I'm sat eating a bar of chocolate, and I keep wondering what would "she" say? How would "she" feel? How would "she" react?
When I talk about she, I'm referring to anorexia. My eating disorder became so embedded in my brain, it became me, I became it, together we were one. Now our connection is tumulus, not quite severed, but it is not quite the symbiotic relationship we once had.
She was my first real love. My first real friend. My first real driving force. I want to say letting go of the anorexic, eating disorder ridden me has been a lot easier than I anticipated, but in actual fact I've spent over a year getting to this place. Bit by bit, our bond got chipped away, it wasn't noticeable. At the time I thought nothing was happening, but seeds were being planted in my brain. Parts of my brain began to break free from her grip over me.
She stole me away without me realising. She took me prisoner and she wouldn't let me go. She told me over and over again that I was nothing, that I was worthless, than the only value I would hold was to be thin. And I believed her. I hung on her every word. She made me feel special, she made me feel wanted. As long as I was striving to be thin, I thought I had control, when in actual fact, it was her that was in control. She caged me, she chained me in, I was confined to one goal and one goal only.
Every second of everyday her voice was in my head; "Don't eat, purge what you do eat. Fat is nothing. You are nothing. You wonder why nobody likes you? It's because you're so fat and ugly. At least if you're thin and ugly, you'll at least be thin. That girl is thin, why can't you be that thin? Why are you such a failure? You're nothing. You're lazy. You're disgusting. You make me sick."
She made me doubt people's love for me. "How could anybody ever love you?"she taught me that compliments were people's way of laughing at me. "They're really insulting you, whatever they're saying, they really mean the opposite" she taught me to smile and politely thank them and then go home and cry and listen whilst she told me how grotesque and what a failure I was.
But she was there for me when nobody else was. Nobody ever stayed around, but she did. She was there when I needed someone, she was there to spur me on, to make me want to achieve my goal of being thin. I was reliant on her, as long as she was there, I was safe. I was in my comfort zone. My comfort zone was starve, purge, hate. An endless cycle of soul destroying, torturous thoughts, where I felt nothing but shame and disgust.
She brainwashed me. For years, she manipulated and controlled every aspect of my being. She convinced me that thin would equal happiness. She used my body dysmorphia against me, she used my other mental illnesses against me, she twisted them to what she wanted and what she needed them to be; failures. Failures on my account, they were there because I simply wasn't good enough or thin enough. For years, I was burdened with the notion that I had brought about my own mental illness, and that was yet another failure to add to my increasingly long list.
She had me under lock and key; I can't look at any other female without instantly racking up which parts of their bodies were smaller than the parts of my body. No matter what their shape or size, and due to my body dysmorphia, I can't understand that a UK size 20 has bigger thighs than me, or a bigger stomach. I can't see it. It's a blind spot for me. There is an inherent lack of comprehension that remains within me in regards to body size. All I see is people smaller than me.
She was happily living alongside me, inside me, and I was happy for her to stay, we would have probably been set for life. But then I found love in small places, friends, extended family, and then they set to war. One voice told me I was worthless. Others told me I was worthy. One praised me for being thin. The others cried over my weight. One told me I was ugly. The others old me I was beautiful.
Slowly, I found myself listening more to positive. The people who saw something in me that I clearly couldn't. I trusted them so implicitly, I knew they would not lie to me, I knew what they were saying had to be truth. Maybe not "truth truth" but a truth how they saw it. And that floored me. Never had I ever been made to feel anything more than what my mind had told me I was. Their love started to drive the other "her"'s love away. I wanted to trust what I could see, what I could really feel.
It's a very strange adjustment to make, but the impact it has had on the rest of me has been remarkable. I still have some deep rooted issues with other mental illnesses that I suffer with, but finally, in terms of eating, I feel like I can breathe a little bit again.
I find myself somewhat hypocritical writing this, because only today I had thoughts back of being too fat and restricting what I ate. I am in no way recovered. My eating disorders are still a huge factor in my life, they are just manageable now. Despite those thoughts going round my mind, I still "allowed" myself to eat a chocolate bar, I still "allowed" myself to indulge. Two months ago, I couldn't do that. Allowance of indulgence required a sacrifice; eat a meal, throw it up, don't eat anything the next day. Eat something with too many calories in, throw it up, exercise, don't even think about eating anything else for at least a day. But now, I allow myself these luxuries, they aren't luxuries, they're non disordered ways of thinking.
Sure I do slip, but I'm only human. I'm just working on making sure those slips don't turn into falls.
One day at a time. One day at a time.
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