I... everything about my relationship with him is so new to me. I trust him more than I've trusted any other guy before and that is so important to me, especially given my history with guys and abuse. My needs and feelings actually being considered is a whole new thing for me, so much so that I still often times cast it aside, whether it's just mentally for myself or subtly brushing it off when we're talking. I'm not in a relationship with him, not in the sense that he's my boyfriend. There's really nothing binding us together in a relationship, really. We're just really good friends who are attracted to each other. There in lies the problem...
I have this nagging feeling that my anorexia is going to affect my comfort levels a bit. I am trying so very hard to work on my body and self esteem issues, but they've been ingrained in my head for so many years, I don't know how to change that mindset. He's always telling me I have an amazing body/figure and he gets upset if I brush off his compliment or twist it in a way that allows me to disagree with him without coming off as completely self deprecating. He doesn't know I'm anorexic, he hasn't seen me in well over a month and I just... I've never had to confront my anorexia while having some sort of physical relationship with someone. Not that we've done anything actually physical, it's all been just talk thus far, but... Jesse triggered it but it really didn't manifest itself until after I had slept with Pat. I've had the mindset since I was thirteen but it's only been within the last year and a bit that I've acted upon the mindset. Dean and I are close enough that I'm not afraid he's going to judge me for it, he knows Jesse was abusive, though I've really only gotten into the sexual abuse aspect with him because it was relevant in our conversations, but we've talked briefly about other aspects, in passing. He knows I'm shy but I don't think he's clued in as to the real reason, not where it really stems from. I mean, the sexual abuse has to do a bit with my apprehension about a physical relationship, for sure, but the emotional abuse plays a huge role.
I really need to get myself into therapy... being on stress leave has been a good thing, it's given me adequate time to really think about my life and what has happened but I know I need therapy. There's memories from when I was with Jesse that I've repressed for so long but now that they've resurfaced, they're suffocating. Some of them are traumatizing, just thinking about it... but it helps me pinpoint where my apprehensions come from. It's really where to begin with everything because talking a lot with my mother about things, I realise that certain issues go back to things that happened in my childhood, though that mostly has to pertain with my father. I'm going to need years of therapy to really fix everything that has happened in my life... a lifetime of events that have really fucked me up. Watching my mother struggle through an abusive marriage with my father, going through my own abusive relationship, struggling with anorexia and cutting, depressed through all my teenage years... I'm pretty good with the repression but it's when they all resurface and resurface at once, it can be crippling. I'm really trying to find the person I was before I was with Jesse because at least then I resembled a human being, I wasn't completely riddled with issues. I may have been depressed and struggling with my anorexia but I was secure with my beliefs and views. Now, I really don't know. I don't know who I am anymore.
-C.