THE CURSE OF AN INEVITABLE LOVE TRIANGLE
For as long as I have anorexia, I will never perform a tango of two with a person I love. At as young as 21, I've seen how all of my relationships have been impacted by my eating disorder. Every time a tango starts, it soon becomes starkly obvious to me that a love triangle exists between anorexia, the person I want to be with and myself. The detrimental physical, emotional and psychological repercussions of my being heavily intertwined with anorexia will inevitably curse my relationships due to the tornado's inability not to pick up every last person, thing and spec of dust in its path.
The double-edged curse.
One of the ways anorexia manifests is by outlining the exact rules and regulations I must follow to be deemed as physically beautiful. Just because we all know that anorexia lies doesn't take away from the fact that for sufferers, those lies feel so incredibly real. Anorexia's fight for beauty is fought with a double-edged sword. The first side fights to tell me I'm pretty if I look the way anorexia wants me to look. However, once I've used that side in battle, fighting to live up to its beauty standards for too long, I'm left defenceless, as a patient in hospital, where I feel more unbeautiful than ever. It doesn't feel beautiful when a nasogastric feeding tube is taped across my face and jammed into my stomach, when I've gone days unable to shower due to being connected to telemetry or when I'm choicelessly gaining the weight that anorexia worked so desperately to lose.
My fight for beauty leaves me feeling entirely lost. I feel lost as I get caught amidst the rip that is anorexia's sickening beauty measure of starvation. But I feel equally lost when I can't use the only coping mechanism that ever leaves me feeling worthy of bestowing the label titled 'beautiful'.
The emotional curse.
Anorexia restricts the ease with which I can engage in 'normal' activities couples do together... eating, sharing, travelling etc. When I spend time with anyone, I have to consider the third party which is anorexia, in the sense that its existence causes me to be anxious about timing, calories and endurance. It's one thing for this compulsory consideration to limit me but in it limiting the other party too I'd always be guilty of not giving them the more I'd think they deserved. Seeing the flaw in the love I have to give would be constant.
I feel insecure about my ability to provide in a relationship. Of course, it's normal to wonder how others feel about your shared interactions, but in romantic ones, we're hyper-aware due to the unique, butterflies-in-the-stomach hope and desire for the feelings to be mutual. I think it's difficult to expose yourself emotionally to another person when the emotions felttowards yourself are so negative. I see myself as a walking mess which means that even if a lover offers an alternative, positive perspective, I am unable to accept the possibility that I could be enough just by being me and that I could not just be loved but truly adored. This low self-worth predetermines that I must be burdening my lover.
The physical curse.
It's hard to know for certain anything you want in life at 21 but isn't the whole point of being young knowing that you can do and be anything you want?
Regardless of whether you want kids or not, having the choice itself stripped from you is heartbreaking.
So although I've never wanted kids, it was hard to deal with being told that if it was ever something I wanted, I couldn't have it. Because situationally, with the right person, perhaps it is something we'd decide on. And because situationally, for the right person, perhaps that's something I'd be willing to compromise on.
For many relationships, the topic of children is an immediate deal breaker. What if I fall in love with someone and because of the physical curse, they can't be with me? Equally, many partners prioritise their dream person over their dream of bearing children. What if somebody tells me I'm above their dreams? Could I ever forgive myself knowing that their love for me meant they never learnt the feeling of loving their own child? Either way, the effects of the physical curse that the love triangle had cast would undoubtedly tinge on the entirety of our relationship.
The unfairness of anorexia on me is something I feel daily. Anorexia chose me, but what others don't know is that when anorexia chooses you, it also chooses everybody who has ever and will ever know and love you. So what feels most unfair to me is that anorexia doesn't just get to destroy my body and mind and be done with it. It gets to roll the dice with its hands that hold my love story. Will you or won't you anorexia... let me fall in love?
Kisses,
COS x
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