As promised, I’m writing not because I feel like I have to, but because I have something to say. This post has been living in pieces and random thoughts in my phone’s notes and even longer in the back of my mind. I didn’t quite know how I was going to word it so that it expresses the deep feelings that I think it needs to, but as usual, I’m going to write it out and see what happens.
This week I was reminded that this whole “recovery from an eating disorder” thing is far from over for me. I’ve known, on some level, that I’ve been holding onto some thought patterns and behaviors for quite awhile now. But I’m the ‘Queen of Denial’ when I feel like I need to be, and that’s been the name of the game for the past few months.
I’ve talked about it before, but eating disorders are SMART. Yep, that’s what I said. Just when I think I’ve got that pesky eating disorder on the run, it turns back up again in a different way. I think I know what it looks like and sounds like, and then bam, it changes. This is the reason that eating disorders are so hard to treat. They can look like one thing, and then they can change into something completely different. I will blog more about this at a different time. But for now, I’m going to talk about how mine has completely fooled me for the past couple of months.
First off, I want you to take a second and reflect on a hard decision that you’ve had to make in your life. One that you agonized over, weighed the pros and cons of, one that kept you up at night. Now, I want you to picture yourself making the same hard decision, with all the same agony and stress, at the very least, six times each day. Sounds terrible, huh? Well that’s the best way that I can think of to explain my brain striving each day to stay in recovery from my eating disorder.
It’s complicated. Unlike some addictions, food is a part of daily life. You have to eat to live. There’s no way around it. Therefore, that thing that brings so much stress and anguish, is also the thing that gives you life.
If you really think about it, food is everywhere. It’s like you can’t get away from it. It’s on TV, social media, the radio, movies, and billboards. It’s a part of most family get-togethers and traditions. It’s the center of just about everything. So for someone with an eating disorder, where food itself is a trigger, the world can seem pretty overwhelming and stressful. Take the fact that you can’t seem to get away from it in our culture, and add that to the minimum of six times each day that someone in recovery from an eating disorder is supposed to eat, there aren’t very many times during the day that you can find peace.
Then, to add to the food bombardment that already exists during most of the day, someone who has struggled with an eating disorder also has the “eating disorder voice” in their mind to battle constantly. So, those little bits of peace throughout the day are anything but peaceful. That eating disorder voice is whispering things like, “You’re going to have to work out a lot today to erase that dessert you ate earlier” or “Did you hear her call herself fat? Imagine what she thinks of you” or “What are you going to eat for dinner? Pizza? Really? Are you sure that’s a good idea?” or “Your dietitian is lying to you. Don’t listen to her.” The eating disorder voice, whether you’re in recovery or not, still seeps into those moments of should-be-peace, making every moment of every day one giant decision after another.
You know that hard decision I had you think about? Now, picture yourself having to consciously fight your doubts and make that decision that is right for you, every moment of every day. That’s exactly what it feels like to live in my body right now. It's absolutely excruciating and in some moments, it feels utterly impossible.
Sometimes, the decision is easier to make than others. There are good days where my mind is in a good place, and I can easily tune into the motivation that helped me to make the decision to start on my recovery journey. Other days, well, those are the times that I have a hard time remembering why I decided to let go of my eating disorder in the first place. This past week has been a string of not-so-good days.
To be honest, there are times that I can conveniently forget how miserable I was in my eating disorder. I forget how cold I was all the time, how I was walking around in a daze, not remembering simple things and misspeaking. I forget how I lost my fine motor skills and had trouble picking things up or not dropping things. I forget how I was controlled by my food rules, often putting those rules or exercise in front of the people that I loved most, choosing my eating disorder over them. I somehow forget how I had to spend 97 days in the desert away from my nephews and my job and Rocky. In these instances, I forget all those bad things and focus on things that shouldn’t matter, like weight. I tell myself that the number on the scale, or how my jeans fit (or don’t fit) are more important than my health and the people I love. And because that eating disorder voice is so strong, I still sometimes believe it. In those moments, where I forget how awful it is, I choose my eating disorder because it tells me that it will take care of me. That it will make me feel better and look good and not have to feel. In these moments, I take a step backward and instead of choosing the healthy choice, I choose it.
When this happens, I tend to beat myself up. I get mad, get frustrated, and feel like I’m not making any progress. I get mad at my treatment team for not helping me enough and I get mad at myself for falling back into the trap again. This is exactly what the eating disorder wants. At this point, it’s not only won once, it’s won twice. Because every time I get angry at myself and my team, it pulls me closer to it and away from them. Every time I listen to that eating disorder voice, I take a step closer to the ledge and a step away from recovery.
