Confused

I don't really know what my life is supposed to be. I feel like I need a direction or someone to tell me where to go. I feel like I am sitting in no man's land. I listen to others my age talk about the job they are striving for or the Grad school they are applying for. I have none of that. I wish I knew what my purpose was. I wish I knew what would make me the happiest. I try to live in the moment and enjoy the days as they come, but I cannot help but think about the future. I know that there is more than this. There has to be.

I have dreams every night about jobs that I left, friends that I miss, and opportunities that passed by. I try to live my life with no regrets, but I do have some. I believe everything happens for a reason and God has some grand plan for my life. I just wish I knew what it was and where I go from here.

Flower Power

Here is my new activity. I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and a box of 16 Crayola crayons. I was feeling a bit like I was in 1st grade again. My goal was to express my feelings in a picture without using any words. I could draw anything from a dog to the ocean. I chose a flower. The reason I chose a flower is because a flower has many different parts, as do I. A flower has the stem, the petals, and the roots. I feel as though I have many different parts too. I have myself. Me. Marissa. Then I have my ED. Then I have my family. My Mom. Dad. Sister. I also have my boyfriend. My best friend.

Now for the colors. I colored the stem darker green at the bottom and lighter as I got to the top of the flower. I did this because I feel as though I have a part of me deep down inside that is dark. That is hurting, sad, and mad. The petals of the flower are outlined dark and lightly shaded inside. I did this because I feel as though I have a tough outer shell. I do not like to show my feelings. The dark outline symbolizes that. I picked bright colors because I like to be silly, funny, and sarcastic! But notice I do have 2 petals that are brown and black. These again symbolize that darker side of me and my ED. The center of the flower is purple because that is my favorite color :D One petal is red and pink and that represents love because I have a lot of love surrounding me and a lot of love to give. Another petal is green and yellow. This represents home. Home is where the heart is.

After completing this and taking a look at it, I noticed that I drew 10 petals. Not 9. Not 7. But 10. I am not sure what this means, but it is interesting. I also noticed that everything is perfectly colored and there is nothing that goes outside of the lines. This is the perfectionist coming out in me. I need to work on this part of myself. Finally I noticed that the base of the stem is wider than the top of the stem. I think I did this because I feel as though I have a solid base to live off of, but sometimes I feel like I am weak, not good enough, and a disappointment.

Now it is your turn! I enjoyed this. It took 15 minutes and I really had to reflect on how I feel and what I wanted to convey with my drawing.

Must Love Coffee

Hey all! Happy Monday! I am still working on getting an activity together. I will be doing it tonight or tomorrow, so look for that post coming soon. This is just a light-hearted post with a comedic photo of me. I felt like coffee today, so drove to get one. And even though it is an arctic tundra here, I bought an iced coffee. Silly me, but it was yummy. Coffee = Love :D

Kinda a random thought... I am pondering adding a Psychology major to my college plethora of knowledge. I really want to dedicate myself to researching ED's and developing different methods of recovery. I want to help others. I am just trying to figure out if this would be a good thing for me. Anyways, look for my new activity post coming tomorrow.

Eye Opener

With help from someone near and dear to my heart, my boyfriend, I did an exercise to help me see myself. My eating disorder has changed the way I see myself. I have such a distorted image of myself and this exercise proves that. Anyone can do this, with help of another person. I drew an outline of what I thought I looked like first. Then I laid on top of my drawing and was traced. Here is a picture.

The colored in person is actually me and the outline behind that is what I drew first.

As you can see, my drawing is much larger than my actual size. This shocked me, because I thought I was that big, if not larger. Even though there was no way that this was fake, I still had a hard time believing what I saw. The first thing I said when I looked at this was, "Wow. That person needs to eat."

It is activities and exercises like this that really show me what is going on in my head. I was very nervous to do this, but am glad that I did. It opened my eyes a little bit to how much my ED has influenced my thoughts. I am going to try and come up with some more exercises to try. Stay tuned for more....