Black and White- a balancing act

Balance-it's one of my greatest strengths and biggest flaws. If you know me well you probably know physically my balance is pretty sick! I can style my hair, brush my teeth, cook a full meal start to finish, clean the house, do laundry, carrying hot beverages, and all other random everyday tasks on one leg. If you know me well you've probably also picked up on my very "black and white" sense of thinking. Either something is or it isn't, I love it or hate it, I'm all in or totally out, my hair is deep red or it's light blonde, long or super short and buzzed! Side note....the buzz undercut definitely seems to fit me and my crazy, extremist personality if I do say so myself!!

 

Back to balance.... or my lack thereof! In essence, it definitely helps drive me and is part of where my deep passion to push forward and never give up comes from, but at the same time it has been such a hindering on my ability to balance my life out in many aspects.

As mentioned before, I struggled with an eating disorder in high school, literally starved myself to achieve an unrealistic idea of what would make me "happy", never got there (because it was impossible and not real!), vicious cycle repeated, missed senior year, was stuck in a rehab center- miserable, kept persisting until I finally realized I was faced with an ultimatum....I can continue to live in complete psychotic "control" (or so I thought) over every single calorie that goes into my mouth and every single pound lost until I wore an altered size 0 and in return continue to also lose touch with every person and positive thing in my life- my boyfriend (who I am still madly in love with 9 years later), my family, my friends, my health, my studies, my independence (because who the hell trusted I was going to take care of myself), and so much more.

Luckily I chose to ditch the real scale completely and find a way to balance my life and become a healthier, happier person. At first I did it for everyone else but myself, but soon later realized I was also worth the work I put in. I also realized the less I try to control the uncontrollable, the happier I am. Balance was always hard for me. My mom says "I see only black and white, there is no gray area" and I'm okay with that as long as I can reign myself in when I know the scale of life is shifting way too much to one end. This is probably why I'm in love with a Libra, whose zodiac symbol is a glyph or scale! HAHA. Dan is definitely my balance and without him I fall off the deep end! Good thing I'm a Pisces (twin fish) so I am an amazing swimmer! OK enough, sorry!

Finally, at age 24 I feel like I can see my life as a jigsaw puzzle. From afar, it looks like a huge, intimidating mess, but if I start to pick up pieces one at at time and try to make a single match it just seems to slowly come together. I can't finish it in one sitting, I will definitely need extra helping hands and it's totally okay to walk away and come back later with a clear head and a new perspective. My jigsaw of a life is work in progress, a balancing act, and an unfinished masterpiece I need others to help me complete. I can't control the process, I can't rush the process it's just going to all work out.