I HATE TO LOVE YOU
I wish you were like a storm, I wish you were like a cold, I wish you were like a sour apple. But you're not. You're like you, anorexia. You're conniving, relentless, inherently cruel, merciless, wicked, monumentally dismountable, shameful, eerie and melancholic, poignantly so. The things I love about you erode every day. And for what is left, I don't love those parts of you the same. I hate it when I love you because I see what loving you has done to me, to my body and to those I love. I hate to love you, anorexia.
I love to love my family. I love to watch them succeed, to laugh, to overcome challenges. But I'm not sure if they love to love me because they hate my eating disorder. They love to watch me smile, be brave and reach goals. But they hate to watch me suffer, wither away and restrict.
It kills them how anorexia is killing me.
Like any family, we've always had layers of complexity and difficulty, though it was always far outweighed by the joy, life and adventure we shared. I can't say the same anymore because it wouldn't be the truth. Hardships, obstacles, and barriers arise weekly, more commonly daily. The fear of what anorexia is capable of stops all of us from breathing, drowning us in its destruction. As it starves me, It eats away at what's left of us. What I hate most of all is that the language I use to describe the effect anorexia has on me becomes interpreted as blame. My family does nothing but hold me when I cry, catch me when I fall and believe in me when I'm hopeless and yet most days, anorexia makes them feel like they're not good enough at supporting me. It's grossly unfair because they want to be, they try desperately and they are.
I hate how loving you made me hate me. I hate how loving you made me hate life. I hate how loving you spoiled the free, happy, confident girl I'd grown to be into someone who was more sure of herself at fourteen than twenty. Normally, I ride waves of ups and downs on any given day. But as of late, there is no wave but one strong downstream current. I reminisce hope, joy and will because it's now a buried treasure, a fantasy, a memory of another life. Time has fused as I feel the mundane days melting into mundane weeks. Loving anorexia has led me to an inextricably painful life to the point in which I feel it would be easier to not be alive at all. Every single day, I find that my life is difficult.
When I experience life, it feels like the moments are endured instead of savoured.
I long for a peace that I can never find.
I miss the sweetness of simplicity... What it feels like to think of nothing, to not have anything to say and nowhere to be. In loving anorexia, I lost my ability to be free and still and quiet. I hate to love anorexia. But what I hate most of all is that there is a part of me so ill that it loves to love it all.
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