Eviction Notice

There is one thing I know is true of living in New York - it has given me the invaluable ability to speak up for myself and get what I deserve. My personality is deceiving...I may be outgoing and blunt, but when it comes down to making things difficult for someone else or creating problems, I'm a little hesitant to speak up. For example, it took me weeks to tell Joe and Helen I wouldn't be able to nanny for them anymore. I had so much anxiety over the conversation, I went through countless binge/purges and sleepless nights. My parents couldn't understand why I didn't just get it over with, but I was dreading bringing it up to them, knowing they'd be sad and need to start the nanny search once again. Only a short 8 months later, and this desire to maintain peace and comfort no matter the cost to me is no longer an issue.
I definitely just got one of my roommates evicted. And it feels so so so so good.
I don't know if I ever spoke about many of the issues on here...but there were quite a few. The overwhelming one was that this kid smoked pot. And a lot of it. About 5 feet away from my bedroom door. You can imagine the joy this girl felt, being raised by a mother who had a fetish for air fresheners and candles. I inherited that fetish...which drastically contradicted with my roommates' contribution to our apartment smelling like a stale bong. On top of the pot smoking was a whole slew of other problems...the whole "homeless man" incident...twice, his friends coming over at all hours throughout the night to smoke...not a great roommate. I can safely say, the biggest idiot I've ever met in my life. So anyways, after all of this and a fight yesterday that was the last straw for me, I went to my landlord this morning and gave her the ultimatum of either evicting him or letting me leave, to which she was happy to comply and tell him he had to go. One week until I can safely breath in my hallway without the possibility of getting a second-hand high. Oh joy.

After thinking about what I just did...how I finally put on my big girl panties and got what I wanted (and deserved), I'm starting to wonder why I can't apply this towards my eating disorder. Maybe it's sort of like my roommate situation...I confronted him about it countless times, we've had multiple arguments where I've rattled off ridiculously amazing comebacks and perfected one liners. And yet, no matter how hard I tried to get my point across, I never got what I wanted out of it. My fight with my eating disorder has similar traits. I know what I want and deserve, I've fought like hell to get it, and yet no matter how many battles I win, how much hope I finally feel, I always find myself back at the beginning, dealing with the same issues over and over again.

This is exactly like my roommate situation. I am having this revelation literally as I'm writing this. It's because he's still here. My eating disorder is still here. And I'm letting him stay here. The situation with the roommate...it wasn't going to get better until he was gone - I realized that last night. And once I came to that conclusion, I told myself I either had to take the extreme measure of getting him evicted or moving myself, or I'd just have to put up with living in a stale bong for the rest of the year. The same goes for Ed...no matter how many baby steps I take, until I fully let go of every single part of him, he's not going to go anywhere. The problem is not going to go away if the problem maker is still present. It's easy to give up bingeing, I can vow not to take laxatives, and purging isn't an issue when there's no binge. But when I allow little restrictions here or there, a mile or two more than I should run, I'm only allowing an eventual "bad" symptom use to come into play. And once that ball starts rolling, it just doesn't stop. In order to beat my eating disorder, I need to wipe out every single part of it, not just the parts I hate. There are no "bad" and "good" symptom uses, as much as I'd like to believe differently. There's just symptom uses. And they all suck ass.

OK. Time to apply this to my fight. Last night, I was so upset over the thought of needing to pay more for a new apartment, actually finding one, getting my security deposit back over my old one ect, I literally went out at 2 in the morning to binge/purge. So my plan for today was originally to fast. A "good" symptom use to counter the "bad". But fasting today isn't going to do anything for me aside from encouraging another binge/purge. It's only allowing every single part of ed to stay, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So along with evicting my roommate, I'm going to work on evicting ed today, and it starts with some fruit and a bowl of oatmeal along with my coffee. Just like the idiotic pothead across the hall, ed doesn't belong here.