking your mind and being a friend.

I get frustrated sometimes that my life seems so ho-hum boring, or that I have it too easy. Other times, I get upset that no one can see how hard even the simplest of things can be- deciding what to eat for breakfast, or getting through the day without having a massive meltdown. Although some of this is a matter of learning how to give myself some credit, some of this needs to be redefining courage. My friend from grad school called working on her novel "an amazing act of courage." This isn't the kind of throw-yourself-in-front-of-a-speeding-bus courageous, the acts that take a split second and yes, were very brave, but they also didn't have a lot of contemplation involved. That isn't to say that these acts are less courageous, but that it's a different kind of courage than is required to overcome an eating disorder.

When I started recovery from this last relapse about a year ago, all I could see was an endless line of meals and snacks and Ensure in front of me, stretching for the rest of my life. I was filled with terror and dread. Yet with enough support and encouragement, I was able to start eating and facing down my fears. Almost 2000 eating events later, I'm finding meals take less courage but still require some proverbial girding of the loins. I eat even when every fiber of my being would really rather not, when I feel like a bloated Heffalump, and on days when I can't imagine why I'm bothering to try and get better anyway. However mundane it may be, it's still courage.

I think of my aunt raising her autistic grandson. I think of all my friends rebuilding their lives after an eating disorder. I think of my best friend Libby as she fights various medical issues. Courage. It describes them, and it describes me.

Lerner describes some seemingly basic ways to live more courageously. Be sure to add yours in the comments section!

The courage to love and to create.

The courage to know another person and be known.

The courage to see yourself clearly.

The courage to bring more of your authentic self into a relationship.

The courage to be generous and patient.

The courage to have an open mind.

The courage to have an open heart.

The courage to live your own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.

The courage to honor a commitment.

The courage to endure when something terrible happens to you or a family member.

The courage of heroism in the usual sense, that is the willingness to sacrifice everything because you believe so strongly in something.

The courage to get through the day.

So I've been at my new job for two weeks now, and I must confess it is much different than most of my previous jobs. For starters, I am busy all the freaking time with no moment to catch my breath, check my phone/Twitter/email, or even visit the restroom much. Almost all of my jobs in the past decade have entailed me, sitting at a computer and reading/typing. At the bakery where I work now (I know! I know!), I'm on my feet for the entire 8 hour shift, running to and fro and doing tasks with a minimum of intellect required. That's not to say that my co-workers are stupid--far from it--just that the work itself doesn't require a huge amount of higher level thinking. It's more like "smile--take bread--put on gloves--slice bread in machine--put sliced bread in bag--hand back to customer--smile." I'm not scrutinizing a scientific study and my pay reflects that fact. That being said, I rather like my job.


My back, however, does not. I have a herniated disc in my mid-back from a cycling accident about 8 years ago. It has ached on and off, but it rarely causes me much distress. That has changed somewhat. Oh my holy, my back aches by the end of my shift. I stretch and touch my toes as much as possible, and it has gotten a little better as I've gotten used to being on my feet. Ibuprofin helps, but not all the way. Note to self: find a massage therapist.

I haven't had any hilarious customers (nor would I blog about specifics here- I like being employed, thanks), although I have fielded some oddball requests. No, I will not make you sugar cookies using your own cookie cutters, and no, I really don't think the slice and bake kind are too much work. But aside from that, no royal jerks and so all is well.

Physically, the job is pretty demanding. The ovens in the back kick out a lot of heat, as do the refridgerated cases, so I sweat heaps. The upside is that I almost never have to go to the bathroom in spite of drinking 3 bottles of water during my shift. One would think that the demands of my job would have made me unusually hungry, but it really hasn't. I don't know whether this is because my hunger sometimes doesn't strike, that I'm eating by osmosis, or that it's stinking HOT back behind the counters, but I don't really get hungry at work. I have gotten hungry after my shift, perhaps because I'm sitting and my brain has the opportunity to process those little stomach signals.

