If I can offer my two cents, I hope you don't mind...
When I was very DPd I felt horrible. I had reached my top weight and dropped school. Felt like a fat and ugly failure. Absolutely disgusting and since I was anorexic before the DP, my new curvier body was horrifying. Horrifying. I wore sweats everyday because why bother, I was just too damn ugly (or so I thought).
As I was recovering, I learned to embrace all that disgustingness as well. I learned to embrace both my prettiness and my ugliness. I learned to appreciate all parts of myself, the good and the bad. I learned to be human. Before DP I was "perfect"- I cut all the ugly qualities out of myself (or so I thought) and only accepted the good about myself. That was why I got DP. I couldn't accept all of me.
Those times when my DP was so bad- I later cherished in a way, because I made the BEST friends. I was introduced to a guy that was so hilarious. I had another really close friend...oh my gosh...I planned this surprise birthday for him...we got together and plotted when it was his birthday and he would want to call friends to go out, all of us friends deliberately ditched him off, he felt dejected and angry that everyone blew him off on his birthday. So he was like "screw this, I'm going to the club alone. Screw my friends." Little did he know we were all waiting there to surprise him. It was a great night. He was always pulling pranks on others and could not believe someoen could pull one on him. We had a lot of fun trying to out prank each other.
Such a great memory from such a dark time.
You see, in all that badness are sparks of goodness. I made memories and met people I would cherish later and that would later impact my life in a really good way. Like in the Count of Monte Cristo, when Edmund is in the Chateau d'if (a prison), in his darkest moment he meets a man who will bring incredible light to his life.
So what I'm saying here is in all this disgustingness and off-ness and human ness, this human mess that's complicated and not going smoothly and nothing makes sense, does turn beautiful in the end. Because it's real.
The time I was MOST unreal was before DP ever set in. I was happy but I was not authentic. I was creating a perfectionist image of who I thought I should be. Clean. Perfect. Flawless. Superhuman. And what made the DP so BAD was that it exposed me for who I was- needy. Complicated. Messy. Human. Happy. Sad. Lost. How dare DP do that to me! It was like Rumplestiltskin hearing his name and flying ino a rage.
What I learned was to become authentic. To be ok with being bitchy and complicated. To feel sometimes disgusting and other times really good. To take BOTH the good and the bad.
And I became the person I had wanted to be (who was striving for that image when I was trying to be superhuman.). I became closer to everything I ever wanted when I learned to accept all parts of me and the messy complicated life we live in. An I developed a way better sense of humor. And I became a lot prettier
What irony.
