From the Desk Of Anorexia

[fromthedeskofanorexia]

Takeout (TW)

**Specific foods and behaviours mentioned**

I have a confession to make. Tonight I ordered Chinese food. I wish I could say I had some leftovers to throw away along with my fading dignity, but I instead spent the consequent hours underneath my covers, my cat curled against my distended stomach, feeling something beyond shame. I felt dirty, greasy, humiliated by my own human weakness.

Is there any way in hell I could still say that I have anorexia?

The trouble with having an eating disorder for so long is that there are so many iterations of yourself to compare your present self to. Me (and probably most people)? I always go to my sickest. Would that girl have ordered Chinese food? Hell, that girl ate only 5 things: egg whites, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, and up until a point, plain popcorn. Then there were the days when I would allow myself a Quest bar and cry about it in bed. Some things never change...

But now, things are messier, I'm older, with many more years of shame to ruminate over. I know more about how this works, and yet, I feel as if I know nothing at all.

Precipitating this Chinese-food-ordering was 48 hours of fasting and an hour or two of "feeling like I had permission to eat now that I had earned it" whilst also knowing that I was going to deeply regret it. But maybe, just maybe things would be different this time. Maybe it wouldn't end up feeling as bad.

And every time, I feel like a fool. A disgusting fool.

If I was a stronger person, I would look myself in the mirror and say that yes, yes I do still have anorexia. Ordering food, no matter what kind of food does not mean I'm not really struggling to feed myself. Having takeout does not mean I'm not starving. Being full beyond comfort does not mean that I'm not underweight. My eating disorder might not be exactly like it was, but that doesn't mean I'm not still sick.

But really, I'm just not that strong.

[fromthedeskofanorexia]

I feel like you have taken the words right out of my mouth with your most recent post. I could not have resonated more with what you have written. I have recently returned to Tumblr after a year or two long hiatus as I am in the grips of a relapse. Writing is my outlet and the only way to make sense of my thoughts. Thank you for your blog x

Thank you so much for your kind, generous words. They mean so much to me. This is exactly why I writing, why I am trying to find the courage to write. I hope you can continue to find comfort in your words xx

[fromthedeskofanorexia]

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.

The middle ground.

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.

[fromthedeskofanorexia]

Before I go any further, I can't help but feel the need to explain myself.

See, I'm not special. Nothing about my eating disorder is particularly remarkable and really, getting to a dangerously low weight is its only claim to fame. I was never the sickest. I've never really had any health complications from the eating disorder. My body has fought me—hard. Every day for a decade, I have waged war against my body, and in turn, it has stood defiantly against me, holding tightly to its homeostasis.

I have no grand story to tell. These words, these sentiments may be useless, even meaningless, to everyone but me.

So what is this? What am I doing here?

I am here to tell the truth. The real, brutally honest depiction of anorexia and recovery—the parts that no one really wants to talk about because they are senseless or boring or shameful.

I need to figure my way out of this, and the only way to do that is to write. Words have always provided me with the greatest comfort, perhaps greater comfort than an eating disorder. I need to make meaning out of this battle, and armed with my writing I think I am ready.

My hope, after I have said everything I need to say is that I will find anorexia less intoxicating, less appealing. I want to see it, really see it for all that it is.

[fromthedeskofanorexia]

Bones are universal, a language we see and recognize as our own. They are a mirror, instilling fear to those who look, for they know that this is them too. They are jolted into recognizing a fate that could be their own.

A thin film of skin stretched across an unsightly terrain. Losing weight, the barrier between the body and the world thins, wears away so that flesh and bone and blood is quite possibly uncontainable. A fear of the world results in its absorption. Instead of nesting into a haven of protection, disappearance. A soft and quiet fading into the atmosphere.

Is this not more naked? Is this not more powerless over the enemy? Living under the supposition that protection would come from absence?

This is never the fight it is framed to be. It is a quiet fatigue, a giving-up, becoming the consumed woman. How perfectly simple and small.

[fromthedeskofanorexia]

I went to Starbucks today—the one by my apartment. For a modern-day Starbucks, it's surprisingly spacious and, impressively, still has its outlets. I stood by the counter, waving away the barista who was calling me over to order, "I'm not ready yet," I said, fittingly.

I used to come to Starbucks and order a black iced coffee with a pump of sugar-free vanilla and shake in 8 to 10 Splenda packets. Unsurprisingly, splenda is not supposed to dissolve as well in iced beverages, so I would spend the entirety of the drink shaking it, swirling the ice cubes around, getting rid of the white crust of sweetener that formed on the bottom. It was disgusting, and it was all I drank.

I stared at the board today, as if I hadn't already examined the drinks menu prior to coming. I had come to get a frappucino. Actually, I had come to write, however, I intended to get a frappucino, or at least consider it. But my mind was already halfway into it's tumbling routine and the words, I'll have an iced coffee. Black. were resting on my lips. I took so many moments to steel myself that the barista had good reason to stare at me gapingly, but eventually, I gathered up my courage to order a mango dragonfruit refresher.

"Do you want that with water or lemonade?" the barista asked. Fuck's sake, I have to make another impossible decision?? "Um..." I took a beat too long to respond before spluttering out, "lemonade please." I'm pretty sure this was accompanied by some kind of strange body twitch.

What am I doing?? Ordering a caloric drink? In starbucks? Who am I?? This is not what I do.

And that, right there, is the dilemma.

Since my two-weeks of eating normally, the phrase "coming to terms with" has stuck around in my mind like a frenzied bee. There is too much that I need to face, too many truths that are blaringly loud that I am trying to ignore.

Maybe my weight isn't ever going to go below xlbs again

Maybe I just don't have it in me

Restricting is harder than it used to be

I don't have the will-power I used to have

Maybe it's not about will-power but about self-hatred

I don't hate myself the way I used to

Maybe it's not about self-hatred but about self-protection I don't need to protect myself in the way I used to

These are deeply painful. Deeply painful because I know they are true, and there's nothing I can do anymore to change them. I don't have that kind of power. Another truth to come to terms with. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and I know I am doing my best to shove my head in the sand.

Except there is one thing that has been true for a long time—a truth I hold dear: my writing is the most honest part of me. And for the first time, I have written out the things I don't want to admit to, yet cannot deny. I hope that represents some sort of courage

There is a rift inside of me. The dilemma is that I'm trying to figure out who I am and what I'm doing while facing the truth and denying it at the same time. The dilemma is that everything is a goddamn question now. Everything is an argument. And while I fight with myself, I am inching myself closer to something I don't want—a quiet, unobtrusive end to an eating disorder. No drama. No hospital beds. No needing-to-save-my-life. No plunging myself into the depths of recovery for one. last. chance. No. My recovery does not feel like it's in my hands. It feels like my body has taken it from me, tugging it away from my trembling grip, and spat I'm doing this without you, whether you like it or not in my face. A slow, painful sunder I have never totally been on board with.

[fromthedeskofanorexia]

Is this how the end comes? Slowly, silently, without the spectacle I have grown so used to? Do I finally stop here, hands outstretched to catch the messy fragments of a life I have tried to live, to not live, to live again?

Four years ago, I was dying. I say this with moderate pride, complete honesty, and mild horror that four long years have passed so quickly since. Four years of not-really-dying-not-really-living. Four years of nothing I really want to quantify.

Which is where I find myself. In no-man's-land. Writing about an end I have been resisting, an end that has come anyway. Do I succumb? Do I surrender?