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I am not who I used to be.

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thursday

lavender-and-honey

The other day I was talking to my boyfriend about something that happened in treatment and said that “I wasn’t that person anymore.” He asked if I meant that, if I really thought of myself as two different people — then and now. I told him: yes and no.

Yes, it is shocking to me to think about the things I thought and the things I did. I sobbed over pizza, wore heavy sweaters to fool a scale, baked protein bars in an oven and pretended they were cookies. I thought that I could never get a job, that nobody would love me as long as I was fat, that I would be like this forever.

On the other hand, some of those things still happen. I still wish every day that I were thinner. I dream about being able to do it again, only better this time. Some days I cry for no reason at all other than that I am consumed with hatred for myself and want nothing more than to rip my own skin off of my body. Last night, even. I did that last night.

It is easier to think that they are two separate people, that I am not the girl who once took so much Adderall on an empty stomach she thought she was going to have a heart attack. There was a time in my life when everyone knew about my eating disorder, but now I am surrounded mostly by people who either know it only as a passing fact or not at all.

But no, they aren’t two different people. I am both. I do not cry over pizza, I wear sweaters to stay warm, I bake cookies from scratch. When I cry now, it is more in mourning for something I will never have — a thin body, my eating disorder, the crutch on which I had leaned my entire life. My boyfriend asks me if I am okay, and tears leak out of my eyes as my nod turns into a shake. I am not okay, but I am fine. One day, I will be both.