Uncertainty

I've been struggling a lot lately with all the unknowns in my life.  I like order, I like plans, I like stability. And as long as I can remember I've always known where my life was going.  I mean, I said when I was 4 that I was going to be a scientist and now?  I do science.  I knew I was going to go through school, get good grades, and get into a good college.  I knew before I even started college that I was going to study abroad and I did.  I lived in Scotland for a year.  The only time when there was some uncertainty in my life was after I got back from studying abroad with only 1 year left of undergrad and hadn't decided whether I wanted to go to grad school or find a job.  It's not too surprising to me that that was the point when I finally crossed the disordered eating/eating disorder line.  As I've said, I don't deal well with uncertainties.

The thing that I have a hard time facing is that this isn't a normal state of affairs.  A lot people in their mid-twenties still have no idea what they want to do or where they want their lives to go.  Most the people I know are still figuring all that out.  It's really normal.  But for someone who's always had a plan it's hard for me to suddenly have my life connected with someone who hasn't. 

I'm so lucky to have my boyfriend in my life, I know this.  Without him my eating disorder would still be really bad.  He's helped me get through so much of it.  And he makes me happy.  But he's still working on figuring out what he wants out of life and it's hard.  He's applied to grad school and beyond all the unknowns of where I'll be living in 6 months, I'm not completely convinced that this is even what he really wants to do.  I really hope it is because I can only handle so many changes.

My best friend told me that she thinks this move will be a really good thing for me.  She said she thinks I need to get out of my comfort zone.  She's probably right.  I'm comfortable living an hour from my parents, living in the same state I've spent my entire life.  My job can be boring but I know what to expect from it.  I'm even comfortable skirting the edges of my eating disorder.  This is all safe to me.  On the other hand my boyfriend says he's really excited to go somewhere new, explore a new city, all of that.  Maybe if I could see that I would be too but the problem is right now all I see is the massive unknown of where this new city will be.  And beyond that I see moving, leaving my family and the few friends I have here, and adjusting to a new place.  I find it all terrifying.

Furthermore, there's the uncertainty of when I'll get married and when I'll have kids.  Honestly, I love my boyfriend to death and I want these things with him but if I could solve that uncertainty by doing them by myself I might actually do that.  Unfortunately it's kind of hard to get married by yourself and that's what I want.  I don't even really care about a wedding, though that'll be fun I'm sure, but more than anything I want to fully share a life with the man I'm in love with.  Sorry about the sap a couple days late but it's true.  I look forward to buying a house together, sharing a name, all of that.  And it'll happen.  I just have to learn to deal with the fact that not everything can follow some aribitrary plan I've laid out.

My response to all the unknows is to fix some of that anxiety by restricting.  Just skipping a snack will make me feel so much better.  But then it's like taking a drug (or at least how taking drugs was explained in my elementary school program).  Skipping a snack isn't enough to quell the anxiety anymore, it needs to be a meal.  Then 2 meals.  And so on.  But I'm not willing to do that anymore.  It's not worth it because the anxiety is still there waiting for me.  My only option is to face the uncertainty, even though it feels awful because there's absolutely nothing I can do to make things more certain right now.