WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS
A lot of people with eating disorders, including me, live with the all-or-nothing mindset. It's a mindset in which you feel your eating disorder is merciless or you're mostly managing. This aligns with the saying 'when it rains it pours' because, during the 'all' stage of having an eating disorder, it is all of the world that caves in on itself, where a sufferer has no way out and when the end is so far from near. Except, what if I told you I've spent years discovering, learning and harnessing the space between these polar opposite lines? When it rains it pours, yes, but allow this blog post to be your umbrella.
I live so much of my life calculating, literally and otherwise. I literally calculate calories and times and I otherwise, calculate my desire to live safely amidst the burning desire to live wildly, unmeasurably freely and spontaneously. The act of constantly weighing up (pun-intended) everything I do, say, eat, think and act on is fatiguing to that critical point of delirium and tears. It is exhausting.
Its level of exhaustion is the only thing that isn't measurable about my life.
If I am going to live a life of calculation, I want to at least include in my calculations moments that bring me and my family slivers of delight. If I have to calculate calories, I want to calculate calories that provide memories. There are specific forms in which I can manage fear foods. We have those options available in our household and I get to be included when my family reach for them. Although I still have many fear foods I'm yet to overcome, when I'm offered, I do my best not to decline what I can manage. Since implementing this radical change and doing so frequently, the moments and intensity of anxiety have increased but so have the moments and intensity of joy. I try to have a fear food every 2-3 days now. It's not much but it's something. My family and I have learnt the hard way that something is so much better than nothing. Because when there's nothing, the world around us is a bitterly cold and eternal winter. It's heartbreaking. It's soul destroying. It's a time in space in which the rain comes from the tears you cry and cry and cry.
'Utterly tragic' is the only phrase that depicts my convoluted relationship with my scales. It started as a tragedy and it's ended in one. To have your worth and actions ruled by a number makes you feel worthless. You're a losing pawn in a losing game. And although you can win on some days, there's no victory victorious enough to outweigh (pun-intended) the losses that are inextricably solemn, lonely and extensive. There's no players to high-five with, no crowd going wild and no cheerleaders chanting. There's you, there's a piece of glass and there's a mental illness. There is so much shame intertwined within my weight. It used to make me extremely distressed whenever there was a possibility of someone knowing what my weight was. Originally, this was because I feared that their judgement and criticism of me would equate to that of the anorexia inside my head. I believed that others would think what I thought: That my weight was too high to be sick and that I was a failure of anorexia if I woke up with a weight that had maintained or increased but not lost. Once my weight became scarily low the competition only grew with myself to be the lowest weight I could be before and once it had become life-threatening. At this point, the distress of another knowing my weight arose because I didn't want anyone to admit me to a hospital ward. Once I began toying with my life, what was once thrilling had become a fixation in its most sickly sinister, wrong and desperate form. My weight was analysed down to the gram. A single gram would be the deciding factor of a) whether or not I was a good enough anorexic and b) whether or not (and how much) I could eat.
After many years, I've learnt that people without anorexia, whether it be strangers or those who adore you, are unlikely to base any of your worth on a number. Doctors and nurses spoke to me about weight purely because it was a component of my medical status. The most difficult conversations with doctors involving my weight were when they based how sick I was off've the number. But even still, it was not a measure of my worth as a person. In fact, many doctors, included words of hope and courage for my future when we were discussing just how truly sick I had become. Most of them want more for me, even the ones who believe I will never recover.
'So now what?'
Is a question my family and I ask myself whenever there's a blip. It assists us in overcoming obstacles so that we don't allow the blips to be the end of the road. In the midst of a challenging moment, it becomes very easy to want to give up entirely. Eating disorders on their own suck. OCD on its own sucks. And it's in scenarios where they exist together that I see the true detriment of comorbidity. The OCD classifies a day as perfect if all my meals went swimmingly or it classifies a day as a struggle if my eating disorder was loud. It doesn't like the idea of a day that bears with it the good and the bad. It either wants me to eat well or restrict. So being asked this question allows me the opportunity to seek an in-between.
'So now what?' prevents a bad moment from becoming a bad day.
There is something about how the question is phrased that my OCD can wrap its head around. And I'm very grateful for my parents to have found such a phrase because instead of feeling like I either have my head above water or I'm drowning, I can ride out the waves that are days: An imperfect mixture of feelings and emotions.
I'd always believed my prediction of the in-between to be accurate: scary and uncomfortable. Whilst it is all of those things, it is also the place that gives me a life worth living. Things can be hard, Dolls, but hard doesn't mean impossible.
Kisses,
COS x
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