The Road to Recovery (Jordan)

I've taken matters into my own hands and now it's time to place them in someone else's.

I'm waiting to meet with a counselor about whatever's going on with Alex. She keeps insisting that she's fat and disgusting when that couldn't be further from the truth. Lately, she's taken to eating rather hastily, not talking to me about her day, and cutting friends off with very little warning. Her personality made a 180 from where it originally was and part of me thinks I'm to blame. Looking back, I probably indirectly drove her into the overachiever mindset by way of my use of language which places emphasis on achievement rather than intrinsic value. The pediatric psychologist, Dr. Eugenia Liu, helped me to see that. She has been a great help for both of us.

Not only that, Dr. Liu helped Alex pinpoint one of the sources of her distorted body image. She told me that part of it had to do with her old vocal teacher's suicide. Alex told us that she felt like she wasn't good enough for Caitlin, one of the key positive female role models in her life, to stay around. She blamed herself and even said that she thought Caitlin would have stayed if she were thinner.

We're also meeting with a nutritionist, a family counselor, and her doctor. I've never had so many people fighting specifically for Alex since her birth. After she grew from a baby to a child, everyone sort of left. I was too stubborn and proud to ask for help, so I tried to do everything on my own. I don't know how, but I managed until now. I tried to get Alex to eat something, but she either didn't eat enough or wouldn't eat altogether. Rewards didn't work and neither did explaining the consequences of starving herself.

Alex is still in bed because she doesn't have the energy to do much else. One can only hope that she can rise above all of this and somehow make it through life as a semi-decent person. But I've never been one to settle for semi-decent and neither has Alex. She's young and can recover; it's just a matter of when and how. If it means I have to go a week without even glancing at a sword, so be it. Alex needs me, not what I can do, but me.