#reasons to recover

[neuroticboyfriend]

your life is worth living no matter what this capitalist hellscape tries to tell you. your interests are important. your joy matters. your impact on others stretches far further than you could ever know. you are not forgotten, and as long as you're on this earth, you are never truly alone. i hope one day you feel all the safety, passion, and support you deserve.

until then, just try to remember... this pain is not meant to happen. it's not your fault. the world we live in can be better. it needs to be, and someday it will be.

[lousydrawingsforgoodpeople]

[iamenoughonmyown]

Reasons to recover #8

For my younger self. She deserves to feel happiness, love, comfort and safety. 💘🍂

She deserves it all after struggling all her life and feeling left out, unloved and alone, feeling like she didn't fit in anywhere. She deserves to love herself and feel love. ( crying as I write this, it's a difficult journey but I'm trying for her)

[kindnotestoself]

[I want to be so full of sunshine that I brighten other people’s day!]

[bye-zai]

FUCK @NOERXI@, FUCK ED’s. I WILL SURVIVE!!! 1 year update from when I was EXTREMELY unhealthy to now.

[xskeletal-illusionsx]

Reasons I Continue to Recover: A Reminder for Self

🖤 Freedom from obsession

🖤 The ability to feel emotionally stable

🖤 Better cognitive and physical abilities

🖤 Feel better overall

🖤 Regained and strengthened my sense of agency

🖤 Able to feel genuinely good emotions

🖤 Able to connect with others, especially over recovery

🖤 Freedom from the cycle of behaviors

🖤 Ability to find real solutions to my problems

🖤 Freedom from fears

🖤 Freedom from a need for control

🖤 Hair doesn't fall out anymore, and it's healthy again

🖤 Skin isn't super dry

🖤 Nails don't break off from being super brittle

🖤 Healed bone density (no more breaking bones!!!)

🖤 No more ulcers in my mouth/throat

🖤 Teeth aren't super sensitive anymore

🖤 Able to heal and grow my relationship with my family

🖤 Able to enjoy food!!!

🖤 Freedom from the isolation that illness brings

🖤 Freedom from feeling weak and not empowered

🖤 Not passing out or feeling dizzy all the time

🖤 Much more stable mood

🖤 Less stressed out

🖤 Freedom from feeling forced to adhere to unrealistic beauty standards established by wh*te supr*ma*y, misogyny, and p*d*ph*l*a

🖤 Freedom from feeling like I should adhere to beauty standards for a gender I don't even identify with

🖤 Feeling more comfortable/assured of my gender identity regardless of "how I look"

🖤 Being alive and able to write this list, in hopes that maybe it'll reach someone else who needs to hear/see it

[reasonstworecover]

Reason 6

Without food, there's no energy. You cannot explore, have an adventure, visit the water, walk through the woods, cross under a bridge, talk to strangers, take risks. You cannot live if you do not recover.

[janaisrecoveringforreal]

motivation for recovery

eat cake on your birthday

picknicks

eat the things you bake

travel

make your dreams come true

apologize to your childhood self

eat crêpes at the christmas market

popcorn when you go to the cinema

have different things on your mind than just food

be confident

make friendships

fix the relationship with people you like

be able to concentrate

have the energy to do the things you love

have children someday (if you want to)

try new foods

so you actually have a real personality

you don’t have to always say no if someone offers you food

you don’t waste even more time caring about the least interesting thing about you (your body)

to be actually happy

[prognosis-undiagnosable]

Possible Recovery Mindset?

I just think of the things I'd rather have, such as:

enough brain power to function

people not worry about me/my health

Not have to make up lies about my food intake

more time to focus on school & friends than planning out food

Take my friends out and actually be able to have fun and enjoy

The biggest thing that helped, personally to recover is that I'd rather be strong:

to be able to protect my friends (if needed)

to be the one people call for when they need help carrying heavy things

to be able to run around, wrestle and carry my friends for shits & gigs

[neuroticboyfriend]

as long as you're alive, there's always a chance for something to get better. no matter how small.

