Some days it’s still easy for me to get caught up in my own “me-ishness” – something that I know I used to talk about a lot more often than I have recently. Yesterday, I spent much of the day in my own way. I know, shocking, right?

After the post about about what was going on, however, I decided that I needed to clear my head a little bit. I went out to join others who were rallying in response to the election day decision in Maine in DuPont Circle where even that hateful woman Maggie Gallagher showed up (presumably, to delight in the sadness of those in attendance – many of whom were simply pissed and ready to put that anger to good use, including Michael Crawford who, with the crowd’s help, called her out).

Sorry, I digress – caught up in a moment of frustration over that still. Anyway, when the rally started, there was another group already in the space. They were from the National Women’s Law Center, and they were taking the time to read letters by women who had been denied healthcare coverage based on a variety of circumstances – rape, c-section, mental health issues, and other pre-existing conditions – that may or may not have impacted them if they weren’t, well, women. One of their members addressed the marriage equality rally, discussing the importance of healthcare for those in the LGBT community.

As it was (at least) the second time that I’d seen someone draw the two issues together yesterday, it definitely got me thinking. I believe in the need for healthcare reform because, well, I know that there are countless issues that aren’t covered and that, right now, the insurance companies who deny services to those who are paying their premiums have many members of Congress in their pockets (Joe Lieberman whose wife works for a healthcare company and who has threatened to do everything in his power to prevent a public option – and who needs to be recused immediately – comes to mind), and simply because in a representative government, well, it’s important to represent the people and not the special interests.

The value and importance of healthcare reform – or, far more appropriately, health insurance reform – when it comes to eating disorder treatment and recovery is hard to deny. Most of us who have sought inpatient treatment are well aware of the high costs involved; the majority have probably heard – at least once, if not more, that the treatment is not covered. Many of us have faced higher co-pays when we’ve seen a therapist, a nutritionist (though I’ve never seen an RD), or others for treatment.

On some levels, the mental health parity law that goes into effect in January should help to change some of those things. From my understanding, therapists will see reimbursement rates closer to those of physicians, and there won’t be arbitrary limits like 10 sessions per year with a therapist placed on policies (and, yes, when I was 17, my parents’ insurance only covered 10 sessions despite my anorexia diagnosis). However, I’m not fully convinced that this is enough to ensure proper treatment because, as it stands, insurance companies will still be able to pick and choose what they’ll cover, determine which medications should be used to treat patients (based on which prescription drugs they will cover), and will be able to determine that they are not responsible for paying for the costs associated with a pre-existing condition.

A diagnosis of anorexia, bulimia, or EDNOS when one is 15 will follow along on a person’s health record for a lifetime. Treatment provided – especially longer-term, inpatient treatment – is something that will flag that record. With the likelihood of relapse at some time in one’s life – and with the recent upsurgence in restricting during pregnancy in order to prevent weight gain – couldn’t this mean that an expectant mother could be denied coverage at some point? As muscle damage and electrolyte imbalances contribute to heart attach, is it not possible that a man or woman who was diagnosed with an eating disorder at the age of 22 could suffer a seemingly unrelated heart attack at 38 and be denied coverage for treatment based on past history?

Healthcare should never have been a for-profit industry; people’s lives are too important to be weighed in the balance along with the dividends paid to shareholders at the end of the fiscal year. I don’t know what the answer is – a public option does make a lot of sense to me – but I do know that changes need to come. Those with eating disorders (and a wide variety of other conditions) deserve the care they need.

I’m not good at this, but I’m going to put it out here anyway: I’m struggling today – just as I have been for a while lately. The more that I’m embracing who I am and what I experience, the less that I feel like I have a place within the ED recovery community in general. Never is this so real to me as when there are a plethora of tweets and posts within the community that are focused on body image such as the article that’s been making the rounds today on bruised body image and what can be done to combat it.

It would be easy to look at my body and simply see fat. In order to “present” more masculinely, I wear compression clothing – often multiple layers of it. In effect, this means that every morning, I’m putting on two or three shirts with a 30% spandex content because I know that there are greater risks involved in binding with ACE wraps (cutting into the skin, circulation issues, and even breathing difficulties among them). As someone who always avoided tight-fitting clothing, this is still strange to me – and even a casual glance in the mirror lets me take in a little bit clearer a view of my body than I may want to. More than that, it impacts the clothing that I choose to wear, the way that I hold myself while walking, sitting or doing much of anything else, and the way in which I interact with other people.

