i originally thought i’d make this post password protected. but then i realized that it is a message that most people never hear, and an aspect of ED recovery that most people tend to skip over. so here it is, out in the open, ready to be scrutinized and/or ignored. what’s important is that i’m able to be honest with myself, and sort through the mess that has been the past month. the words taste like vinegar, but i feel like i need to be open and honest, even if Britt’s the only one who reads this (love you!).
i have been struggling a lot lately, and been a bit in denial about it (and when i’m not in denial, i’m ambivalent. not the best alternative). october really tested me, in terms of the amount of focus i put on school and myself and my body, and the extent to which i’ve been willing to prioritize my well-being. unfortunately, it would seem that recovery has come last in all these things. october showed me that in the face of stress and lack of control, i’m still a bit weary of how i ought to respond. i have, it seems, run right back to numbers and the safety they provide. crying over tests, counting calories, weighing myself- i have let these numbers back into my life, and let them measure things that they are really not connected to (self worth, potential, success, happiness, etc).
this is the recovery crossroads that does not get enough attention, and that people who have never been through recovery don’t know much about. i am at the point where i feel like i am really losing my eating disorder, and i am terrified of that- yet i am terrified of being sick, and losing everything else in my life. i am at a point where i could chose to fight for my sickness, or fight for myself. i can look positively at recovery as letting go of ED, or look negatively at it as letting myself go and becoming a slacker. it’s easy to relate grades and body image back to ED, easy to wish i’d never left vanderbilt and leapt into all the uncertainty of treatment and honesty and recovery. it goes back to the same theme of lack of control and my inability to handle that feeling. at times it feels like a mistake, but i know (deep down) that it is not.
there are two quotes (from the book Wasted by Marya Hornbacher) that have seemed especially relevant lately, and ones that i have found repeating in my mind:
It is not a sudden leap from sick to well. It is a slow, strange meander from sick to mostly well. The misconception that eating disorders are a medical disease in the traditional sense is not helpful here. There is no ‘cure’. A pill will not fix it, though it may help. Ditto therapy, ditto food, ditto endless support from family and friends. You fix it yourself.
and
This is the weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and forth in your head, often, about giving it up. It’s hard to understand, when you are sitting there in your chair, having breakfast or whatever, that giving it up is stronger than holding on, that “letting yourself go” could mean you have succeeded rather than failed. You eat your goddamn Cheerios and bicker with the bitch in your head that keeps telling you you’re fat and weak: Shut up, you say, I’m busy, leave me alone. When she leaves you alone, there’s a silence and a solitude that will take some getting used to. You will miss her sometimes…There is, in the end, the letting go.
how perfectly these words summarize what i’ve been going through lately- and i suppose for the whole of the past year. as hard as it might be to understand, i miss my eating disorder very much, especially because i don’t have the other familiar people and places i once enjoyed. i find i miss ED least when i am with my family and old cheering friends. i miss ED when i am with things that have proven stable, familiar, and constant. i was talking with my roomie the other day about how hard it is for me to feel like i’m simultaneously losing the two things that have always been my world (school and weight). my midterm grade was a huge blow to that. ditto my perception of my body. ditto worrying about transfer apps. i try to combat these thoughts by remembering how ED continues to disrupt my life, and how much i hate that. it’s stopping to try to be rational that allows me to realize that it isn’t ED that i miss, but certain feelings i derived from it, which then allows me to remember other ways i can reap the same benefits in more functional ways.
i am now in the position of “mostly well,” it would appear. i am doing what i have to, eating roughly regularly, weighing what i’m supposed to, generally following other people’s guidelines for how i should act and how many classes i should take, and going to school where other people think it’s best for me to be- and hating almost every minute of it. this is my blog, and my place to be real. that’s the honest truth of recovery, and a reality that many people chose to ignore or hide. it’s the place where on the outside, it looks as if disaster has been averted, and on the inside, it feels like things are worse than ever. it’s difficult to remember how much i hate the flipside as well. it’s most difficult to remember that it is up to me to fix myself- that vanderbilt or BC, in school or out of school, wherever i go, there i’ll be. the place is not the problem, the people are not the problem. i am the problem.
but i am also the cure.
and THAT is something to chew over (pun intended). i wish each day weren’t such a battle. i know i need to fight for myself, do what is necessary, reach out, and try to make the best of each day without worrying about those to come. it is only through doing this that things will start to feel easier again, and i’ll be able to get through the next two months, and everything after. i’m at a crossroads, i’m definitely at a plateau in any and all progress i’d made in recovery, but i don’t think i can truly go back to the place that this journey originated in. so i’ll eat my lunch, and have a snack, and deal with the physical discomfort and the mental anguish of it all. because maybe i will always live with this ED-NOS label, but it sure beats dreaming constantly of food, crying over every number i encounter, and spending my nights with my head in a toilet.
there, my friends, is the ugly truth of recovery. and there is the explanation for why i haven’t been blogging much lately. and my hope to get the gears in forward motion. because i’m so, so tired of this struggle.
at peace, not in pieces 