Summary of Chapter 6 : Parts Performing Wellness – The Appearance of Having It Together

What does it look like to seem fine while falling apart inside? In this chapter, I write about the part of me that kept everything looking controlled, competent, and calm, even as my internal world was anything but. This was the era of performance. And Manager Me was running the show.

Manager Me thrives on productivity, perfection, and the illusion of calm. During college and early adulthood, she often teamed up with Surface Me to present a polished exterior. ED Me didn’t lead in those years, but she didn’t disappear either. She adapted. She stopped starving and started running.

At the time, running was both a coping strategy and a battleground. Different versions of Running Me took the lead: the Regulated Runner, the Rigid Runner, the Restrictive Runner. Sometimes they all showed up on the same run. From the outside, it looked healthy. On the inside, it was often driven by anxiety, obsession, and disconnection from Self.

Through college, graduate school, and early relationships, I performed wellness while hiding internal chaos. But after my first marathon, when my body forced me to stop, something shifted. Self Me began to understand that healing might not come from control. It might come from presence.

I wasn’t fully recovered. Not even close. I was still performing health.
But something real had begun. And that mattered.