My fears...

My love, that was quite the counseling session, huh? To be honest, I am scared. I am scared of losing you again. I am scared of falling back down into that abyss that we have been clawing our way out of for the last two months. I am terrified that I am going to lose you again, but the next time will be far worse. In each of those reasons, 'I' is the prevalent word. Those are selfish thoughts because they have everything to do with me, nothing to do with you. I have to now put my trust into the process just like I have been telling you to do for the last two weeks. I was glad to have the opportunity to share with you my feelings about coming home  and my worries and concerns. This eating disorder put me in a terrible place emotionally, mentally and physically. The emotions that I had were so raw, I had never had them before. Feeling those emotions for the first time scared me and caught me off guard in a way that I had never experienced. I did not know that I loved you so much until I lost you. I did not know that I hated the eating disorder so much until I lost you. That is such a wide range of emotions expressed in two short sentences. I was in a hell in December. I really thought that you were going to die in the next couple of weeks of month. That is hard thing to come to grips with as a husband to a woman that I adore. That is my worst nightmare, to lose you, and I saw it happening right in front of me and there was nothing I could do about it. Now that I have experience those emotions, I know what they are. Like I  said on the phone, if there is a next time, those emotions will not be so intense. I am all in on this experience. I am all in on getting you home feeling better about yourself. I am all in with being with you in the months to come and getting to know you better. I am afraid that my intensity will not be as resilient if there is a next time. I know you are going to have struggles and that we are going to have hard times. I was really glad when your therapist was able to define my words into a more specific fear, and that was that you will close yourself off from me and that the dishonesty will return. She was correct, that is my greatest fear, that you will try to fight this alone or give in to it and leave me with deception. I will do whatever I can to help you not fall back into those ways. I will try to be here for you when you need me. I am all in on your recovery. I am not all in on going back to our old ways. I know that you want to get better, we have all been praying for you to get better. I was encouraged when you told us on the phone today that you surrendered yourself to not knowing the time frames. That made me happy. I am glad that you reached that point last week, I think if you had not reached that  by today, you never would have because now we have any idea of the time frame of the next few weeks. But now I want you to go a step further, and maybe you are already there. I want you to surrender yourself to recovery. I want you to not picture yourself at home, struggling with the dinner that is front of you, or the pushups that you want to do. I don't want you to picture yourself being embarrassed when you see someone you know that probably is aware of why you were gone. I don't want you to picture yourself being self conscious when someone says you look great. What I do want you to picture is how great it is going to feel when you drive down our gravel driveway after being gone for almost three months and the feeling of excitedness and relief at seeing the home we love. I want you to picture us sitting around the dinner table talking and laughing about our day. I want you to feel the love of those who truly care for you, those who have been praying non stop and helping me so much, and when they see you and they want to make a big deal about you, hug you and tell you that they missed you, that you will feel good about that. I want you to picture the embrace that we are going to have each day, knowing that we are back together again and that you were saved from the grave. The eating disorder is nothing to us in this new view, it is everything in the old us. It is time to close that chapter, hard as it may be  and as difficult as it will feel, the page has to be turned. There is just too much happiness to be enjoyed to let it take your thoughts, emotions and love from you. When you return, it will be a celebration. We will be happy, we will break out the sparkling cider and toast as a family the miracles that we have received and been a part of the last two months. I realize that you are quickly approaching the next phase in this journey. One that is outside the Center. I realize how scary and thrilling this will be for you. I just ask that you let me take the path with you. Hard as it may be, let me go with you and share in the journey. We are going to have hard times ahead, but they don't have to be difficult ones. They can bring us closer together, not further apart. Please be honest with me. Write it in your journal a million times, that you will be honest with me, so when you are having a hard day and you don't want to tell me, you can pick it up and read in you book how much you did not want to fall back into the old way. That is one reason I write to you every night, I wanted to capture the emotion in my moment of trials so that I can read these words again to get pulled back to where I need to be if I get off course in the future. I love you so much, if this eating disorder can go away,  I know we will rise to a new level in our relationship and love that we have never experienced. Lets take this journey together, I will be here for you. You are my girl and always will be. I love you.