Ups And Downs

Sorry I haven't written for a while, I've had a pretty rough week. The roughness of the week is actually what's inspired me to write on here, because it's only struck me this week that people think once you start eating again, your problem is solved.

Friends think now that I'm not passing out in lessons, throwing up every day after lunch, losing weight at an alarming weight, now I'm not skeletal and I actually eat that I'm okay. And you know what? I'm not. I'm better, much better than I was, maybe even ever happen. But the truth is, even in this stage of recovery, there are days, sometimes weeks, where you just genuinely will feel shit. It's hard though, when something is so much less noticeable or obviously problematic to alert people to the fact that it's still not okay to talk about weight or ask me for diet tips. Not yet. I'm not ready. I just want to shout "guys, I'm not quite healed yet, please just give me a hug". As awful as this sounds, it's almost made me want to cut, to make me see some physical embodiment of this not-being-okay feeling I keep having. The ED thoughts still exist, and a part of me worries they always will.

I don't even think it's just friends and family who think recovery means eating and then, suddenly, you're fine. I think a lot of sufferers will embark on what truly is a long journey to recovery, thinking that they'll wake up tomorrow no longer having these thoughts. That they'll be fine.

I'm not going to bullshit you: Recovery is fucking hard. It really is. You'll have your ED days, you'll probably purge up your dinner, or go 2 days without eating. That's part of the battle, you see. It's how you overcome the bumps in the road that really matters, because recovery requires an inner strength to keep going and keep pushing forward. The first few weeks are instrumental. I read my diaries from around May last year, when I decided to try and recover, and every other day I decide I can't do it. And you'll feel like that! You WILL feel nothing matters anymore, you will feel alone, and scared.

Truth is though, your worst days in recovery will be better than your best days in relapse.

The rest of the world may not understand that because you don't look emaciated you no longer have an eating disorder; or because you no longer are covered in cuts that you're no longer depressed. Almost all of the strength to make it to recovery is needed from within you.

And so I leave you with the ever wise words of my drunken school friend.
I once had somebody tell me "You know, you look so frail and fragile on the outside, and yet on the inside you're one of the strongest people I know. You got some fucking balls, you know that?"