[ed-recovery-reminders]

Just stop. Stop. Step back, walk away from the scales and the mirror and the tags Tumblr tries to warn you not to scroll. You'll never find anything good in them. The mirror gives nothing but grief - does it for you, or only for me? I avoid the mirror. I generally avoid the tags. But just now I scrolled one, just to see if there was anything useful. I read at least twenty or thirty posts, and found one that I was glad I had read. One.

This isn't healthy. Not for me or you or any of us. The scales look tempting, but they're a trap. I beg of you, don't look at them - or any of these things. It's all a trap and by the time you figure out how bad it is maybe it's too late. I am torn up inside; the only reason I'm not crying is that I'm all cried out right now. Please take care of yourself. Forget weight. Be a healthy weight and be the weight you're designed to be. I'm begging you. I'm begging me too; I'm deaf to my own cries, but I wish you wouldn't be; if you need even one person to remain accountable to, to get yourself out of the hole we're all digging for ourselves - please tag or message me. If I can help even one person to be just a little bit stronger and safer and healthier I will be glad. I love you, I love you all and I want the best for you.

I started when I was in year eight. I suppose it's really a byproduct of being genuinely underweight all my life up until then: small for my age, later in development than typically, possibly to do with being born three months early and sick. And one day - I can't remember it, not really, and not the start - I looked at myself in the mirror and decided I was fat.

There was absolutely no self-awareness in me then: one day I looked at myself and decided I was fat, I know not why. I had one meal I could not-eat-as-much in the day, so I got into the habit of skipping it entirely.

And that - I have no real timeline beyond that. I figured out I was wrong in my perceptions. I worked on it. I gained weight. Eventually I became content with my body. I saw myself and at times approved.

I really don't know what happened next, honestly - how I got back here. How I got down to where I am now, lowest ever weight [once fully matured] and struggling to eat anything at all. How I'm weak and have no energy; how I can't do things I used to be able to. How it means I hate myself and want to hurt myself and still I resist that through sheer stubborn force of will (and how someday force of will is not and will not be strong enough, so that I'm clawing for reasons to counteract the urges when they come).

I don't know what happened, but I don't want it to happen - for me, or for anyone reading this. If you can, please get help. Take a break from the internet and everything to do with it. If you can't or won't get professional help, tell somebody in your life (even online friends, if appropriate) about what you're going through. I am hugging you tightly, if you want it, and hoping and praying we all get through this. Never thought I'd say something like this but - eating disorders can aptly be described as hell on earth, in a way.

Please, just, if you need it (and even if you feel you don't) take a break and take care of yourself. I'm rooting for you.

[theanonfirefly]

Reasons to recover:

To be able to lead a more fulfilling and joyful life with that one person.

[iamenoughonmyown]

Reasons to Recover #9

Graduating with an Msc psychology degree and attending my convocation ceremony ❤️ ( it's a big deal for me)

[benevolenterrancy]

additional thoughts on why they had better stick to sword drills: Liu Qingge would doki-doki himself into a qi deviation and Shen "middle sibling" Qingqiu would immediately ruin his ~aloof immortal~ persona

[pleucas]

we breathe, eat, fall in love and die

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu roleswap where disciple Shen Yuan knows he's gay, and figures out that he has a big huge crush on his handsome Shizun, but also concludes nearly at once that he's not going to be drawing Luo Binghe's eye any time soon. Firstly, Luo Binghe is notoriously straight. Secondly, even if he weren't, he wouldn't go for his scrawny untalented nerd of a disciple! Shen Yuan's not bad looking, not before or after transmigrating, but he's neither a beautiful nor a hot manly man, and he assumes if Luo Binghe were into dudes he'd be into the same kinds of twunks that Shen Yuan likes. Guys on his own level, etc etc.

