Come As You Are
It's National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (NEDAW), if you haven't yet heard! To celebrate I wanted to share some of my journey right now.
I don't want to start droning on about my past, because that doesn't matter anymore. Where I used to be doesn't matter, and how sick I once was is irrelevant. The theme of this year's NEDAW is "come as you are." The theme is not "remember how sick you once were" or "compare yourself to everyone else's degree of struggle or how bad they used to be." Even when I do refer to my past, I'll never share numbers or pictures from my sickest days. For one thing, I was the most insecure about my body than I'd been in my life, so I have about 2 pictures of myself and I mainly wore sweatpants*. More than that, it glorifies the "emaciated eating disorder." It's a sneaky way to get people to compare their sicknesses to each other, and I don't endorse the practice. Any relationship with food that makes you question whether you should feed yourself or find a way to "purge" all the nourishment in your body (including through exercise) is a major issue, to be completely honest. If you don't see this as an issue, I suggest that you go see someone because you probably have an issue. This includes anyone who battles themselves daily on diets. Diet mentality is a disordered eating mentality.
Coming as you are is confidently saying "this is what I struggle with, this is who I am. It's different than your struggle, and here I am. I am worthy to be seen."
This is imperative because I never want a person to feel the way that I've felt in the past. I don't want people who already believe they'll never be enough for anyone or anything, or enough to get anywhere or succeed or be around anyone, to hear that they aren't even sick enough or struggling enough to be considered someone who deserves to be acknowledged at all. Who deserves to be seen. Who deserves help. Who is allowed to call their illness an illness, and to be affected by it.
My friends, come as you ARE. I don't give a cow's utter how you look! And guess what, neither does your illness… they don't discriminate who they torture, as long as you're vulnerable to listen, nothing else matters! It's the devil baby!
And you know what, I don't care how ugly your disorder is either. I don't care that it seems as though it manifests differently in other people. I'm not phased if you punched walls and your car dashboard and broke them. So have I! Or maybe that's just me. If you've lost your closest friends and you think it's your fault and that shouldn't happen to people? Oh baby, It's part of the journey.
Shame is a USELESS feeling. The only benefit of reminiscing in this situation is either to think about how we can come up with more positive coping strategies than we once used, looking and seeing how far we've come, or using it to relate to a stage in life someone is in, where you have been before.
And I will share, as needed, for anyone who needs empathy. But the only thing in my past I will share right now is this:
The lower my weight was, the less friends I had.
The more isolated I was.
The more I isolated myself.
The more obsessive I became.
The more I hated my body.
The more I hated my personality.
The more self absorbed I became.
The more I realized nothing could ever satisfy me.
The less control I had.
The more out of control I had ever been.
The ugliest I have felt, in my entire life, in every aspect of the word.
If I keep on pining for the past, the way my body used to be to feel more "valid" as a human, I will never, ever, ever, take a step forward in my life. That is TERRIFYING.
Right now, I'm the furthest in my recovery I've ever been. I want to be proud. But I can't. And this is what I want to talk about. The ugly road of recovery. This is coming as I am. Stuck in the middle and being pulled in both directions.
What's recovery from an eating disorder look like for me? Right now, it's like seeing pizza (2 days ago) and feeling like a million dollars, so excited to have it, so proud of yourself that you don't care and that you won't make up for it after, having 2 slices of pizza, and then spending the rest of the night holding your head in anxiety. Needing to talk through the whole experience with someone, and then beating yourself up more because you thought you could finally eat pizza like a NORMAL PERSON and handle it. What am I most jealous of? You truly want to know? People who eat pizza, and chill.
Recovery right now is wanting to be proud and celebrate that you didn't starve yourself on a day that is usually triggering, but you can't unless someone else does it with you because you really have opposing forces asking you "WHY DIDN'T YOU DO IT? YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED! YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS ABOUT YOU? WHERE THIS LEADS YOU?" (I don't know random voice in my head, probably to not being hungry anymore?).
If I come as I am, I'm leaving the house so proud for wearing jeans and not caring, and then still looking in every mirror I see pulling my sweatshirt below my thighs so that no one can see them.
If I come as I am, I come with depression and anxiety - sometimes onset merely from the pizza that I ate a few days ago, now.
Like I said, I am green with envy of "pizza and chill" people.
Recovery for me is loving to run, but I actually don't even know if I enjoy doing it or not because it was so entrenched in my eating disorder that I can't tell what's healthy and what's not. What was/is the exercise addiction vs. the athlete mentality.
Recovery is coming so far and getting so excited to realize you can socialize, and no longer be so distracted by yourself and obsession and fear... and then finding yourself socially awkward because you spent so much of your life thinking about those things that you find it difficult to relate with others. So you don't put yourself out there as much. You don't understand how to build new relationships.
What I always remember being told in treatment was "once your eating disorder is gone, your life circumstances will still be there. Your eating disorder was not the problem in your life. Your eating disorder was developed in the context of your life. You need to be prepared that recovery won't suddenly resolve your issues. You might actually start remembering some of them, and freak out. This is a warning, and you need to be prepared."
These are the aspects of recovery that aren't talked about so much. Once your weight is restored and you've been in recovery for a long time, in the sneaky moments that you are alone and you realize the weight is the only thing that's returned. Your brain is still traumatized by what your body went through when it was starved. So you sit there having childish arguments with yourself, that genuinely feel like life or death. Feeling over dramatic, wondering why you are the only person complaining about something that everyone lives with, feeling like you are just a selfish and wimpy person. Which of course, goes over so well. Because shame added to shame is great (not) (negative + negative = a lot more negative). And it just isn't true, but you have no way of knowing for sure because you don't know anyone else in the same boat.
Coming as I am is extremely exposing and I hate it. But what I hated even more, was hiding and remaining isolated and alone. The only thing that kept me going when I started, besides God and my loving support, was "me too's". And I owe it to everyone who needs it now. Feel free to reach out and share your journey with me, and what part of the path you're on.
Just come as you are.
*So about the whole "mainly wore sweatpants" thing, it's honestly one of those things that I'm like when is this my eating disorder and when is this just me living my best life because like who doesn't want to wear sweatpants all the time? Anyone please answer this question because I need to know, thanks :)