Being around food--specifically food that I would have found extremely distressing during the height of my eating disorder--hasn't really been an issue. I don't in general feel comfortable sampling the overpriced baked goods I'm selling, in part because I fear my potential nibbles adding up into pounds of weight gain, but also because I don't know how to make it work with my meal plan and I don't know how to work it out with my mom (the general rule is that if someone doesn't see me eat it, I didn't eat it). I realize that this is part of the legacy of an eating disorder, and I don't blame her for being cautious, as I've run wild with these excuse in the past. But next week we will be discussing it with TNT, so that's good.

There is a nutrition information binder for the items we sell, and I was a little shocked to realize that the desserts weren't as high-calorie as I had feared. A few caught me off guard, but most of them were easily workable into my meal plan. The irony is that I would be not overly anxious having a cupcake, say, for a snack, it's just that I worry about having a bite of a cupcake. And not just "a bite" but I fear that that one bite will turn into two and then half the cupcake and then the whole thing and then I'll be applying for jobs at Sea World. So I don't know how to account for that one bite on my intake for the day. Logically, the solution would be to tell myself that it's just one bite, but we all know that EDs aren't logical, so we may as well drop that pretense.

Overall, this job has been a good thing. I am a lot more comfortable just being around food compared to when I started, and I'm able to start contemplating incorporating bakery items into my daily intake more often (albeit only after I looked at the nutrition guide, but whatever). None of my co-workers talk about dieting and weight loss, which is a huge relief, and I really like everyone I work with. No one there has called me "Captain Cupcake," but one of the bakers calls me Pookie. The irony is that's my nickname for Aria so I keep looking around for a tabby cat whenever I'm called Pookie.

The steady income helps with my stress levels, as does the fact that I will have health insurance on June 1 and can cancel those COBRA payments. I think I can do a preliminary guess that this job will work out just fine. I keep wondering whether I should tell management they hired an ex-anorexic to work in the bakery. Oh well. At least they don't have to worry about me stealing stuff out of the case!

I'm guessing I'm not the only ED person to struggle with this thought: that recovery somehow means giving up, that it somehow means failure. Failure and I? We don't mix.

It's odd- my most spectacular failings have not only occurred in this past decade, but they've also been the direct result of my eating disorder (ie, being basically kicked out of school, placed on medical leave at work, having left more jobs than I care to count to seek more treatment). And it's true, these things do make me feel like a failure. Many of my friends have careers and children, and I'm living with my parents. Thinking about this doesn't exactly lift my self-esteem.

Yet the problem remains: if the eating disorder has been the one thing that has uniformly screwed up my life, how can recovery be a failure?

The answer? I see my own recovery less an embrace of the future and more of a throwing in the towel and admitting I couldn't hack it.

Who's shocked that this attitude has left me less than fully recovered? Anyone? Anyone?

The odd thing is that I don't view other people that way- I get excited when I learn someone else has kicked the ED to the curb, or has finally decided to seek intensive treatment. I can see it's such a positive step. But it's almost as if my Puritan Work Ethic has gotten twisted into the eating disorder. That same work ethic that allows me to study and write for hours on end, that has kept me out of blinding debt, is the same ethic that says "Don't give up now!" Silly Carrie- quitting is for babies!

I love the quote that says "Quitting something that is bad for me isn't giving up," although I could never quite convince myself of it. I'm not sure quite how to see recovery as something other than quitting or giving up. I can tell myself all of the things I would be able to do without the stupid eating disorder following me around, and that's something (that is, admitting that the ED is actually preventing me from, I don't know, living my life), but I still feel SO TREMENDOUSLY GUILTY for "giving up" and gaining weight.

Maybe, in the end, I won't be able to convince myself that recovery didn't somehow involve "quitting" just before I showed everyone how good I could be at this anorexia thing. It helps to know that I'm the only person that thinks this, but one thing I haven't learned is that you can't have it all. There are always choices and trade-offs. Give up food and free time and sanity to gain a semblance of control over your life. Maybe I'm intellectualizing this, but it's fairly simple math- is the price of whatever worth paying?

So yeah, I'm quitting anorexia and giving recovery a shot not because I'm a quitter and just gave up, but because I realized that anorexia just wasn't worth it anymore. It's like saving for a new car to realize that your old one works just fine, as soon as you get the brakes fixed, and you would rather use the money on a trip to Europe. Not quitting. More like repurposing. For me, it's repurposing my time and energy and life to something that will be more rewarding.

Next task: find that something...