5 am eating disorder ramblings and stuff
So things are a bit of a mess right now but for the first time in my life I decided to talk about my eating disorder and recovery on a public social media platform and it’s been one of the most liberating experiences ever. The entirety of the last decade I’ve spent battling my eating disorder I’ve ALWAYS been incredibly ashamed by it and almost never talked about it with anyone. Even while I was in a recovery program SPECIFICALLY for women with eating disorders, surrounded by girls going through the same exact situation as me, I was still too ashamed to talk openly about it. Then recently after a whole bunch of prying from my friend who is in recovery from his own addiction and a few drinks I was able to push myself to share a teeny tiny bit of information about my eating disorder with him. Namely that I had one and that was about it. And he brought to my attention that I should be proud of my progress, not embarrassed by it. That rattled around in my head for a few months and I started thinking that maybe he was right and maybe the shame I was carrying around was a more serious issue than I realized. So, last tuesday, I made a public post regarding my 3 years in recovery which made me feel totally vulnerable and was terrifying for me but every single response I recieved was supportive and positive and uplifting. I even got a message from a girl I went to high school with and hadn’t spoken to in literally years telling me she was proud of me and how she wished she could be as strong as I was against her own eating disorder. And I thought it was awesome that me sharing my own experience actually made enough of an impact on someone who is essentially a total stranger to reach out and share some of their story with me.
Thinking about it now, I honestly think the shame I’ve associated with my eating disorder has been a major and insidious problem that has always hindered my recovery without me even realizing it. My ED made me too ashamed to ever talk about it and by never doing so it could maintain some element of control over me. Being vocal about addiction takes the control away from it. Even after 3 years in recovery I could never shake the belief in the back of my head that I would always eventually relapse and never truly be able to live my life without my eating disorder hovering over me. I still don’t believe in “full” recovery, I think that once an addict, always an addict and that recovery lasts the rest of your life but it’s like for the first time ever I ACTUALLY have the upper hand and have taken the control away from my eating disorder. And now I honest to god believe that my eating disorder is fighting back hard as hell to regain that control, because the last few weeks instead of being easier for me to fight back it’s actually been mentally harder for me to eat like I’m supposed to and take care of myself. But I’ve still been doing it anyway regardless. And recently every time I’ve eaten something “bad” or had 3 meals a day or didn’t purge even though I really wanted to it feels closer to a victory rather than a mountain of guilt crashing over me. So...basically my eating disorder can kick fucking rocks because I’m not going down that easy this time.