It’s not that I’m looking in mirrors and thinking that my body is fat; I look in mirrors and am reminded that my body isn’t a match for who I am. I can look at the lists of ways to improve my self-esteem, but they aren’t going to change that fact – especially when the suggestions offered to “repair” the faulty self-esteem boil down to things like “look at exercise as something fulfilling, not punishing” and talks about things like why exercise shouldn’t be about things like wearing a bikini.

I’ve started working out again – and this time I’ve talked my partner into joining me (there are a number of reasons for this, of course, one of them being about my sense of comfort). There’s something uncomfortable about it still. First, I’m distracted by how different the experience of lifting weights is with a different hormone balance and how much more quickly I’m able to add weight and how much harder I’m able to work without discomfort. There are challenges involved in having some parts of my body looking more female than others, but wearing guy clothes (they’re all that I own at this point), not having shaved my legs in at least 4 months and having a lot of people around who really don’t know how to keep their comments to themselves. Last night, I even had the extra benefit of being asked to show my ID in addition to my membership card because they didn’t believe that my first name matched that shown on the card.

It’s good – but it’s stressful. The closer that I get to feeling like all of the pieces are coming together, however, the more that I’m unsettled because it seems that something is missing. It’s likely that what’s missing is a connection with my family – one that’s there in part because, well, I have no idea how to say “this is what I need to do to stay alive” only to watch my parents grieve for their loss.

When I was diagnosed with anorexia back in 1990, it was right around this time of year. My parents grieved then as if I were already dead. The same thing happened in 1995 when, at Thanksgiving, I traveled home from Boston to tell them that I was admitting myself to a psych unit because it was the only way to get treatment for my eating disorder and depression at the time – well, at least that’s what seemed to happen after they got past the “but you look good; is it really necessary?” I’m not sure that I’m ready to face that look of loss again – especially as it’s a look that I’ve been wearing all day today since hearing the results of the election in Maine (and knowing that the vote in Washington state is still too close to call).

I don’t know what gives people the sense that it’s fair for them to vote on the rights of a minority group. Love is love is love is love – and as long as things are what they are now, that vote in Maine tells me that I’m nothing more than a second class citizen. Living where I do, I could lose my housing because of whom I love. I’m out and I’m outspoken, despite the risks that go along with it, because I don’t believe that I can afford not to be – but I need to live honestly in spite of that fear.

Of course, that makes it really difficult for me when I’m faced with people in my own life – people who I’ve chosen to let in – who think that I’ve got it made and that I should settle, lie if I have to, but mostly look out for myself and take whatever I can get. Because I’m not good at keeping my mouth shut, however, this caused a rift this morning.

Last week – I talked about it on Twitter – I had an issue with someone on my morning commute. Because of her physical disability, even though she’s thinner than I am (observation, not comparison), she has knee pain. Her proposed solution? Look into bariatric surgery. As she put it, “if I lost just five pounds, maybe I’d have less pain.” I’m trying not to even get started on the all-kinds-of-fucked-up that is, but I’ve known people who have died because they genuinely believed that losing 5 pounds would solve some problem in their lives – and I didn’t bite my tongue at the time. The conversation kept going, and I said something about hearing from a close friend the night before and about an awkward moment when I first answered the phone. “Well,” she said, dropping her voice into a lower register that she uses to indicate how men talk, “you should have just said ‘I’m coming down with a respiratory infection.’” There are times when I’ll divert the subject, but even with my parents, I haven’t consciously wanted to lie; with people in my life who accept me and want me to keep up the fight to stay alive, there’s no reason for this – living honestly is too important to me.

This morning, therefore, caught up in the cast aside feeling, when she started talking about the only way you know people love you is that they talk with you often, I said something about loving my parents even though it’s been 3 weeks or so since I’ve talked with them. She laughed – probably more discomfort, or simply thinking that it’s entirely different because she’s talking about a different kind of relationship – and I lost it. Not a hundred percent sure of the wording, but I believe it went something like “what the fuck is so funny about it? What the fuck gives you the right to dismiss the most honest things that I say when I put myself on the line and share them? I’m done – I’m just fucking done.”

