I took a deep breath, and I did it. I quit my job at the bakery. I gave my two week notice this afternoon, and I will no longer be an employee of the bakery as of August 5th. My boss took it surprisingly well. She knew the second I pulled her aside and asked "Do you have a minute?" that I was going to leave. Bless her (occasionally flaky) little heart, she gave me a big bear bug and told me she was really happy for me.

So I guess that's it. I guess I really have committed myself to writing full-time.

I think I'm still in shock. It doesn't seem quite real yet. I have never really done the brave, adventurous thing in my life. I've done plenty of things that are interesting and unusual, but I've never sort of leaped off the cliff and figured I'd learn how to fly before I hit the bottom. I'm harm avoidant. I don't like doing things unless I know how they're going to turn out and that I'm going to succeed (keep in mind, this is a perfectionist's definition of success, too!). I was lucky in that I did many things well enough that I could stay safe and be fairly successful. With my writing, I tested the waters while still saying "safe" and ensconced within my very predictable little world. Although I loved writing and--more importantly--being a writer, I felt compelled to remain on terra firma. Where I was safe, but in high school guidance counselor speak, was "not living up to my full potential."

Have I mentioned that I both hate heights and the sensation of freefall? Both make me want to puke. Kind of ironic for someone in recovery that so many metaphors for what I just did are leaping into the unknown.

I always loved this quote by Anais Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." My therapist back in Michigan loved that quote, and we often discussed it in the context of recovery. After all, one of the factors prodding me forward was the realization that staying in the ED was more painful than facing my fears of getting better and all it required.

Now, however, I'm realizing that this quote is even more appropriate for what I'm feeling now. I'm still the same harm-avoidant person I always was. It's just that I'm seeing the harm in not going for it, in not following my dreams, as well as the harm in falling kersplat on my face and looking like an idiot. There's risk in both. But my harm-avoidant self recognizes more harm in not taking the leap than in staying safe and predictable.

It's quite an interesting change for me. One that is probably going to require lots of Dramamine.

I have these recurring dreams, and have for about the past year.

I dream I am back at the treatment center where I was residential for seven months in 2006. Sometimes the house looks the same, sometimes it doesn't. The residents that are there with me in the dream tend to vary: some of them were actual residents, some of them were girls I knew in high school that likely didn't have eating disorders, but they were there nonetheless. And some of them are totally random people, people that I don't know, have never known, and seem to be sort of "placeholders."

The one person who is always present (besides me, of course) is the one girl (M) who betrayed me so deeply that I can't put it into words. The exact details of what happened are too long to go into now, but I always go back to the treatment center after this event happened.

Another odd fact: there is rarely any staff present. This is probably significant, but maybe it's not.

Most of the action focuses around me and M. How she's languishing there for one year, then two. How she manipulates the staff to keep from gaining weight. This part is certainly true. I even told the director I thought she was full of shit, but that didn't change anything. My motives for telling them were somewhat less than noble: I was jealous. Jealous that I had to eat and gain weight and follow the rules and blech, and she seemed to get every exception in the book and managed to get everyone to feel sorry for her.

Anyway. Back to the dream.

Sometimes what happened between M and I plays a role in the dream. Last night it really didn't. I don't know.