Anorexia Recovery Bucket List
It's impenetrable to reconcile with just how much life I've missed out on by not choosing recovery. Although making the decision to recover is such a monumental and complicated choice, it could and will never be the wrong time to dream of how exquisitely that decision could impact your life. This is how I wish my life could be, in the form of a bucket list.
I want to wake up on a normal day, having done normal things, having had normal thoughts and then I want to normally eat and midway pause because I've recognised that I'd completely forgotten I have an eating disorder... had an eating disorder. I want that moment so badly. I don't care where it happens, when it happens or who it's with. I could be laughing, sharing pizza with my group of friends at a pub. I could be eating the dinner that I'd concocted on the premise of flavour, creativity and art as opposed to the calories, punishment and nutritional breakdown. I could be sharing popcorn at the movies with my dad, having not thought twice about saying 'yes' when he offered me it. I fear the strong likelihood that I will never live another day in my life that isn't lived in the immense fear, obsession and suffering that anorexia brings. But I still hope it happens. I still hope that I will get one moment.
One of the worst parts about anorexia, as I'm sure many (most) sufferers will agree, is that from the moment you begin to develop an eating disorder mind, its sole, ultimate, incessant desire is for its victim to get sicker and sicker and sicker. I suppose I always thought that there would be an end but every time I've come close to the end, its insatiability only sustained, if not grew. I remember a conversation that I had with my Bapa. As I explained to him that I didn't want to get better, he said 'Oh, Lukie, I can't ever imagine wanting to be sicker. When will you want to be healthy?' To which I answer that I want to want to be healthy. And it isn't me who cannot want this, it is anorexia... The leech that robs me of desiring everything that is fulfilling about leading a healthy life.
I want to start having fear foods every week to seek normality, implement a sense of excitement in my life, to regularly provide my family with some sense of hope and for connection. Although it is scary, it's also scary to me to be as strict and regimented as the recent weeks and months have seen. Instead of thinking in black and white of 'anorexia' and 'no anorexia', I want to allow myself the process of recovering... A bit of regular fear for a lifetime filled with memories worth remembering and savouring.
Since I was a little girl, my mum and I did this thing together called a random day. They were rare, I'm talking a few days a year, if that, but they were the best days of my life. It involves being entirely spontaneous, free and open to every possibility. It's simply unrealistic for me to have these days now. If I'm going to eat, it has to be at specific times and I cannot eat food that has been prepared or touched by somebody else. That rules out eating out, what was once a delightful component of this day. I lack the physical strength to walk up big hills and I risk fainting or collapsing if I walk for prolonged time periods. It's quite literally dangerous to walk this talk. Anorexia, like a poisonous and bitter vacuum, sucked up everything that my mum and I, equally, found special about this day. It is my recovery bucket list hope that one day, anorexia will release random days from its grip and allow my mum and I to share a day like this together, once again.
I wish that I could say 'yes'. What many people don't realise about eating disorders is that not only are they not a choice, they strip you of your ability to make choices. Luka: it's my name but it hasn't been me in a long time. Because when people ask me: 'Luka, do you want to eat this?' or 'Luka, do you want to do this with me?', it isn't Luka that gets to answer. Anorexia robbed me of much more than my name...
Anorexia robbed me of myself.
I could find many more items to add to my anorexia recovery bucket list but I confess to you, Dolls, that continuing to imagine a life that I worry I may never live may break my heart. I cherish the fact that I've been granted the pleasure of fantasising about this world I do not now know. I thank you, Dolls, for being the reason I get to look beyond a day, which has been all I can manage as of late. It would mean more to me than you could ever know if any of you wanted to confess your anorexia bucket list items to me to accentuate the preciousness that it is to dream.
Kisses,
COS x
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