These are the times that I catch myself. But what I’ve realized in the past week or so, there are so many more times that I choose the eating disorder where I don’t catch myself. I participate in a behavior that is disordered, instead of a recovery-focused one. This is what has been happening for the past few months.
I can’t speak for everyone with an eating disorder or mental health struggles, but for me, too much free time is a recipe for disaster. Hence, why I’ve been so silent during this quarantine time. When I’m alone with my thoughts for too long, I can talk myself into just about anything. And the longer I’m alone, just me and my brain, the scarier, more irrational those thoughts get. Not proud of this, but I can work myself up into a panic in no time at all, or talk myself into really, really unrealistic, irrational things. Pretty much, too much alone time with just me and my brain is bad news. Therefore, the almost two months in March/April that I spent seeing practically no one, holed up in my house alone was the perfect breeding ground for my eating disorder to start creeping back in. However, it was smart, and didn’t manifest in the same ways as it did before treatment. It was sneakier and different, which made it that much harder for me to catch and identify it. Because of this, I didn't see it for what it was...at first.
Eating disorders are sneaky, sneaky things. Throughout this quarantine time, it’s been pulling me back to it and I didn’t even know it. Things like, “It’s ok if I exercise a little more than normal, I have all this free time and I’ll go crazy if I don’t go on a longer walk.” Or, “I’m not walking around school all day and I’m probably burning less calories, so it’s ok if I skip this snack.” Or, “I’d better not eat a dessert this week because I don’t want people to judge how I look when I see them again.” Simple things, little things, that all of a sudden start adding up to be big things.That’s the thing about eating disorders. They are never truly gone. They are always lurking and waiting to prey on crises like global pandemics or other changes in routines, personal disasters, grief, or even happiness. They are good at fooling you into thinking you’re just “being healthy” or “it’s not that big of a deal.”
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that you can recover from an eating disorder. That you can get to a place where you’re living your best life and making choices not based on numbers or food, but based on health and happiness and freedom. But I’m also not naive enough to think that those deeply ingrained habits just go away never to be seen or heard from again. Someone with an eating disorder needs to always be aware, just like a drug addict or alcoholic, that they can easily fall back into old patterns so they need to be proactive in protecting their recovery.
I’m pretty good at looking like everything’s fine, even when things are most definitely not fine. Even the people closest to me sometimes have trouble deciphering how I’m doing, or if I’m doing as well as I look like I’m doing. Throughout this pandemic, I’ve had people checking up on me. Asking how I’m doing. It has not been an easy time. But one thing that I’ve said to people is, “Eating disorder-wise, I’m actually doing pretty good.” I was not lying when I said that, not on purpose anyway. But as I took a step back this week and had a heart-to-heart with my dietitian, I’m realizing that I wasn’t doing as well as I’d previously thought. Am I in crisis mode? Nope. But have I let some pesky little thought patterns and behaviors back in? Yep.
The difference between now and times in the past though, is that I’m willing to look deeper into these things that have crept back in, reflect on why they have come back and what I can do to move away from them again, and ask for/receive help from my treatment team. Instead of remaining in denial and letting things get worse and worse until I’ve dug too deep of a hole to get out of my own, I’m trying to stop digging and take the initiative to start climbing back up out of the hole. A lot of things have changed in the past two years, but the biggest? Probably my self-awareness and willingness to help myself and let others help me.
So am I still having to make that hard decision, every single moment? Yes. Is it easy? Not at all. Do I always make the “right” decision? No, not even close. But am I working hard to continue to take steps away from the ledge? Every single moment of every single day.
Lately, it’s felt like my body and I are at war, battling each other over every morsel of food I have to eat and every calorie that I burn. I feel like I can never win with my body, and I imagine that it probably feels the same way about me. This is something that I need to tap into more, and something that will make a pretty good blog post I think, that is when I’m ready to really dive into it. For now though, I can dream. And I dream that someday I can make a covenant with my body. A promise to love it and take care of it and appreciate it. Right now, I’m not there. We’re still bitter enemies. But hopefully, with continued steps in the right direction, maybe someday, we will be able to call a truce.
That’s the last thing that the sneaky eating disorder voice wants: a truce between my body and I. Instead, it wants me to always be at war with my body, at war with my treatment team, and at war with the part of myself that wants to be healthy and happy and free. The past few months, I’ve let it back in just enough that it’s thinking that it may have a fighting chance. But this week, I’ve renewed my commitment to keep fighting, to keep making the right decision each moment of every day, so that someday, that voice will fade and I can live my best life with all the happiness and fullness and freedom that I can imagine.