Plus Luo Binghe hated the original disciple Shen, and only started to warm up to the transmigrated version after Shen Yuan got injured in front of him trying to stop the other disciples on the peak from killing a small animal. For some reason, Luo Binghe brought Shen Yuan medicine. He got even nicer after Shen Yuan distracted the skinner demon by trying to convince it to take his skin instead of Luo Binghe's, and then again when Shen Yuan successfully fought off a demon invader -- though initially when Luo Binghe volunteered him for that job, he thought it was an assassination attempt. His heart was in his throat when Luo Binghe nearly took a poisoned blow for him, but luckily he reacted more quickly and got hit by the thorns instead. His heavenly demon blood took care of the poison, and he managed to convince everyone that he narrowly avoided getting cut at all.

Shen Yuan's careful not to read anything into it when Luo Binghe finds out about his, erm, uncomfortable dormitory situation and moves him into the side room, or when he completely messes up trying to make dinner and Luo Binghe takes over cooking and bans him from the kitchen (he swears he's not actually that bad at cooking, he just never had to use a kitchen without a microwave or an electric hot plate before...)

After all, it's not like Luo Binghe is cooking for him, he's just making food he likes and letting Shen Yuan eat it too! Because he's nice! He's way nicer than the book gave him credit for being, see, clearly Shen Yuan was correct in signing up for his defense squad, "top ten worst villains of all time" his ass that poll was nonsense...

Unfortunately, though, the plot's still gotta plot. Shen Yuan is heartbroken when the Immortal Alliance Conference rolls around and his shizun stabs him and throws him down into the Endless Abyss. Heartbroken, but not surprised. After all, it was always going to go this way, wasn't it?

But at least, now that it's done, he has some agency in how he reacts to it. He's changed the story enough that he doesn't need to go get revenge. Maybe Luo Binghe's still the villain of his story, maybe that was inevitable, but some heroes let the villains get away. Don't they? It's all part of that noble, breaking the cycle of abuse type stuff. He can be that kind of hero. He can let it go. As long as he avoids Luo Binghe altogether, it should be fine, right? It's not like he's obligated to turn people into human sticks. He asked the system, he's definitely not!

Technically he's not even required to conquer the demon realms. He just has to get out of the Abyss and the be sufficiently cool and/or tragic. Conquest is just one means of doing that, and not even Shen Yuan's preferred, since he doesn't exactly want to rule over anybody. Going around the demon realms beating up some jackasses and rescuing some damsels in distress and becoming sworn brothers with Shang Qinghua, one of the current demon kings, is suitable. He definitely doesn't want to marry any of the damsels he encounters (thank fuck the system lets him off the hook for that!)

But eventually he has to go back to the human world. Not only is it mandated by the system, but he also misses living there. The demonic realms are in many ways better than expected, plus a lot of the monsters are really cool, but he misses the weather and plants and the people he's more accustomed to being around.

He misses Qing Jing Peak, if he's being honest with himself. Shizun's cooking and the bamboo forest and the crisp mountain breezes, the comforts of home.

Not that he can actually go back there in specific. Of course not. If he did that, Luo Binghe would try to kill him, or else the system would try and make him kill Luo Binghe. Bad ideas all around. No, he can't go back to Qing Jing Peak, but he can go find someplace nicer than the demon realms at least. He just has to keep a low profile, which shouldn't be hard since the original goods did that even while actively scheming to kill his former master!

Except.

Everywhere he goes, suddenly Luo Binghe is also there?!

Good thing Shen Yuan thought to take a page out of the book of Luo Binghe's actual love interest, Liu Mingyan, and start wearing a veil. He just didn't want any randos who might have seen him at the Immortal Alliance Conference or on any of the other missions his shizun sent him on to recognize him. But one minute he's investigating a strange case in Jinlan City, and the next the streets are full of Huan Hua cultivators (Shen Yuan has no intention of joining them, that's the path the original took to getting revenge! He doesn't want revenge!), and then Luo Binghe and Sect Leader MBJ and Peak Lord SHL show up, and SY is ducking down alleys and hiding behind columns, just trying to stay out of the way until the lockdown on Jinlan lifts and he can leave.

