Summergirl88’s Recovery Challenge - Day 4. What motivates you to recover?

• I want need to be a writer.
• Turns out, when it comes down to it, I actually don’t want to die. This was never really about dying. It was about finding a way to allow myself to live. It still is. I still want to find that. And this isn’t the way.
• Unlike with anorexia, I don’t NEED a motivation to get better from BDD. There is no reward from it. It’s just interminable hell. I guess in that sense it’s more like other mental illnesses in that there is no competition or desire to hang on to it.
• I want to have even just one single day (but I’d prefer many LOL) in which I don’t feel discomfort constantly. I am not looking for perfection or elation or even happiness. Just not feeling in pain. Physical and emotional. But I’d settle for even just emotional. (BTW the physical pain isn’t from my ED or BDD, but it’s hard to separate one illness from another. I just want this all over, now, please.)
• I want to know how it feels to just do normal things and not think about it. I want to take things for granted. Stepping outside the frontdoor, catching my reflection in a mirror, buying new clothes, eating… none of these things should even register very much on my radar. Plus just normality without always the scary thoughts attached, the terror, anxiety, checking, panicking, etc,etc. A ‘normal’ day. I want to get upset over regular stuff, like regular people do. I want to have headspace reserved for non BDD thoughts.