I reached underneath the table and gave my fiancé’s hand a firm squeeze. He always gets mad when I purge, but it makes him even more mad if I don’t warn him that I want to. He subtly withdrew from the conversation with our parents for a moment to make eye contact with me. My eyes clearly expressed that the hand squeeze wasn’t a false alarm, but what could he really do? Our parents continued casually engaging in conversation with each other, my parents having flown 3000 miles across the country to meet my new fiancé’s family. “You’re okay,” he whispered in my ear.

I bided my time until the conversation picked up some momentum, and then I made a break for the bathroom.

Photo credit: Christy Pietryga

There’s a really solid bit of advice out there for if you happen to find yourself beginning to love an addict: don’t. But what about when that addict is yourself?

I’ve run back into the oh-so-comforting arms of my eating disorder more times than I am willing or able to recount. It has provided a momentary escape, a release, or a pointed purpose to get me through the next minute, hour, day, (months, years). I’ve written enough “goodbye letters” to my eating disorder and “eater’s agreements” to myself and my loved ones to start a small bonfire …only to find myself yet again bound up in the very same chains of restriction and obsession. One night, I fall asleep promising myself that I will never engage in a behavior again; the next night, I find myself promising that I will once and for all pursue my next and final weight loss goal.

Frustration wells up behind my eyelids, but I firmly press them shut with another promise. Be it for my destruction or well-being, I’m not even too sure.

I’ve learned to have grace for the addict inside myself, racing around and seeking out the next escape from a life that I never exactly signed up for. I’ve practiced the art of separating my deepest sense of self from the destructive patterns that I too frequently partake in, while simultaneously taking responsibility for my conscious thoughts and actions in each all-too-predictable pattern. I’ve given myself permission to not always have a steadfast resolve of self-love and freedom, but to instead surround myself with people and circumstances that gently encourage me to choose life.

I’ve learned that when my addiction seems big, my life needs to get bigger. I’ve managed to hurt myself while being single and while dating, pursuing higher education and taking time off of formal academics, guiding white water rafts through the outermost rapids of northern Maine and teaching little kids to play soccer within the urban sprawl of Los Angeles. I thought to myself, it doesn’t get bigger than that… It does; it has to.

For years on end, I’ve berated myself for my stupidity, selfishness, and lack of foresight. I’ve hated the part of myself that fantasizes about losing just 5 more pounds, I promise. And then I’ve attempted a different approach: you’re having a hard time right now, Ashley, aren’t you? It’s all too easy to hold anger against the addict, but aren’t they — aren’t we — all just trying to do the same thing here? We do our best to keep on keeping on, and in the more trying moments, it’s no surprise to see myself reach for a tool that has always provided short-term relief.

My short-term relief has a tendency to spiral as wildly out of control as a beginner skier accidentally finding herself on a double black diamond trail. But it’s the same short-term relief offered by your one extra drink after a rough day at work, your random hook-up so you didn’t have to be alone that night, your absolute refusal to apologize to a person whom you love, or your grudge that you’ve clung to tightly for so many years. While it’s easy to vilify an addict (easiest of all, the addict inside of yourself), the addict’s plight is all-too-relatable.

And while I wouldn’t wish that out-of-control beginner skier to bring anyone else crashing into the base of the mountain with her, I have learned to allow others the dignity and respect of free will. Pushing others farther and farther away, with as much force as I could muster only led me to more self-destruction. I was faced with even more tear-filled “how can I help you?s,” and I saw my own pain reflected back to me in the eyes of others who I sincerely believe(d) deserve more. Put simply, it didn’t work.

And so we love. Each and every one of us loves. Or at least we try to.

I choose to love and comfort the addict inside of me that relentlessly goes after the same old thing time and time again. I love and honor the self that reaches out and squeezes my fiancé’s hand even though we both know that there’s probably no stopping me …this time. I love and thank the self and others who continually show up to the dinner plate with me. And I do my best to love the life that I have worked tirelessly to create for myself, the one that I continue to hope and pray is bigger than my addiction.