That pretty much sums up how I’m feeling right now – I’m done. I’m so, so tired of settling, of feeling displaced, of not feeling like my opinion matters (or that it even should) and of people feeling like they have the right to say that it’s okay to deny me rights afforded by a civil contract just because they can’t wrap their heads around the fact that there are people who are different. I’m tired, I’m angry, and right now, I’m just not even sure that it’s worth it to keep trying.

It’s fairly normal to start a work week and find yourself asked something about how your weekend was. What’s less normal, at least for me, is not being able to fully answer the question.

This weekend was a bit stranger than mine have tended to be for a while now. We spent Saturday morning getting new tires put on the car and watching a couple of discs of last season’s How I Met Your Mother; Sunday, we’d had plans to take a road trip. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean that it seems as though I’ve almost forgotten what that experience is like. I miss it, and I’ve needed it, but apparently, it just wasn’t in the cards this week. Neither, apparently, was doing laundry or picking up groceries, but I digress.

But then, that’s just surface story really. The real part of the weekend, the part that I don’t really want to dive into and the part that’s more relevant here, is that I had an “episode” of a sort that, in the past, I’ve only had when I’m actively restricting and completely failing to take care of myself.

After running a few errands yesterday, we picked up some sandwiches and some beer then went home to watch football. After the game, event though it was closing in on 5:00, I decided to take a nap – in part because disappointment pushes me toward depression, especially when I’m already stressed out. I slept for a couple hours, but didn’t really hydrate after the beer and before sweating in my sleep. When I got up, I headed to the kitchen – and that’s when things started to feel a little bit crazy.

First my pulse sped up.

Then the room started to fade out – the counter, and even the light, blurring and seeming to spin ever-so-slightly.

Then there was the wave of nausea, and the shaking, and the sense that I could pass out without anymore warning.

When I made my way to the living room, still on the verge of passing out, my skin had gone gray, breathing wasn’t easy, and I was not convinced that I wouldn’t throw up. My partner looked at me and immediately suggested a free ride to the ER – something that I refused.

I forget sometimes how quickly my body dehydrates and how risky it tends to be for me. I forget that there are some simple things that I need to remember to do that likely wouldn’t be as significant an issue if I hadn’t damaged my body so badly in the past. I forget too that, when I take a step back and stop actively participating in the recovery community, it’s still easy for me to lose sight of the big picture: that recovery is something that I still need to pay attention to, if only to make sure that I’m keeping myself in check.

There are challenges with the movement however, and they are challenges that I see with increasing frequency. Most notably, the challenge seems to be that there are, for me, a lot of reminders of what I’m not. This was summed up nicely in student comment in response to “Love Your Body Week.”

This has created the social standard that stays as top priority in the minds of people who care to listen to it. However, even though this unfortunate way of thinking has changed how others perceive beauty—by the American standards—it assumes that it only affects a small sector of the American population. Its target: white females between the ages of 12-35.

So, it’s safe to say that when discussing body image and eating disorders, cultural relevance plays a significant part. When the average American thinks of eating disorders and issues with body image, they automatically assume that it’s about younger white women. “Love your Body Week” at Towson University has demonstrated how cultural relevance is predominantly European centralized. Just like the media, Towson University has taken “Love your Body Week” and made it appealing to its target of younger white women instead making it inclusive for everyone, including transmen, trans women, cis women, cis men, and people of all colors. While many people may argue the opposite, “Love Your Body Week” was not appealing and open to everyone. Having a single event, which sympathizes with women of color does not justify that the central idea behind “Love Your Body Week” is catered to predominately younger white women.

As someone who cusps the upper realm of that age group, who does happen to have been born with white skin, and for whom gender has become an increasingly interesting issue, I feel like this managed to sum up why I wasn’t keep on embracing “Fat Talk Free Week” along with “Love Your Body Week” – the reality is that it seems to leave a lot of people on the outskirts. More importantly – at least to me, at least right now – it doesn’t address the sense that some people are in a position in which they are going to be more aware of their bodies, and are going to actively be making an effort to change what others see.

For those who are struggling to come to terms with the fact that they are female and that means that their bodies will have curves as they become adults, embracing Love Your Body Week is a matter of saying, “this is okay – taking care of my body means that there are all of these things that I can experience, simply by being alive.” For me, that’s simply not the case. Now that my body chemistry is better reflecting what I think and how I feel, I’m increasingly aware of what my body is and isn’t.

