Thoughts on Re-Entering School After Leaving For Treatment
Are you excited?
I groan. I don’t know what I feel.
I stare at my backpack and flashbacks of lonely dorm-room binges and deceitful purges play on a loop.
Excited? I don’t think that’s quite right. But, I am honestly, unsure of what I do feel.
I remember walking around campus a year ago, a head full of food fantasies, a bleeding stomach, a sore throat, scarred knuckles and a suffocating emptiness I never knew was humanly possible to experience.
I remember, like it was yesterday. But, I also feel like an entirely new person now.
How do I say hello to the people I disappeared from a year ago as the me I am now?
Am I different? Will they notice a change? Do I share my story? Does anyone care?
I pick my pens and place my headphones in my bag. Done. Ready. or am I?
I don’t know if one is ever ready to re-enter the world after treatment. (But, tip: I do know that one always needs to re-enter the world after treatment.)
So, here I sit, backpack in hand “ready” to re-enter.
To you who are re-entering school after leaving for a season to receive treatment, know I am right with you. I am in your boat.
We can roe roe our boats trying to figure out what this bizarre feeling is. Not quite excited, not upset, not scared, but… something.
I am happy to sit in the boat beside you and just be. I may not know my feelings about re-entering life as it was before treatment but, I have a feeling everything will be alright. We`ve got this. #warriorsunite
One day at a time.
And hey, maybe that person sitting next to you needs to know you are a warrior because they have been fighting, too.
I suppose, if anything, to be back but in a better head-space is a time to be kind, to be love, to be a source of hope to the lost and the broken.
Maybe you and I were made for more than just ourselves.
Maybe our stories can truly impact.
I swing on my backpack.
Breathe.
Okay, let’s do this thing.
*cue inspirational jam song *
