Sunday, January 16, 2011

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.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

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.

Monday, January 10, 2011

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.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

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....