As the student goes on to say, “According to Carla Pfeffer in the Journal of Lesbian Studies, transgendered people deal with body image issues on a daily basis that goes unnoticed by the cis gendered community. Transpeople are more likely to be self conscious about their biological body parts.”

There are a number of reasons why this is the case, of course. In part, it’s because trans- and genderqueer – folk have done a lot of soul-searching to get to a point of seeing that their bodies and minds simply don’t match up. Rather than the issue being a matter of “looking good will help me to feel good,” my current body image issues revolve around thoughts like “every time someone calls me ma’am, it hurts at the core of my being. What can I do to reduce that ache?” Despite compression shirts and binding, my body still wants to assert itself in ways that make that more challenging. The clothing that makes me feel human and comfortable doesn’t exactly “fit” the way that it’s supposed to; after all, a female pelvic girdle is just not made to support the waist-band of a pair of men’s low-waisted jeans in quite the same way as a biological-male’s does. As a result, I’m far more conscious of looking for the right clothing – and of undergarments made to reshape the body so that there’s a better likelihood that things will fit than I ever was before.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m looking at things with a disordered lens. In fact, as I’ve mentioned a few times recently, I think I’m about as far from that space as I’ve ever been. However, what I’m discovering (somewhat uncomfortably) is that it’s difficult to look away from my past when there are always lingering elements. Health issues and feeling like an outsider: these are just things that I’m carrying with me in this journey, at least right now.

One of the most challenging issues that I found when I was in the midst of an eating disorder was that it made me somehow lose sight of everything that I was and everything that mattered to me the most. It didn’t matter whether the switch was flipped by an abusive relationship or the celebration of a healthy, supportive relationship with a civil union back when equality was too difficult an issue for lawmakers to even consider offering something called marriage; when I started to get caught up in the throes of anorexia, I lost me. I quit returning calls to friends. I lost my passion for listening to music, for a great conversation, for time spent relaxing. Recognizing this is about as close as I can come to sharing the experience that Jenni Shaefer describes in this Huffington Post blog. There came to be a point in time where the only thing that I could focus on was having an eating disorder and, no matter how much I felt like I was the one in control, the only thing that I could do was work on destroying myself.

It’s interesting to me, then, to be in a position in which self-discovery is so stressful that I almost find myself wishing for the simplicity of self-destruction. It’s challenging to me to try to balance my desire to change my body into a form that better matches on the outside what I feel on the inside – especially in light of the number or people in the greater recovery moment who focus on the importance of loving one’s body for all that it can do, those who believe in loving one’s body even more than just accepting it. I often struggle – and know that I’ve mentioned this before as well – with the strains of feminism, and the importance of overcoming the way women are told to see their bodies.

Lately though, especially while fighting a sinus infection that’s left me with a fever for 8 days now, it seems as though there’s a balance that I’m missing in my life. Despite feeling more recovered than I really thought possible, despite the fact that – however much it’s happening a lot more slowly than I would like it to – things are really falling into place in my life on the whole, I’m unsettled. I know who I’ve been. I know who I want to be. I know who matters in my life – and somehow, once again, I’m terrified about letting those people down and losing them. Once again, I know that being myself is proving to be more than some seem to be able to handle – and yet, for the first time, I’m starting to see that that has to matter less. If I’m going to keep pushing through, if I’m going to reach the goals that I’ve set out to go after, if I’m going to become the person who I know/trust/believe that I am, it can’t matter to me.

And acknowledging that is probably the most frightening thing that I have ever discovered.

Too much of life is spent trying to meet the expectations of others. Too much self is denied when all we are able to do is focus on making others happy – in making everything comfortable for everyone but ourselves. For me, I’ve spent the last 30 years trying to be the daughter that my parents can be proud of (I used to say person, but I know that it’s more than that); what happens to the quest for perfection and performing a part with all the right cues when you know – with everything that you are – that it’s a part that you can’t play?

The concept of self is often something that’s difficult to come to terms with – especially for those whose lives have taken some awkward turns, for those who have been pressured to be something – to be the person that others want them to be rather than even coming to a point where they can identify key characteristics about themselves – and for those who have been told time and time again that their wants and needs should come in second place. So what happens when someone who has finally started to recognize that “self” is an okay concept – that it’s okay to sometimes act with one’s own interests in mind – is put in a position in which all of society seems to push back against that awareness?

