h and h

I got a facebook message from an ex tonight. She writes me from time to time.

It was a relationship that ended badly. Or, more accurately - I ended it, badly.

It's a long story.

And yet, we've reached a point where we can occasionally be in touch. A back and forth exchange, every 6 months or so. Hello. How are you?

She still calls me "beautiful." It makes a little part of me smile and remember how she was the first one to really convince me of that - that I could be beautiful. All the more poignant because she didn't think she was, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Tonight she asked me a question I haven't heard in a long time.

"Are you happy and healthy?"

My dad used to ask me that. After I confessed at 16 that I was cutting and suicidal, after I came out at 18 to him as gay. Suddenly the rest didn't matter. He still wanted me to get good grades, and he never gave up on his dream of me becoming a doctor/getting a PhD/curing cancer. But this was the important thing, the question he asked at the end of every phone conversation, every lunch date.

Happy and healthy?

Am I?

I don't know. I'm still doing terrible things to my body in terms of how I eat/don't eat/throw up what I eat/exercise to make myself not feel guilt over what I eat. But I love food and feeding others. Right now I'm in a downward spiral of relationship mess that started only 2 days ago over something that feels big yet is really so small, and it's killing me that I can't seem to pull up the nose of the plane. But I'm happy to be writing again, and keeping mostly on top of the list of things I need to do, and to be supported and loved by friends in my life.

Will I ever be, totally?