Duck...Duck...Goose!
Round and round and round us children went, teasing and implying and playing Duck...Duck...Goose. I recall those hours fondly because the game was sinister-less, strung together by the enticement of unpredictability, the desire to be chosen, the need for connection, the heart-warming feeling of importance and the responsibility of power. I've challenged anorexia so many times, finding the bravery to flourish into a beautiful Duck. But it seems that I can only restrain myself from anorexia's grip for so long. And then I find myself suddenly, fitting perfectly back into the place anorexia holds for me, the waiting Goose. It seems that my old habits are never old enough, they're never far away enough, they're only ever a few 'Duck's' away from being what it wants me to be... its 'Goose'.
Every time that I've engaged in recovery or recovery behaviours, it's been after an extended period of starvation and weight loss. By the time I decide to eat, I am starving, physically and mentally. At that extremity, surrendering to recovery feels unbelievably relieving, nostalgic, warm and exciting. But after I've reintroduced food for a few weeks, that feeling dramatically shifts for me. For the first few weeks of re-feeding, I can feel how desperately my body craved nourishment. When my eating stops being as an epochal of relief for myself and my family, I begin to swallow the guilt with every bite.
The very reason I'm in the position I'm in is because I cannot recognise the need to eat a normal amount of food as a fundamental component of life.
I cannot meet that need for myself. In my mind, I do not view food as a need in the way that others do. It is optional. It isn't critical. And it isn't necessary. At the standstill, I'm not ravenous anymore. So I'm left with my reason for eating being consistency, normality and life. But if those reasons were reason enough for me to eat, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in in the first place. Once I convince myself that it looks like I've put on 10 kilograms (even though often all I put on is water weight that goes directly to my vital organs) and that I've had enough relishing of food, I glamorise anorexia and long for the 'safety' it bestows. Before I know it, I pick up exactly where I left off. The only thing that ever drowns out the noise of anorexia is that 1-3 week period, where my primitive brain has taken over and the taste of food is literally, the taste of life. The second I begin to hear anorexia again, I immediately start mourning the present because I know that my enjoyment in the sun has ended. I know I will not be strong enough to keep it up, just like the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.
'Recovery'
Honestly, my relationship with this word, this term, this concept or whatever you want to call it, is likely the most convoluted, elaborate and difficult relationship I have experienced to date. Two years ago, the word itself created a physiological response where my body would tense with fear. I have put in incredible hard work that has contributed to changing how I initially viewed the term.
I did hospital admissions I was forced to do.
I ate when it was the last thing I wanted to do.
I ate fear foods despite my head screaming at me.
I listened to the advice of professionals even when I hated what they said.
I talked about my feelings when I wanted to shut down.
I gained weight at times I wanted to lose weight.
I spent days and weeks in other beds when I wanted to be in mine.
Though I speak of this as though it's in my past, it isn't. I engage in behaviours leading me towards my recovery every day. But that's what a lot of people seem to miss... Is that it's my recovery. I am the only one who truly knows whether or not one of my actions is propelling me towards a recovered Luka or is sending me backward to anorexia. Although I wish for the sake of my health and my family that I was further along in my recovery, to be entirely transparent, I would say that it is at 90% intensity that the three demons of my body image, my mental health and my eating disorder are sitting at 24 hours a day. This means that whilst there is 10% of me that yearns for recovery, there is a strong part of me, the sick part of me, that still hates the concept. So every effort I make involving recovery takes all of the strength I have worked so immensely hard to muster over the years. When I and others begin to compare my recovery to others, it becomes a competition. This is dangerous because there's always somebody out there who is further along in their recovery. Feeling incompetent, unappreciated and invalidated when you're doing everything in your power to resemble courage isn't fair.
It's so important to remember how vastly unique eating disorders are because although something may work for someone else, it mightn't work for another.
~
I'm going to give you an analogy, Dolls.
There's a little kid and his favourite toy is the shark but his mum wants him to play with the dolphin because the shark is getting old. But the little boy loves the shark and always gets told he plays with it perfectly. The little boy plays with the dolphin to make his mum happy, even though the shark, the toy he wants to play with, is right there. The boy is in the middle of playing with the dolphin and he's just beginning to find it fun. Then his mum interrupts him, the person he's compromising for, and she starts telling him he should do a better job playing with the dolphin, that he didn't know what he was doing and that his friends made up better stories. The little boy was trying the very best he could do with the toy he didn't know how to play as well with. And he gave up because his mum couldn't recognise how he was doing all that he could for her, despite his abilities that lay with the shark.
~
When another person makes me feel like I'm not doing enough in recovery or that I'm not doing it the way they want, I feel defeated, I give up and I de-rail.
It's as simple, it's as true, it's as critical as that.
What I need from others to support my recovery is to stop the 'shoulds' and you 'coulds'. I need the moments that I speak of recovery to be harnessed and recognised because sometimes they're gone before they ever have the opportunity to flourish. I need the comparisons to cease because I know that I will get there when I'm ready and I know that noting what I cannot do at that point in time makes me rebel against the beauty I had managed, the strength I had mustered and the lessons I had learnt.
Psychologically my eating disorder has never resolved. However, when there's been sufficient nutrition after long periods of starvation, I have noticed that my ability to tolerate food, my approach to food and my rigidity with food have occasionally eased in certain habits, thought patterns and beliefs. The key issue in this scenario has remained: The psychological improvements have stemmed from an acceptance that arose from forced physiological treatment. My distress level was directly linked to whether or not I chose to accept the situation for what it was. Mostly, I chose to accept the situation, surrender to the treatment and comply with their protocols for my peace of mind. In these short periods, 3-4 week admissions, I began finding myself walking through moments where I heard 'Duck'...'Duck'...'Duck'. It would take the form of getting excited for a meal, eating when someone wasn't watching me, having a good body image day or not obsessively washing my crockery. But essentially, these moments were over before they began because once I was medically stable, I was thrown into the big wide world with no support for what it felt like to exist in a body bigger than what I left it with. When your identity has been that body for so long, you need intense psychological strategies to cope with the change. But 3-week admissions don't provide that. Medical wards don't provide that. GP checkups don't provide that. And, unfortunately, in my experience, psychologists haven't provided that either. I think that most people who recover are at a point where they genuinely like the idea or can at least grapple with the idea of finding it within themselves to accept the weight gain. Because what hope is there for people as sick as me who can't bear it? For those whose entire eating disorders are directly linked to their weight? Whose biggest obstacle to overcoming their eating disorder is that innate fear? It's an undeniably large and very real component of many eating disorders and in all my years of sickness, I've never felt truly supported in managing weight fluctuation. It's all good and well to say that weight gain is a part of recovery.
But where is the intense support, recognition and information available for those who are critically attached to numbers?
Goose. The second I am discharged, no matter how much strength I've attained mentally, I don't know how to cope with the physical outcomes of my admission. I have to make those numbers resemble anorexia's desires as a few weeks of adequate nutrition don't account for ways to overcome the hurdles that lead eating disorder patients to hospital in the first place.
Living with anorexia does feel like a relenting loop of Duck...Duck...Goose! The first few times of playing its game feel somewhat enticing and exhilarating, but after many years, it only feels the way it sounds: Never-ending, exhausting, and insufferable. Every day I feel like I am a Goose so I have to tightly hold on to the few moments in which I feel there is hope of being a Duck.
Kisses,
COS x
Comments