Surviving

     I had the word "SURVIVOR" permanently etched in black on my right calf years ago, before I even truly understood the meaning of the world. At the time I was in the midst of my hundredth attempt to recover from my anorexia, something in reality I was years away from. I had just turned 23 and thought the world had handed me the hardest cards it could...growing up with an alcoholic mom and absent father, not able to go to school, constant stream of hospitals full of tubes making me eat and not bleed, being raped, mom dying, being homeless...to highlight a few. I still very young and very stupid, I hadn't survived anything, surviving requires pulling yourself up out of rumble and moving on...I had merely kept breathing.
     It was only a few months after I got that epic word inscribed into my flesh that I became the exact opposite of a survivor...a coward. It had all become too much for my brain to hold, I was being told what to do from all directions, told what to believe from all directions, and I believed in nothing for myself. The world had won and I wanted out of this game for good, so needless to say this "SURVIVOR" pushed three bottles worth of very powerful pills down my feeding tube into my small intestine, and stopped breathing in the ambulance to the hospital. I didn't wake up the next morning because of a will I had to live, I woke up because a friend, a team of ICU docs, and God forced me to keep going. I was a stubborn toddler during that time of my life, having to be watched all the time because the first chance I got I was slicing my flesh as deep as possible and pushing lethal doses of the meds that were suppose to be helping me into my body. I didn't wake up everyday and bravely try to take it on, I woke up and stomped my feet spewing venom on anyone or anything that tried to help me, all the while crying how I couldn't do it anymore. I had my own hypocrisy staring up at me from my own flesh, and I was too far gone to even know it.
     Anyone who knew me during that time of my life will tell you that I am a completely different person, even now in some dark times I am not that girl from nearly five years ago. I don't just mean my behaviors are different because sometimes they aren't, I mean that I literally look and talk like a different person. A friend told me back then when you looked into my eyes there was nothing there, when you spoke to me it was obvious I didn't care to hear you, and really the only thing that made me alive was the fact that I had a pulse (which was debatable at times). I literally don't remember whole weeks from those times, meeting people, and doing things. I spent my time medicating, cutting, and restricting. By that time I had already been diagnosed with the gastroparesis and was physically becoming as much of a mess as I was emotionally. If you think I was worthy of the title "SURVIVOR" at that time I am going to have to call bullshit because you are either lying or stupid. It really is okay to admit the truth because I know it, I was a shell waiting for a chance to off myself, or praying whatever God I thought I believed in a the time would end it all...I wasn't even a person anymore.
     It was during those days that I met the man who become the father of my child and husband. He somehow saw past all the crap and found that somewhere inside that shell there was a person who was trying to survive, and he reached in and ripped her out. Seriously, best way to describe it because he brought a fire to my eyes, to my heart that I hadn't had in years. He didn't go away when I threw as much venom on him as I could...everyone else had retreated before even coming close to that. He would push, I would push back, and he would push harder until he got what he wanted...emotion from me. I had been running on autopilot for so long that I really didn't know how to feel anything, feelings scared me, which is why I always bled, starved, puked, or swallowed them away. Suddenly, I was alive and I could feel everything...it sucked, but a necessary event. Once I came back to life it was time for the decision that only I could make, Josh did the CPR and shocked my heart, but you can't will a person to fight if they don't want to. It was at that moment I made the decision to survive no matter what was thrown at me...no more pills to numb me from reality, no more existing...time to be what I thought I had been that day at the tattoo shop...a "SUVIVOR".
     Making that decision has gotten me to where I am today. Suffering has continued to be a very real part of my life, and I have felt that darkness emerge in me again, that need to give in. Josh and I have been through more together in five years than most couples will see in their lives, and we are both still going. I no longer allow the world or people tell me what I believe...I know where I stand with God, and it is personal. The years with Josh have taught me that the will to survive is the most important thing, and God built Josh for survival, who showed me I was built for it too. We have been kicked down as far as we thought we could go and then kicked again, yet here we stand. We have been the target of monsters set to kill us, and yet no matter how deep the wound we rise back to our feet bleeding, but surviving together. Things will never be easy for us, Josh and I were dealt the same hand full of dark cards, but the thing is I can accept my fate now. My suffering and tragedies have all had purpose, my survival has a purpose, and I understand that now.
      For me, most of my suffering has been used to teach me how to help others, but all of it has been for my son. Between Josh and I we have been through enough for ten lifetimes and learned a lot, but most of all we have survived. Our son was a miracle, ask anyone, all the doctors will tell you it was never suppose to happen and him and I were never going to survive. They painted a very bad picture of my child's entry to this world, an even worse picture for the nine months leading up to it, I would need surgery, bed rest, pain medication to tolerate the nutrition being pumped into my gut, and my son would be born weak and addicted, if not dead. They were right about the surgeries, the bed rest, the meds, the horrible pain I felt for those nine months, but they underestimated the will I had to survive and the will that both my husband and I had given to our son to survive anything. Despite the predictions of tragedy written in my file by all the "experts" we both survived those nine months and he was born not only strong, but completely free of any medications in his system. He did not spend one day in the NICU, let alone the weeks they had predicted. That little boy might be one of the most hard headed, strong willed children on the planet, but he is also the strongest kid I know, and I am certain that God has used all the tough times Josh and I have survived and continue to survive to prepare that tiny miracle for something in his life.
     You must earn the right to be called a "SURVIVOR" because simply still breathing after a tragedy does not mean anything. It is surprisingly easy to retreat inside yourself and give up, to will yourself dead because once you believe yourself dead than it is only a matter of time before you flat line for good. There have been plenty of times during these years, esp the last few months that I have felt like being done, willing myself to the land of the dead and waiting for my physical body to follow. There have been days and even weeks that I have essentially give up over the last months, but then I remember that I have lost the right to make that decision, I must live true to the ink in my leg because it isn't about me, none of this is about me. I have this little boy that looks at me everyday and depends on me to grab his little hand and lead him forward in life, to protect him from the real life monsters of this world until he can learn to survive on his own. There is nothing easy about surviving, absolutely nothing. When people say, "At least you survived"...I want to rip their heads off, no one wants to survive horrifying things, not meaning they don't want to be alive, meaning no one wants to go through it, who wakes up and wants to be raped, be sick, be broke, the list goes on and on...no one. And, there are people in this world who will never go through anything close to what I have been through and people who have gone through things I couldn't even imagine. When I tell people I am surviving that isn't something I want pity for, it is something I think we deserve respect for. Do not ever let anyone make you feel weak for being a survivor because earning that title meaning that you have seen hell and managed to claw your way out of it despite being pulled back down millions of times. Survival is a choice because you can always decide to let whatever happened to you swallow you whole rather than come through it...make the choice to survive because you deserve it.