The Moon Has Eight Phases, I Have None.
I can only imagine that trying to understand an eating disorder from an outsider's perspective is a monumentally difficult, perplexing and painful task. For the majority of the population, eating comes naturally. One doesn't just eat out of necessity but out of joy and ease. I can only imagine how confronting it is to see anybody, let alone someone you love, reduce a promising life to one that ultimately ruins their life as well as the ones of those around them. I spend a large amount of my time regretting the way such outsiders must view me, perpetuating my self-hate and shame. More than anything, I wish I could explain away how my eating disorder is not a phase that I can snap out of. Then I thought about how the moon has eight phases and I thought, maybe, I could explain... How the moon has eight phases and I have none.
These are the eight phases that I don't have.
Every time you look into the night sky, you see a phase of the moon that slightly differs from the last. You see a fraction of something inherently whole, whether it be slightly thinner, or slightly thicker. So it makes sense that each time you see me, whether I'm a little thinner, or a little thicker, you see me as a variation of the girl you once knew and you think it's just a phase, that she'll be back soon. I know you want to see that girl again because I do too.
But for you to understand this post, you must learn that you have to let go of this girl you once knew because I'm not a moon; I'm me, and this isn't a phase, it's a part of me.
These are the eight phases that I've never grown out of.
Once I was like the moon: I had so many phases that sometimes changed sooner than day by day; one second I'd be so happy, and then a little less or I'd be really loud, and then speak really soft. None of this was in a manic way, but rather in a natural way, in the way that growing kids are or learning teenagers. My phases were a part of me, natural and to be expected. The phases of my moon were beautiful. A black cloud then crossed my moon, so dark, polluting its surrounding air until its light was so dull it was nowhere to be seen. That's what anorexia is like. Some people think it developed when I was 14 but it was long before then that I remember its darkness consuming parts of me. I established a phase that existed beyond the realms of time and space, one that never particularly started nor ceased, but leached, thoroughly, entirely into every part of me, into every phase I ever inhibited, until instead of there being a million everchanging phases, anorexia was completely intertwined with every part of my mind. Seeming as I were just a child, my undeveloped brain became combined with something dark beyond its years.
How could I grow out of something that grew up with me?
There are eight phases that many never grow out of.
'Recovery' is a beautiful word to me, but it's also a deeply complicated one. Every good feeling I've had in the last decade has related to the word. Recovery allows me to imagine. Recovery allows me to dream. Recovery allows me to feel. But recovery isn't attainable for me. And it's not pessimism, it's not weakness, and it's not refusal, it's real. When I look, honestly, in the mirror, I see that I am not aligned with the word. My bones, my tears, my fear, none of them resemble recovery. Whether or not I want them to is irrelevant.
Some people get so caught up in being the moon that the moon stops simply being the moon and it instead, becomes their universe.
Apocalyptic: the feeling I felt first when the moon became my universe.
Apocalyptic: the feeling I feel every day, now that the moon has never left.
Phases don't generally last for years. But I know that certainly, they don't last for decades. How could something that's been a part of me for decades go away with any kind of ease? How could anybody expect me to remove something from myself that's like a second layer of skin in a few days or a few weeks? La, la, di, la the sound of the song that rings in my mind as I fall asleep hearing the tune of all of the people's hearts I break every day, including mine. I sing the tune the more I learn that I may never grow out of anorexia, even in those moments where I've felt recovery tingling so perfectly at the ends of my fingertips, touching something that could be mine but for whatever reason never appears to be. And for many, it never will be. It's a hard, hard, hard pill to swallow. But life isn't perfect. Life is messy and unkind and anorexia is everything, plus some more.
These are the eight phases that are never new and never full.
I've felt it before... The hope ascending and then lulling. I've felt every day dawn and watched the same one break into a million little pieces of inextricable mess, frustration, hurt, anger and loss. It's the same every day, in fact. It's the same for every hospital admission. It's the same every week I promise will be my last one with anorexia. It's the part of me that always digresses into a state of emptiness. It's never new. The cycle always starts, and it always renews to the one I knew before. It's this horrible little game of tag and chase, anorexia always tagging and recovery always chasing me. 'You're it', I say to recovery, and anorexia says, 'No, Darling, you are.'
These are the eight phases of my moon, the ones that don't light up a midnight sky, the ones so very dark.
When I look into the midnight sky, I see a bright and beaming resemblance of hope. For in a universe of black, a light still shines for my eyes to gaze upon. But in my world, the moon doesn't exist. For what is the moon in a life of anorexia? Is it the recovery I don't know how to attain? Is it the strength I have no strength to find? Is it the mountain I cannot climb? How can I find the light when the darkness is what I know? If this were just a phase, then I would be a moon with enough light to hold my own. But I'm depleted of the warmth of light amidst a burning solar system, erupting with destruction, fear and fire of an angry poison of an illness's voice.
These are the eight phases of the moon that don't create motion in the waves, the ones that keep me stuck.
Oh, to have the power of being the moon that allows for the ocean's movement in which simple serenities exist such as sweet little fishies migrating. I would give anything to be the moon for this reason, for if I were stuck in a phase then 'this too shall pass' but instead here I am, giving my all to you and it leading me to repeat the same day, with the same intrusive thoughts, the same caloric intake, the same evil decline. If I were the moon nothing would simply stay, every day would be new, and in fact, every moment would be too. Oh, what I would give to have eight phases like the moon.
These are the eight phases of the moon that constantly evolve.
The moon, predictably, has a cycle, unalike to the days of mine which either bleed into one or are so individually cursed that they are highlighted as unique hell. Nothing is predictable with an eating disorder, except for unpredictability. I want to evolve, like my dad believes I can, into this beautiful butterfly he describes me to be. I wish on my most solemn days that I could see myself through his eyes for when I'm stuck in the everchanging, yet ever-existent hardships of battling anorexia, I feel myself breaking, buried in a lonely cocoon. I find myself latching on to behaviours that feel safe, even though I know they're the same ones that force me to remain unevolved. To have eight phases of change that are bright in all of their own, special way is the antithesis of an unpredictable motion of torment, chaos and suffering.
These are the eight phases of the moon that I'll never live to see the rest of.
Anorexia is a terminal illness. Anorexia is deadly. Anorexia is fatal.
Like many believe, I believe also, that my cause of death will be anorexia.
To see it laid out so bluntly before my eyes melts my heart as slowly but surely as a lit candle wax. Since knowing this truth, suddenly I have yearned to believe I'll see the day when the wrinkles appear below my eyes and the blue veins of my body protrude in my ageing skin. Dissimilar to the majority of my age, I wish to grow old because despite my belief that I am not sick enough to die from anorexia, the evidence of its possibility from the hundreds of words of fear that I read daily, has led me to fear the day I do not wake to the beautiful world I'm so loving living in. I ask Dolls, that you pray for me to live, the way that I pray for you to. I wish to see the eight phases of the moon until I'm aged 88. They're so beautiful, don't you think?
The comparison of the eight phases of the moon to the zero phases of mine is to show you the true weight and depth of anorexia that make it near impossible to exist as a phase, one that one can overcome flippantly. While the moon has eight pure phases, I, purely, have none. I hope you can understand that, even just a little more. For when others make it sound like recovering is a simple task, I wish to scream 'Don't you understand that its challenge extends far beyond one's effort, or attempt?'
I wish to say that if you have tried recovering and have not succeeded, you are not a failure. It is just a fucking brutal illness that goes beyond the position of your heart and soul.
Kisses,
COS x
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