Except...

Luo Binghe really isn't acting like himself?

He looks like he hasn't been eating or sleeping well. There are dark circles around his eyes, and something almost melancholy in his countenance. And he's dressed entirely in white, none of the usual Qing Jing greens and blues anywhere to be seen. Of even greater concern, he's being reckless. Shen Yuan can't stop himself from rushing out when he sees his former shizun get infected by a sower demon.

Luckily, it's been some years since the last time they saw one another. Shen Yuan's gained a few inches in height, so he's almost at eye-level with his old master now, and though he's still more slender than bulky he's picked up some totally new styles from training the demon realms. He doesn't move the same way he used to. With that, plus the veil, it's enough for him to quickly swallow back his words as he grabs Luo Binghe and quickly administers a cure for the sower infection.

Well, he has one of course. He wouldn't need it himself, heavenly demon blood and all, but his time running around playing hero in the demon realms meant he rescued a lot of humans from such fates. Which is hard to do if you don't have a cure to their afflictions, but between him and Shang Qinghua, sourcing such things was almost easy.

Luo Binghe looks at him like he's just seen a ghost. The other Cang Qiong sect members are alarmed by SY suddenly accosting one of their own and of course find him suspicious, so he runs away right after, and then he has to lose Sha Hualing's pursuit in the city.

But what else could he do? He manages to evade the system's attempts to railroad him into meeting Gongyi Xiao, avoids the rest of the Cang Qiong crowd, and drops some of the cure through the current Qian Cao peak lord's window to get the incident sorted out. Then he flees and puts a good amount of distance between himself, Jinlan City, and every righteous sect he can think of.

The only problem is that after this point, Luo Binghe is everywhere.

Any time Shen Yuan stays in one place for longer than a few days, Qing Jing disciples start turning up. Any time he takes a job hunting some cool-sounding monster or pursuing some interesting tome of knowledge, the better to satisfy the system, it seems like Luo Binghe has selected and gone after the exact same target! Which is especially annoying because back when SY was a disciple, Luo Binghe was always assigning him to do this stuff. Since when does his chronic homebody master have an interesting in six-tailed scorpion lemurs or ancient spiritual kilns?

What's weirder, though, are the rumors.

It seems like any time SY stops at some well-populated place and asks for the latest gossip, he has to hear about how the Qing Jing peak lord lost his beloved disciple during the Immortal Alliance Conference, and mourned like a widow, and now wanders the earth in search of solace for his grief. Seeking something, possibly even the ghost of his dear disciple.

What nonsense! Luo Binghe threw SY into the Abyss himself. He had to do it, it was the plot! And also his obligation as a righteous cultivator, confronted with a "dangerous" half-demon. Does it sting? Yes it stings! That's why SY wouldn't just forget it! Despite logically knowing it's pointless, is there some part of him that wishes his master would have chosen differently? That thinks he should have known that no matter what kind of power Shen Yuan had, he would never use it to hurt people recklessly, or harm innocents, or especially not harm... well. It's pointless, his blood condemned him, and if there is some part of Luo Binghe which regrets what happened, it's doubtless just that he unwittingly harbored a monster for so long.

Which is fine and Shen Yuan would leave it at that, if the guy would just let him!

But no. Instead he has to deal with Luo Binghe turning up and asking him questions, trying to get him to talk (SY has no hope of disguising his voice, if he says anything he's not even sure it won't crack as he comes perilously close to tears instead, so he just stays silent), and then asking for his name, asking if he's mute, asking about his background, his sect, his kin. Is his a righteous cultivator? Where did he get that sword? (NOT Xin Mo, thanks, he used that thing once and then tossed it back into the Abyss before the portal finished closing behind him -- he knows a poisoned chalice when he sees one, although knowing the plot twist about that sword from the novel sure helped.) Where did he learn those forms? Is he... does he have a safe place to go home to? Someone to tend his injuries? Make sure he eats his meals?

