What I wish everyone else understood sometimes

another -brief- but intense relapse (yup- as predicted, hence the break in posting)

purging (after I had been doing so well for so long-i am so ashamed), starving, walking, walking, walking....

Together again with my head straightened on. I have an appointment with a nutritionist next week. Hopefully that will help me towards this goal of recovery without relapse.

the trigger this time? The weightlifting I was doing and being weighed at the doctors. I have gained the 10 pounds that was my goal- no increase in clothing sizes- just weight gain. But seeing it on the scale still entered my psyche and did it's damage in the evil way that only Ed can do. I had hoped I would be strong enough to deal with the weight gain. But I was wrong.

Obviously I'm not as recovered as I thought I was. I thought I was ready to do the weightlifting. But I can't do it yet without more support.
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But I was thinking tonight, sometimes it's hard to share with others because of the way they look at us, and think of us, once they know the truth.

First,
The eating disorder is described as self absorbed and childish. So many times it is referred to as a disorder of "emotional immaturity". This writing, this description, while useful sometimes to both the clinician and the patient also is harmful to both I believe. While there are elements of truth in this, that have helped in all aspects of my recovery, there are semantic issues that arise from this as well. There is an aspect of it that implies a childish desire to be sick sometimes.

What I wish the world understood is that I do not choose this pain. I do not choose to carry this. I know the enemy is myself, I do not blame others, or point fingers. But I do not choose this. If I could walk away I would. It is the truest example of what a mental illness is. It is painful and crippling, it is illogical, and at times I can not control it, no matter how hard I try. Nobody chooses this kind of pain. I believe and sense sometimes in talking to younger women with the disorder, that there are stages that they go through, where there is an attention seeking function served by the disorder, but for those of us now, in our adult years. The hideous shame and secretness of the disorder should speak for itself.

Second,
I want you to know what it is like to be me. To understand the pain of my existence. Living in my body is torture. I am trapped inside a heavy, sweaty gargantuan fat suit. I do not know, want, connect, respect, own, this body that I live in. I barely tolerate it. If you lived like this, you would feel the same way. I am sure of it. The small comments that family have made over the years, regarding fluctuations in weight, have more hurtful effects than anyone can ever imagine to those of us who are already carrying this extreme pain around with us.


Third,
Eating disorders do not need a name, a body size, a clinical pattern. If I look healthy, or if I look overweight, will you believe me if I tell you eat 500-800 calories a day for three-four weeks at a time? Will you care? Will you suggest maybe it's a good idea? If I do not jog 4 miles a day anymore, but I have arthritis and sometimes I sneak in a run when my doctors order me not to, will you consider that exercise bulimia? Because I have never binged, but I purge, I am not bulimic. Because I am not underweight, I am not anorexic. And within the eating disorder online communities of self help, you find those that will competitively compare the severity of their behaviors to each other, and expell those from the groups if their behaviors are not as clinical as theirs. There is a world of people who suffer, who do not identify, who do not own what they do to their bodies, because they do not fall under the right categories. Not only are we not good enough human beings with beautiful enough bodies, but we aren't even good enough anorexics/bulimics.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

We all know how that phrase goes..

"make me the fairest of them all"

For some of us, the mirrors mean more to us than others though.

My life has been controlled by mirrors. Real mirrors, mirrors projected to me by others, and mirrors I have imagined projected upon me by others.

Always my physical appearance, my weight, my size in space, is the feature that is paramount to my existence and my worth in this world.

Today at 10 a.m., the mirror was kind, but honest. A middle aged, but not overly thin nor overweight mom viewed back at me. Kinda cute if looked at in the right direction in fact.

Today at 7 p.m, the mirror was cruel. An aging, overweight, cellulite ridden women with bags of fat. The amount of exercise it would take to shape this woman back into something "acceptable" for society to view... seemed so overwhelming. Too overwhelming to bear, and frankly, not eating is just easier.

There are magic mirrors everywhere, only my magic mirrors are cruel, they change and distort and capture the "reality" of my changing internal reality. If one could see what the picture in the mirrors were as I walked by, they would know the haunting reality of my changing internal existence throughout the day.

23 years later, and no sign of real freedom yet

When I was eleven years old, I watched an after school special about bulimia. At that time, I had no idea what an eating disorder was, how one might make oneself vomit, or remotely understand human physiology enough to understand the dangerous effects of repeated vomiting on the body. Apparently, I was also not old enough to understand that the show was intended to be a deterrent. All I thought was, I should try that.

And so I did.

I went into the bathroom, stuck my finger down my throat, after a lot of wiggling and a little jabbing, voila, produced vomit. And hence my lifelong struggle with purging began.

It has taken 23 years, multiple forms of restrictive eating and purging methods and several remissions and subsequent relapses, to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I am not yet recovered. I can not claim that at this time. I don’t know if you ever can truly recover in the most definitive sense of that word. Perhaps you only find some balance and “do better”. I want to be better. I want to find that elusive real recovery, because every time I think I have made it, I fail- either though purging, restriction, exercise bulimia or laxatives. In reality, my life, my "recovery" is a cycle of dancing through mild cycles of these and calling it "healthy". I feel as though I balance delicately on the edge, teetering. Stress, mayhem, self-esteem- I know I could be triggered to relapse. I am on the edge of relapse as I start this blog. This blog represents my attempt to prevent it.

So many of us struggle, recover, and yet relapse again and again. I want to know why it is we never fully recovery. Why we switch to a new method of control for a while, simply to fail again. So, I guess that is the purpose of this blog, to try and uncover why it is so hard to really recover.

And more than anything, I would love to just be a normal woman. To look in a mirror and not see something horrifying looking back at me. To look at a plate of food and not debate whether to keep it down. To not count calories obsessively in my head with my perfect calorie counter.
Until that day, I'll just keep accepting who I am. Because, that's all I can do.