For me, self-awareness has been an extremely gradual process. It took me a long time to start to recognize that it was okay that I didn’t necessarily fit in with those around me – to see that just because I wasn’t like my peers, there was nothing to say that there was something wrong with me. I was different, and that was enough. Likewise, it took me a while to recognize that it was okay to not try to make my body look a certain way, or that no matter how hard it was going to be to break out of an abusive relationship, I didn’t have to stay in it just to keep up the facade that my parents liked seeing.

Of course, that self-awareness came in stages too. I left an abusive relationship with someone who insisted on putting a stain on the change – and suffered greatly for it. Just because I knew who I really loved didn’t make my family okay with it, and, well, that led to a lot of equally bad (if not worse) choices. However, somewhere along the line, at that point in my life, the lesson that I had most learned was a simple one: live your life, but not out where others can see it. I was shown that that was the best plan of attack time and time again for a number of years. When I tired of it, whenever I tried to change it, I kept finding that there was something else that tried to push me back into a box where I was forced to deny part of myself.

That’s why the process of coming to terms with my gender issues has proven so difficult for me: the box that I felt that I was supposed to fit into was really well-constructed. Truth be told, I suspect that I helped build it because I thought that staying within the bounds of others’ expectations would somehow be more comfortable. But nothing holds forever, and our awareness of ourselves eventually becomes too strong to be contained.

As part of my recovery process, nourishing myself came to mean something more than just feeding my body. I needed to feed my soul with friendships. I craved knowledge and connection, and the more that I started to allow those things in, the more that I found myself acknowledging that I was still trying to fit a certain mold. So, as uncomfortable as it’s been, I’ve gradually been making changes.

On Twitter, I’ve been pretty upfront about what those changes are for me. Yesterday on a phone call with an activist in the eating disorder community, I was upfront and spoke on the phone about who I am (and, while I doubt that she heard my voice catch, I know that it did). Yesterday, I mentioned more than once that one of my sites had been hacked. A few people know the specifics. The blog, which contained both public and private entries, documented the process of the last couple of months of my life; in place of them, there were images of members of the LGBT community who had been beaten or killed along with plenty of hate speech to make me nervous about simply being who I am. Truth be told, I’m still shaken by the experience.

Along with self-awareness and the realization of what’s right for me – what it’s going to take for me to really live the sort of life that matters to me – comes the reality that there are people out there who are so filled with loathing and misunderstanding that they would kill me for it rather than trying to change their perception. Factor in the fact that I’m still terrified about what my self-awareness and acceptance is going to mean within the construct of my family, and today, despite knowing what I desperately need to do in order to live and thrive, I’m thinking that the box I used to force myself into is mighty appealing – but at the same point, I know that it’s not safe; I know that it wouldn’t help the fear to ease, nor would it help me to reach any of the goals that I’ve set for myself, nor would it make getting through each day, one step at a time, any easier.

Accepting that is hard. Accepting that there comes a point at which there is no turning back is strange. Knowing that I’ve crossed that threshold is stranger still: how the hell did I get here? And, perhaps more importantly, how did this recovery landscape come to look so different than I could have possible imagined that it would?

It’s always been the little things that seem to get to me the most. I’ve been looking inward a lot lately, thinking probably a bit more than it’s particularly healthy to do. Out of necessity rather than desire, more than once I’ve even caught myself isolating – something about the sense that, if I don’t have the money to go out, I shouldn’t head out with friends and get caught up in the pattern of “go ahead, spend; it’ll all work out later at some point.” And, as coming down with something always tends to trip me up, now that I’ve caught some nasty infection and run a low-grade fever for most of the week, I even have that great run-down feeling that I used to know so well.

Of course, getting out of these patterns is likely going to require less effort than it once would have. I’ll get back in the habit of going out sooner rather than later – more than likely, it will be possible next week. I’ll stop feeling so run down when the ‘bug’ is out of my system – and when, ultimately, I’m able to get my appetite back, eat some more, take less Sudafed, and as a result get back into the habit of getting a more normal amount of sleep.

This collection of patterns would have, in the past, been enough to suck me in and not spit me back out for a while. The lack of appetite is weird as hell – especially since I’ve developed a much healthier relationship with food than I had really ever thought possible. The exhaustion is a drag – what, with my general lack of depression and, with it, the desire to prove once and for all that I can outsleep even the laziest of cats.

