when I first came out as gay, well, bi at the time, no one believed me. "oh it's just a phase rachel.", or "you feel safer with women right now after your divorce and such", "you're nooooot", "you're straight you just like girls as friends" and whatever else they dared say at the time. "ok, we'll see" was my stark response on cue back then to all these retorts at one of my most personal traits, my sexuality. i had the tenacity, the courage and strength to come out and say who i really was...and others dared challenge me. it just simply made no sense to me. there i was, pronouncing my unconventional sexual identity to other people, and there they were, telling me i was not what i said i was. just a couple days ago, this same thing happened to me again, many many years after first starting to identify as bi/gay/whatever i feel that day. i am a girl who is attracted to girls, bottom line. it never changed since the day i came to terms with the fact and really embraced that it was real. i was attracted to her, then another girl, and five years later, i am still a girl attracted to girls. am i gay? likely. bi? unlikely. the thought of being with a man at this point seems foreign. it seems inauthentic to the self i have learned exists in me, and inauthentic to the identity i long to possess and own. i like women. i like their softness. i like women with tattoos and uneven short haircuts. i like everything about them. my heart races when i see a girl i want to impress, my stomach drops at her attention and my gut swirls. these feelings don't exist anymore in me for men.
in a similar vein to my unbelieved sexuality, lies my eating disorder. yes, i have one. i have a pretty strong eating disorder. why exactly, i cannot say. when it started, i mostly know, and when it will fully leave me, i cannot yet say. but i compare my sexuality to my eating disorder for a reason. i don't have a conventional eating disorder...sure, parts of it are conventional, and parts aren't. i recently, and by recent, i mean as recent as two days ago, was in treatment for it. i started off as inpatient and residential back in my awful skeletor days, graduated to partial treatment (PHP as we in the community refer to it), which rung me tight and left me out to dry. i switched treatment teams from residential to partial, a move which i believe was detrimental and a huge system flaw in the treatment center in which i found myself. but like many other things, i had no choice. i switched teams, was forced to leave the most helpful and best therapist i had ever known (thanks Alanna for everything), went to partial, and fell down a hole. the partial program sucked, i did not jive with my new team, didn't get what i needed from them. i quivered in fear and disgust at the sight of my dietician, one of the most quintessential roles in ED treatment, and frankly did not find my psychiatrist to be helpful at all. his jerry seinfeld-esque hilarious nature that everyone loved somehow did not seem to serve me. it actually rubbed me the wrong way. i wasn't in a shrink's office for stand-up, just give it to me straight. but no alcohol of course. anyway, i digress. the partial program was wrong for me, i quickly went from somewhat ok to not ok in any way shape or form. my body was changing and i was still being force fed inhumane amounts and getting nothing else out of it. well, except gay group, that is.
to come back to the point, i compare my ED to my sexuality for good reason. as the patient, i told my team every day, every session and probably frankly to the point of annoyance, how not-ok i was, how unhelped, fatigued, my overused phrase "at the end of my rope" i was...and my incessant honesty fell on deaf ears. "i'm nauseous", "anxious", "impatient", "frankly feel worse off now than before" fell into silence and instead of help, all i got was more food. "more nutrition!!" "no b's, c's all day", and all of that and more.
just as my gay(ish) profession to others seemed to fall with no sound, so did my honest confessions of my state and apparent un-ok state at partial. keep eating, more nutrition and go home, rachel, was all i got. why this is and why this was, i cannot say. but here i sit now, with my own chosen pb&j (favorite) sandwich, still doing ok and feeling better than i did at partial.
confused, yes. overwhelmed at the past days' events, absolutely. worse off, no.
i have been through much, my heart still longs and wants a normal and recovered and decidedly un-straight life. that all remains, and that is that.
with authenticity,
rachel
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