Your tenth year into an eating disorder is very different than your first, second, or even third. I don't know when exactly things start to change, and perhaps it happens more gradually than one can pinpoint. The first couple of years are an all-out war between you and your eating disorder. Daily gunfire, relentless attacks, night and day become one and the same. It is inescapable and dark and harrowing and you want to die.
Today, a decade having passed since I developed anorexia, I cannot say that it is any less harrowing, any less torturous, but somehow, I have had to learn to live with it nonetheless. There are two occupants in my body—me and the eating disorder—and there isn't room for us both. But we're at a stalemate. No one is budging. No one is moving out. I want to live. But so does my eating disorder. So here we are.
Sometimes I think back to a specific time I have let pass and think "I should have recovered then. That would have been a good time." When I began college. The first, second, sixth, seventh time I went to treatment. When I graduated college. When I started my new job. I fantasize about a recovery demarcated by something. Would that have made it easier? Would it have made more sense?
But an eating disorder, and therefore, recovery, does not make sense, except for one person. The one who has to live with it.
Eating disorders are inherently miserable, no one would deny that, even those most devout to their illness. Recovery was supposed to signify happiness, wasn't it? Happiness could not coexist with an eating disorder, could it? That's what they used to tell me, as if happiness was supposed to be more enticing than starvation (it never was).
I spent my day today completely lost within a wonderful book. I snuggled with my cat. I bought myself something nice. I took the most amazing shower after being devoured by the 90-degree heat. I had therapy. I wrote. I didn't feel the usual dread I feel everyday—that I'm doing something wrong. I found pleasure and peace in all of these things. It was beautiful.
But I also didn't eat until dinnertime, when I had my usual low-calorie frozen dinner. I felt pleased at feeling lighter. Anorexia wasn't filled with disgust at the sight of my body. I was being a "good girl". I was pure and acceptable.
There's no doubt I am consumed by starvation and deprivation. Those are the hallmarks of the life I choose to lead, but that also isn't the whole truth. I found happiness today. Not everything was dark. I found pockets of light.
It is all these years later, all these years of coexisting, that I realize that I have adapted to holding both. Happiness and illness. Abundance and deprivation. In many ways, this is more terrifying than I want to admit. My black and white argument that "I cannot be happy and fulfilled with an eating disorder" is disintegrating the more I figure out a way to remain in the grey. I am learning that it is far harder to hook your faith into the grey than the all-or-nothing argument: get better or die.
I wish it were still that simple.
I am learning that this is the darkest part of the illness, where it seems escape is impossible. Where getting out is going to take every last ounce of myself and then some. Where I have to tell myself that I am fighting for my life, even though I might not think that's true. Maybe you have to make it true. Maybe you must remind yourself that the alternative just isn't what you want anymore. Maybe you remember that you have always wanted more.
