'I've Got It Under Control'

Oh, but darling... You don't have it under control. It has control over you. Eating disorders provide their sufferers with a false sense of control, meaning that for a lot of people, including me, 'I've got it under control' has become a lie that I inherently believe. However, the more one lets go of the notion that you've got it under control, the more that freedom can unfold, and the more life can begin.

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These are questions from me to me, Dolls, but you know within its realms you're asking the same ones to yourself. Did you have it under control when the physical symptoms began and never ceased, when they became progressively worse and you became an all-time new weak? Did you have it under control when the world went white, when you lost all your vision as the stars stopped being stars and there was just one big star consuming the landscape, blocking every tangible object in broad daylight? Did you have it under control when you forgot things like your plans for the day or the words you wished to speak, which then became things like your passcode or your middle name, the brain fog beaming so brightly that your title of the smart girl became a feeling of being a stupid girl? Did you have it under control when your favourite thing, the beautiful rain, became something that you feared because it made you, oh so, painfully cold? Did you have it under control when you lost feeling in your extremities, or the only feeling left were cramps that felt like twisting daggers in open wounds? Did that 'control' feel nice? Did that mental control satisfy you as physically, it broke you?

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The people who you're proclaiming you have it under control to are the ones who, in you having anorexia, have had all control stripped; the control they've lost in feeling helpless, not knowing how to save you from yourself and the control they've lost in not knowing if they'll ever get their daughter/friend/lover back. In chasing your so-called 'control', they've been left with none. And they want it. They want you to stop chasing this so-called control and chase the other kind, the kind you get in recovery: Where you have enough control to say 'yes' when you want to, say 'okay' at the last minute or have the strength to make memories. When you stop trying to manage a life governed by anorexia by 'having it under control,' you stop having the people you love under anorexia's control too. You don't just get your true control back, you allow it to fall into the palms of the people you love.

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I started to restrict for no reason other than I couldn't stop. I started not to feel dissatisfied by the number on the scale and I began to do it just because that was what I did now. I started to not care about calories anymore, only counting them because it made 5% of my life feel like it was a bit better than the other 95%. I started to relapse because not living with an eating disorder felt wrong. Nothing was about desire anymore.

I couldn't stop. I can't stop. Not because I do or don't want to but because anorexia is an addiction. It was when I realised that I couldn't stop, even if I'd wanted to, that I truly understood the depth of anorexia's evil.

And the rate at which that control will derail and destroy you will depend on how intently you believe the lie you tell yourself: that 'I've got it under control.'

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Control is a term I remember once understanding. But that was a time long ago. Now, whenever I speak of it, it resembles bathing in a pool of honey: I can sludge my way through, but its sticky web requires effort and perseverance to navigate. I am out of touch with control. I am golden yellow from the aftermath of attempting to attain it. Control has me, though I have none of it. Dolls, I am sorry to say, but the healthy part of me knows that 'I have it under control' will be the death of us.

Kisses,

COS x