Pushing Boundaries

We all grow up with fighters inside of us; we all learn from a young age how to assess our current state of endurance, and then push this boundary in order to gauge our strength.

Me – I’ve always been an all or nothing girl. This is what I like to call it, but the preferred family variation is ‘obsessive compulsive psycho.’ This is a personality trait that has at times been beneficial, but has mostly made it difficult for me to feel comfortable in that middle ground that is supposedly a balanced life. Some of these idiosyncrasies are harmless ones that I have accepted will never leave me; while others will involve hard work to ensure that they do not overlap into one extreme realm or another. I do not foresee my obsessive cleaning and immaculate bed making as being detrimental to my wellbeing, although I think perhaps cleaning the linen closet in the middle of the night might be a step too far. However, sometimes this ‘all or nothing thing’ mentality – when translated into food, control issues or general attitude in life – starts to unhinge your mental state and send you spiralling into a gyre that is difficult to extricate from.

Both my mental and physical health has taken huge hammerings from this type of behaviour. I pushed myself mentally and physically, always trying to get a step further, but unfortunately it reaches a point where the disorder takes over from you and shoves you violently past this brink and even further than you ever imagined. It is at these low points where it is easy for me to crack when somebody tells me that they wish they were as thin as me. I have been in that situation, wanted to be thinner (oh to be thinner!) but believe me, when you have pushed yourself too far into the danger zone, you lose all control and all you want is out.

My danger zone is 41 kgs: every time I push myself to eat less, exercise more, and binge and purge to the point where I am 41 kgs, I suddenly panic. This is the point where there is no turning back: where 41kg’s too easily becomes 40kg’s, and then 39 kg’s. You are unable to see how sick you look, you are not listening when people are telling you not to wear a bikini because you scare them … and the disease just keeps pushing you further and further. The same can be said about bulimia – there are times when it can start ‘recreationally’ and then transpire into an all consuming incubus that takes up every inch of your head space and the majority of your day. Both are full time jobs, and if one could be paid per hour for misuse of the body … well I would be retired in Majorca.

I have great respect for boundary pushers like athletes, whose tenacity and mental strength is unfathomable, but the trick is to do it with discernment. Now my priority is to make sure that I set realistic and healthy boundaries for myself to obtain a balanced life, and am certain that the only one I will be pushing in the near future will be the skydive on my next birthday.