Difficult Conversations

I'm learning to accept that moving forward means that I have to acknowledge the need for, and then have those difficult conversations that I've been avoiding for most of my life.

There are some conversations I'm not sure I will ever be able to have. As such, those relationships may never be what they could be. Some relationships are too important for them not to be given the chance to be everything they can be. Even if it is the thing that scares me most.

Rewind to this weekend, and a conversation with the person I love most. For weeks, or even a couple of months, I have been spending more time inside myself than I have been with him. I've been consumed by destructive thoughts; thoughts I recognise, and know, to be the Critic in me but thoughts I've still been unable to shake. The feelings of self-hatred, and disgust, and shame that have come from this thinking had put a barrier between us. I couldn't be myself with him in the way I've always been. My heart's been breaking, and I've been afraid of losing him, and it's essentially been because of my own making.

Neither of us had spoken of it until this weekend. He didn't want to make it real, but it has been real to me for a while. I'd been with it, alone, in my head. He didn't want to hurt me, but I have been hurting myself. Alone, in my head.

My fear of losing him by being me. Me, being someone who I've been thinking is totally unacceptable; too sexual, too needy, too fat. I didn't even realise I still think of myself as fat. That hurts me, because I thought I was past this (despite knowing that we don't get past these things, but work with them). I figured because I can weigh myself without falling apart, because I can accept that my weight may be overweight, but that I am still loved, and because I've read a million books and put the hours into therapy and self-help... It'd just go away.

It has not gone away. I am still a work in progress.

I have everything I have ever wanted: A man who loves me and whom I love in return, the prospect of a happy future together, a job which pays the bills and leaves me some to spare. And yet here I've been, pushing it away because I don't think I deserve it and I don't know how to cope with having what I want. It sounds ridiculous, said out loud. How can a person not be able to accept what they want?! And then I think about when I Was very thin, and had the body I wanted, and couldn't cope, so binged back to being big. Being what I knew how to handle.

He told me he loves me for me; for the funny, open, sexy, intelligent person inside. He tells me, and for the first time I hear him when he says he doesn't love me for what I look like, but for who I am.

And, in one conversation, I am able to see what's really been happening, all these years. I am loved, and I am valued, by everyone and everything but me. It is me who has been struggling to accept myself. No one else. It is me who has been struggling to accept that I have so much, so much to be happy about - right now. I've put up the barriers that give me something familiar to worry about (being rejected, for my body or for me).

In one weekend, and in one difficult conversation, I have been given permission - by myself - to start taking down the walls.

It is scary. And it is wonderful.

I am overwhelmed with love, and hope. And yes, some fear of change.

This, I think, is maybe what recovery is all about.

Not Giving In

Apologies for the lack of posting. I've been away, on holiday, and part of that is escaping from the computer. My day job pretty much has me glued to the thing, so it's a welcome break for me.I hope I haven't disappointed anyone in my absence here, and am happy to be writing again!

...

Whenever I've felt low of late, I've heard a familiar phrase pop up in the back of my mind.

Why don't I just not eat? I could just stop eating...

The red flag phrase that I imagine pretty much everyone who has had prior dealings with an eating disorder has encountered during recovery. I know that this is my warning; that something is wrong and that I need to look for what that thing is and deal with it directly. It happens when I am overwhelmed; with life, with choices, with all kinds of emotions, positive as well as negative. It happens when my thoughts become overpowering, my mind spinning with words and phrases, alphabet soup/


It's not that I want to re-discover anorexia, or bingeing, or even diet. It's not even that I want to be thin.

Except it can feel like I do and this feeling, it can be completely overwhelming, even now. It can feel like a desperate, greiving cry for a person - and a body - I once was.

Why don't I just not eat? I could just stop eating...

... and eventually, I'd be thin
... and I'd only have to think about food and my body
... and nothing - or no one else - will matter
... and everything else would go away
... and I will be happy

The hope - the unspoken promises tagged on the end - is what draws me to it, I think. None of these statements are factually true. Most I have previously proved to be wrong. Life continues, things happen, people change. My anorexia didn't stop it before. It just put things on hold and I had to deal with them later. My anorexia didn't live up to all it promised me. It left me worse off than I was before.

So when I am at my worst - when I am crying to my boyfriend because I think want my eating disorder so bad or asking my Mum to reassure me that I'm doing okay - I will not give in.

I will not resort to my eating disorder. I am past the point of return, because, in my heart, I know the truth: I cannot unknow the destructive, negative - even life-threatening, and yes, disappointing - reality of an eating disorder.

I'm still greiving for myself - the girl that developed the eating disorder, the one before her and the one that's writing to you here and now. I'm greiving for my eating disorder - for all I got out of it and for all the desperately-pinned hopes of the life I willed it to bring. I will continue to work hard to move through this.

I am coming out the other end. I am no longer eating disordered, as I have written about in earlier posts. It is scary, and there are still dark times where it is tempting to return to old ways, but I am starting to believe that perhaps I can live in the world without my eating disorder.

And this is happy news indeed.