I don’t know. Long story short at this point, because I’d been thinking about taking a lot of the more personal stuff out of this space, sometimes it’s the patterns that manage to wedge themselves between what’s real and every-day and the path to full recovery. It’s so easy – sometimes, at least – to just get drawn into the moment of feeling like crap and saying “yeah, I know this.” Other times though, those patterns just feel miles away.

So, in having managed to break free from some of my own patterns, I’m left wondering: what patterns do you need to break free from in order to fully embrace recovery from an eating disorder or, for that matter, anything else that’s keeping you stuck?

Twitter has proven to be a valuable resource for me; even though I don’t comment on every article that I find thanks to what others post, there’s a lot of good information. With links to research studies, articles and other explorations of eating disorders, eating disorder recovery and contributing factors, there’s a lot that can be learned on a day to day basis. More importantly, there are a lot of good discussions and opportunities to open doors.

I had one of those conversations not all that long ago. EDNMaryland posted a link about the increased risk for gay, lesbian and bisexual youth for developing eating disorders. Much of the conversation was about terminology, but the article reminded me a bit of why I’m still so committed to using my voice here – even if I still have some questions about where I “fit” in the recovery and education movement.

If you haven’t checked out the article, the basic summary is that kids as young as 12 who don’t consider themselves heterosexual are more likely to develop eating disorders (the study was of youth and adolescents, 12-23 years old). Boys who identify as gay or bi- are more likely to binge and purge; so were the girls. On the second page of the article, there was reference to some correlation between social acceptance and the importance of creating an atmosphere in which the youth felt secure within their families.

I’m relieved that I’m older in that I know that family is as much about the people who we choose to include in our lives as it is about whom we are related to. But the fact that so many young people face isolation and rejection just because of whom they are attracted to is still unsettling to me. Love isn’t something that anyone just turns on or off. Attraction isn’t something that’s easily explained; it’s about what we’re drawn to.

Moving back toward the topic, however, what intrigues me about the study is that it continues the discussion of eating disorders as – at least in part – coping mechanisms. While this is something that was (for a long time) generally accepted, recently there’s been a lot more discussion of other explanations. Similarly, it relies on something that had been widely-published in the past – the notion that families contribute to the development of an eating disorder (in this case, bulimia or at least some degree of bingeing and purging behaviors).

I’m not trying to engage in the debate about family and the development of eating disorders – at least not right now – but I do know this: GLBT youth need the support of their family because, well, the world is tough enough. GLBT healthcare costs are, in general, higher. There are a lot of loud voices out there saying that the families we create for ourselves are less, that we don’t deserve the same legal protections. Hate crimes are a real issue (and, to bring the “T” into the discussion, the reactions that people have – the so-called gay panic defense – leads to a lot of men and women being killed just for being themselves).

All families are going to have some degree of disfunction. Society is always going to be made up of people with vastly different opinions. But love is love – and health is health. More importantly, support and understanding are crucial to the recovery process – and I suspect they have a lot to do with eating disorder prevention as well.

It seems, lately, as if every day brings with is tome new opportunity to accept change. Those who recently came back from the NEDA conference are still sharing their experiences (and presentations) with others – experiences that, in many cases, have been shaped by themselves and the ways in which they’ve come to understand (their own) eating disorders. There’s also a buzz about body positivity that I haven’t seen lately – and it’s exemplified in posts like 10 Ways To Be A Body Positive Advocate.

There were two points in that article that jumped out at me:

1. Be yourself. Whatever size, color, religion, gender, race, or sexual orientation. Don’t make apologies for yourself. Believe in the righteousness of your cause. Believe that hate helps nobody.

and:

3. Let go of fear. Don’t let fear keep you from living your life the way you want to.

Fear is, based on my experience, the most rigid obstacle standing between someone who is struggling and someone who has begun taking steps toward recovery. More than that, fear is one of those things that develops a stronger voice as time goes on – and while it may not be enough to stop someone from starting his or her path toward recovery, it’s often enough to slow down self-acceptance.

I was thinking about this some on my way in to the office this morning – specifically, I was tying to decide whether or not I’d be making a trip to visit my parents this weekend since my mom is having surgery next Monday morning. I’m debating it not because I don’t want to go, but because there’s a whole lot that, well, I just haven’t talked about with my family. But what I realized is this: I sound different and carry myself differently, but that doesn’t mean that anything has really changed; I’m still the same person I was, it’s just that I’m okay with that now and the depression is fading away.

