Wednesday 3 August 2011

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!

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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.

3 comments:

  1. You are strong. Keep fighting against it. Thank you for sharing your story, lots of love to you x x

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  2. Hello! Stumbled upon your blog and thought this post was so moving. I love how you write about grieving for all the different people you've been, and for the hopes you had when you were in your ED. I find myself grieving too, these days, now that I'm in recovery. It can be such a scary, tenuous place sometimes. It's nice to know I'm not alone. Thank you for sharing.

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  3. Hi Alissa and Just me,

    Thank you so much for your comments. It means a lot that people do care and understand, particularly after finally admitting to the person I love most that I am still struggling this weekend.

    I'm starting to think that greiving is perhaps a much bigger bit of recovery than I'd ever thought it would be. It is hard, and it's even harder for other people to understand if they haven't experienced it themselves. You're definitely not alone, Alissa.

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