Looking at everyone relapsing
and going back to treatment/hospitals (it’s that time of year again!) makes me feel waves of nostalgia.
It makes me crave safety. True, honest to goodness, safety. That is what being in treatment/hospitals is. You have no freedom and therefore no responsibilities. You are simply sick and you must be taken care of.
And right now, I’m in a place where that sounds absolutely lovely. To put up my hands and say “I quit. I’m tired of real life.” I want to press the most effective pause button that I know: Buy a scale, relapse into anorexia, suddenly have my whole life swirling around it. Treatment centers, doctors, endless meal plan worksheets and daily weigh-ins and labs. There would be painful parts, of course. The parts where I end up in another ER and have to call my mom sobbing, saying I’m sorry. The parts where I’m fighting with everyone around me trying to make sure I’m in control of what passes my lips.
But that pain is different. That pain is surface level. It’s traumatic and terrible and contains some of my most horrible memories– but it’s different. Because while that storm rages above, the hurricane in your chest gets forgotten.
I mean, who has time to be heartbroken when you’re starving yourself to death? And you can’t very well worry about your stressful job if you’re institutionalized.
Instead of feeling the pain of getting in a fight with a good friend, or the agony of losing the boy you were in love with, or the shame of your boss reprimanding you for missing a deadline, or the anxiety of forming new relationships– you’re sitting under a blanket, complaining about PM snack, and arguing with your dietitian about your goal weight.
And there’s safety even before you enter the doors of the treatment center: bones and weight and starvation consume your every thought. You don’t have to spend too long thinking about the way the boy you loved used to hold your hand, because you can very quickly turn your attention to your hipbones. Or yogurt. Or whatever else is currently playing out in the melodrama of your eating disorder.
And that’s the important part: It’s a cop out.
You are choosing the easier route. And you are losing love and joy and connection that were supposed to be yours.
You’re losing the moments where you and that boy that broke your heart are wrapped up in one another, listening to each others heartbeats through the darkness. You’re losing the part where that senior coworker you always looked up to asks you if you would like to help her with her project. You’re losing the part when your best friend shows up after the stupid boy breaks your heart, and makes you pasta, and rubs your back, and drives you up into the mountains so that you can look at the city, all lit up under the stars.
Treatment is safety. And my illness is safety. But they are not life. I may miss the safety of anorexia and treatment centers with all of my heart, but today, and every day, I must choose to live.