SY, of course, stays silent. But it's difficult. Not only because Luo Binghe asks, but because he still looks... bad. Sunken, sorrowful, desperate almost. Shen Yuan can't figure out if he knows or not. Maybe he's unsure, maybe he's looking for SY to give him a sign, so that he can figure him out and then flip a switch and try to finish the job he started.

That can't happen. If they fight, SY will win, and he doesn't want to hurt Luo Binghe.

But even if Luo Binghe's not a heavenly demon, he is a highly accomplished cultivator, and it seems he's got his own breaking points to reach. Eventually he corners SY and gets a hand on his veil, and for a moment SY is sure he's going to rip it off, see his face, and confront him all "I knew it was you, you twisted evil demon, you won't escape justice a second time" and he feels a deep, icy terror close around his lungs--

Luo Binghe lets go of the veil before he can lift it.

But then something even worse happens. Because Shen Yuan's handsome, peerless, noble master breaks down. He falls to his knees, begging forgiveness, sobbing, clutching at his head like he's being driven to madness.

It all spills out of him, then. How he pushed his own dearest disciple into the Abyss, which obviously SY already knew, but also how he was apparently qi-deviating the whole time, and his senses could not differentiate between one kind of demonic "threat" and another. How he realized what he'd done only after he regained his senses hours later, and rushed back to the place where the tear to the Abyss had opened, but could not find a way in after the one he lost. How he had betrayed and thrown away the only person who cared about him, and couldn't even explain that he hadn't intended to. How he would accept anything, any punishment, hatred, penance, or revenge, if only he could see his disciple's face once more.

SY is stunned.

Apparently, Luo Binghe hadn't rejected him for his demon blood?

Not only that, but beforehand, he seemed to have valued Shen Yuan a lot more than Shen Yuan would have credited.

Is it a trick? Is he lying? SY would have guessed so, would have assumed that Luo Binghe's plan was to lull him into complacency only to turn on him once he finally had confirmation. But somehow, he just... doesn't think this is an insincere display. His old master is too cool for this stuff! He has too much dignity to just throw it away on a scheme! There are other ways to get what he wants.

Even if it is a lie, Shen Yuan is tired of running. He's the hero. He won't actually lose, and if it comes to it, it's still in his hands to decide if he wants to spare Luo Binghe or not (he does, of course he does, even if this whole spiel is an act). Plus he's got a backup plant body in one of Shang Qinghua's greenhouses if all goes to shit.

He takes the veil off himself.

Luo Binghe, teary-eyed, stares at him as if his face is the most beautiful he's ever seen.

Shen Yuan nearly puts the veil back on. His cheeks heat up. Dear Shizun, aren't you an immortal master? A noble peak lord? Isn't it your calling to vanquish demons? Get up off the dirty ground right this minute! Where did your dignity go? Shen Yuan did not spend all those nights doing the laundry to watch his teacher dirty his knees for no good reason!

There's a quaver in Luo Binghe's voice as he points out that Shen Yuan was terrible at doing laundry. Luo Binghe had to redo it the day after, all the time.

Shen Yuan chides at him that he should have made one of the other disciples do it then.

Luo Binghe just laughs, and stays on the ground, until finally Shen Yuan has to physically pull him up. Muttering about how he's being ridiculous, what's he crying for, why's he been moping so much, doesn't he know that handsome face should never look so bereft? Then he realizes what he's saying and shuts his mouth, but Luo Binghe just looks happy for the first time in years. Since the Abyss. How is it possible that SY, who actually had to slog through that awful place, can still smile more than Luo Binghe, who didn't?

They're standing so close. Holding on to one another. Almost as if... as if the scene's tone is... well...

Oh what the hell!

Shen Yuan closes the last little bit of distance between them, and kisses Luo Binghe.