Getting over my own fear has been essential in that process. Without crossing over various lines, without realizing that sometimes embracing gender means embracing something deeper than the body one has been born into, I’d still be trapped by my fear and not making the forward progress that’s come. Without accepting myself (even with the knowledge that there are people all over the country who are killed for expressing their real selves when it comes to gender identity), I’d still be struggling.

Even though I struggle daily trying to figure out just how it is that I “fit” into the recovery community (and thank you to those who assured me with your comments on my last post that I do fit), the thing that interests me the most right now is that for the first time I know that I do have something to contribute. That’s a bit part of why, despite the fact that most of my own experiences have been with anorexia, I’m looking into attending the Binge Eating Disorder Association conference this coming March. It’s also part of why, despite the fact that I don’t believe the Maudsley Method would have been ideal within my family, I’m looking at my schedule, trying to fit the October 5th Maudsley conference in.

Making a difference means being willing to step outside of our comfort zones, to acknowledge changes that need to be made and even recognizing that works for one person may not be the ideal solution for everyone. It’s why education and prevention are just as important as treatment – and it’s why having the courage to be real is essential: we all have something to contribute.

Until recently, I was always a little bit skeptical when someone said that they had recovered from an eating disorder. There was something about it that, to me, seemed too cocky – like it was inviting a relapse.

Let me be clear – this wasn’t about me making a judgment. It wasn’t about thinking that recovered wasn’t possible either. It was about my experience.

In my experience, whenever I let my guard down and said “nope, never again,” within a short amount of time, I’d find myself missing a meal or thinking a bit more about size/shape/weight/calories/working out. For me, it was as if saying that it wasn’t an issue meant that anorexia would press back and remind me that I was never the one in control.

The more that I’ve come to accept my experience and the more that I’ve focused on being true to myself, however, the more that I’m finding that I need to be less cautious. Could a relapse still happen? I’m not so naive as to say no. But I do know that something has changed in me, and I feel like I’ve crossed a line that I hadn’t even believed was there.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that my circumstances are different. I know that my newly increased appetite is accompanied by a higher metabolism. I know that my body is under a lot of stress with the changes as well – in effect, after all, I’ve been inducing a second puberty. I know that there’s a lot of emotional chaos involved (especially when I’m asked awkward questions that, to an extent, could put my safety at risk).

All of the physical and emotional changes are leading to changes in the way I think about things as well. I’m looking at what I can do to have a greater impact on my community, and I’m taking a look at where I fit in this overall realm of eating disorder recovery. After all, I don’t really fit in with the women accepting themselves as women and I’m not fully in the category of guys with eating disorders either – and I think that there’s a big gaping hole in that space. I know that there are others who find themselves in this gap as well – the marginalized who often seem to slip through the cracks. I also know that there are a wide variety of tools that are extremely effective for outreach. Now I just need to figure out the best way to use them.

That’s a big part of why I started to make some changes with the blog and archived a lot of the posts. Despite knowing that I’ve crossed a line within my own recovery, I know that this journey is far from over. I just hope that you’ll continue to take it with me.

Way back in March at the training session for the last Capitol Hill-based Lobby Day for the EDC, there was a question asked about what made lobbyists powerful. Some argued that it was that they had a voice; I countered that the power came not from having a voice, but rather from using that voice and – perhaps more importantly – having an audience.

Today I was scanning my homepage feed on Facebook and one particular post jumped out at me quickly. Someone who I see as having a very powerful voice – who uses that voice effectively and who has an audience – made a comment that caught me in a funny way. There was a sense of “how did we get here, and how is there going to be change” involved.

I’m not in a position in which I’m really putting my voice out there on a daily basis – and when I do it’s in nowhere near that capacity. I don’t have anywhere near the audience. But what I do know is that even when it feels as though one is shouting a message into a vast, empty apace, there’s a tendency for that sound to bounce around. More than that, I know that when the echo of that message bounces back, there’s power.

No. Wait. Scratch that. What I know is that, when the message bounces back, it’s even more powerful because the speaker no longer has control. The original statement resounds, takes on a life of its own. And it’s no longer about talking to one person (or one thousand people or 100,000 people); it’s about making a connection with someone who just happens to be there – and who probably needs to hear it more than we could have imagined.