parties

I've been going to a lot of parties lately... but I guess that's what high school is infamous for... except I don't go to parties with drugs or alcohol.
Anyway, Matt's suprise birthday party was last night. As I was getting ready, I glanced in the mirror, and I looked thin. That happens occasionally, when I only briefly see myself. When I look closer, I always look fat again. A part of me wants to believe that the glances are what I really look like, and the other times are what I look like after my mind contorts the image. Most of me is content (although not happy) with just believing I'm fat.
There were a lot of people at the party, maybe 25, and I thought that Matt maybe wouldn't see me in all those people, but he spent most of the night with me. We were standing alone in the dining room, his arms around me and holding me to him, and he said, "I'm so happy right now, I have everything I want." And although I'd been distant, dissociative, for most of the night, at that moment I looked around me at all the people, and the empty pop cans and mountains of chips and Gushers boxes, and I realized I had everything I wanted in the world too, and I realized I was happy.
It's the first time I've been happy with my friends or at a party in... years, I think. And I was surprised. But I realized it is possible, to be whole.
In that moment, in Matt's arms, I felt so safe and I knew that everything was going to be okay, eventually. Maybe the bulimia will never go away, I don't think it's really possible to actually recover from an eating disorder, but I will eventually be stable, in recovery. Maybe I won't ever stop wanting to cut myself, but I will stop actually doing it. I won't hit my kids. I'll take my meds. I will marry someone, maybe someone like Matt, someone who I love and who believes in me like Matt does.
It was crazy really, that I was happy, and that as I drove home Venus and the moon were so bright in the sky. But I know now, it's possible, it's possible for me to be happy, and I'd doubted that possibility until now.
This morning there was six inches of snow outside. I don't know what significance that has, but it felt like it meant something.