The Love Triangle From Hell
Shopaholics, love traingles are a thing of a nightmare. They're a sticky web coated in Manuka honey that strangles you from the day into the night. My love triangle isn't lovely at all. It's between me, an eating disorder and my home. Every love triangle party wants a taste of one other but we've already taken more bites than we can chew. What's left is a web of lies, longing and heartache.
Before anorexia, it was just me; my thoughts, my hopes, my morals & my desires. That girl was in love with the world and those in it, including herself. One day, she met someone, a stranger on the street. They spoke for a while at first until they met again and talked some more. And more and more and more. Suddenly, that person was the only person she ever really talked to anymore. This person infiltrated their thoughts, their hopes, their morals & their desires unto her until what was once theirs became hers. One day she woke up and everything she loved about herself was a distant memory because she didn't exist for herself anymore, she existed to please this person who was once simply a stranger walking past. This person's name is anorexia.
When I met anorexia, it was like walking into the eye of a tornado. On the one hand, I felt safe and in control of my life in a way that I didn't know was possible. But on the other hand, I could feel the tornado that was destructing everything in its pathway like a blurry nightmare just an arm's length away. Every high that anorexia provided me with also felt sickly sweet. Because in my heart, I knew that it was wrong. And I knew that my love for anorexia was dangerous. I felt the physical consequences, I could see it on my body when I used to be able to see what I looked like in the mirror and I knew the abnormality of the life I was living as I saw other's mindlessly engage in a task that was slowly, steadily, surely beginning to terrify me. And so anorexia's part in my love triangle emerged. I began to be pulled, forcibly, angrily between the mind and actions of sweet, gentle, innocent Luka and punishing, relentless, determined anorexia. The aftermath of such polar opposite forces pulling you back and forth day in and day out is a very serious mental illness. It's one that produces mental breakdowns, hysteria and phobia at multiple points in any given day. It is irrefutably, for lack of a better word, hell.
I told you, Dolls, how before anorexia it was just me but what I didn't tell you is that I find glimpses of that version of myself everyday. I feel a sense of loss imagining the person I'd be if my voice wasn't shone so intensely and frequently by anorexia. It's painful when I see myself shine through the shadows because I know it won't last and I know, deep down, that I'll never just be Luka, without hearing, seeing and breathing anorexia, also. Will you allow me to dream for just a moment, Dolls? I don't need to prove my love to anybody, either the love I give is seen or it isn't. I'm warm after I put on a shawl and rest in the sun. I have energy radiating through my body. I can run up a hill, dance throughout the night, jump into the arms of the people who I love. In my alone time, I think of lyrics to the songs I want to write, gifts I could buy my friends, birthday parties to attend or storylines to the books I'm going to write. I'm occupied by the fruitfulness of opportunity and not by the despair of a mulberry coloured sky of a midsummer's night.
My home became temporary and in that unsurety existed an indescribable homesickness. My eating disorder has taken lots of little bites from me and those I love but this bite was the biggest to date. Never again, would I ever take home for granted. I would find freedom in places I hadn't before like in the sight of dragonflies fluttering on oak trees outside of my balcony, like the delight of cotton sheets gliding on my skin, like morning hugs from a person I love more than life, like the gentle breath of a puppy sleeping next to me on my pillow and the company of my family unrestricted by time or place. The downward spiral of anorexia was a constant reminder that I was just that bit closer to not being able to fall asleep in my bed at night. I would do anything to not be pulled away from the place I loved so much but its only limitation became the lies my eating disorder cried.
Dolls, being involved in a love triangle affects me daily. Its hell doesn't only lie within the big picture... Its hell lies within every little photograph that's captured in the moments nobody else sees. I would like to say that I'm overcoming it but truthfully, I'm afraid that I may never escape it.
Kisses,
COS x
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