Blog number one...

It’s been a little over a week since I first set up this blog, so I thought it was high time I got around to actually posting on it. My problem has been deciding what to write. I’d start with an introduction, but I’ve put all that information-about-me stuff already. Maybe I should explain why I want to write a blog.

I write a lot. I’d write all day every day if I could (preferably from my Parisian garret, but for now, my dull industrial town in the North-West of England will have to do). I’ve kept journals for years, I write poetry, notes, letters and lists. Writing is how I think. It’s how I process things, and it’s how I best communicate.

I’ve recently been making a lot of changes in my personal life. I’ve had an eating disorder since I was fifteen or sixteen, cycling back and forth between anorexia and bulimia and back again. I finally found an amazing therapist who I’ve been working with for the last 18 months, and am well into recovery – am due to finish therapy in the next few weeks. I’ve been using the internet a lot to keep myself focused and motivated, and will probably be relying on those resources even more in the coming weeks, so I thought, why not create a designated space; maybe I can talk to other people in the same position, get advice, share my own experiences.

I also love to read other peoples’ blogs, but because I don’t have a blog of my own, it’s a bit one-sided – I don’t get to comment, so I never get that sense of connection that blogging is all about. So I thought writing my own blog would be a way of properly connecting - of engaging rather than just peeping in through other peoples' virtual windows.

Lastly, I wanted to give myself a sort of project. A sort of distraction – not as a means to end, but as a way of bringing together a lot of the things I love and hopefully gaining something from it. And maybe even giving something back, too. I had my eating disorder for so long that I had no real sense of my identity outside of it – who I was, what I wanted, what I liked about myself, what I wanted to change or what my opinions were. Blogging is my attempt, I suppose, to find out the answer to those questions. And an encouragement to keep asking myself questions - one of the things I'm most afraid of when it comes to finishing therapy is losing that sense of being challenged by an external party. Having new avenues of thought opened to me. Maybe speaking to some of you can help that continue.  

I’m the kind of person who usually plans things out in meticulous detail, so to begin something with no real idea of what shape it will take is a bit unnerving: what if I fail, what if no-one reads this, what if I run out of things to say, etc etc. But there is also an exhilaration in testing the waters outside my own comfort zone. And yes, it's only blog number one, so I'm only dipping the most tentative toe into these waters...but that's enough, for now.

They say every journey starts with a single step. Mine may be starting with something more like a hesitant dip of the toe instead....but the point is, at least I'm starting.