WORDS MAY NEVER HURT YOU BUT THESE WORDS MAY SAVE YOU.

I've spent a lot of time in the thick of my eating disorder and I've spent a lot of time in recovery. So I've learnt what words people think would help but didn't and I've remembered the ones that stuck. But there have only been a few short phrases that have truly saved me, ones that I will not only carry with me for the rest of my life but ones that are the reason I have a life to continue to live.

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THE PERFECT ANOREXIC IS DEAD

This quote framed my actions in a different way. When I was chasing perfection, I could now stop and ask myself: 'To what end?' and 'How far are you willing to go?' I realised for the first time that the ultimate purpose of my eating disorder was always going to be and always would be to put me in a coffin and if not, to put me the closest a person could ever be to being in one. It allowed me to view my eating disorder in the way my parents did. It wasn't beautiful or fun like my mind and social media depicted... It was scary and dangerous. On the days when I am the weakest and am restricting the most, it's the hardest to ignore the little voice that tells me I'll seek satisfaction from being 'perfect'. And sometimes, this phrase is the only thing that gives me the strength to manage. Despite what my mind convinces me as on the contrary, if I'm seeking perfect, I'm seeking death.

WHAT YOU'RE DOING ISN'T WORKING

Eating disorders are highly competitive. Someone I once knew described how when a group of anorexics are in a room, it turns into eating disorder olympics. My greatest difficulty throughout my eating disorder has been an inability to feel sick enough. I've never been able to believe that intervention was necessary. I've determined the need to receive help based off've numbers and measures, not by my quality of day-to-day living, my struggles or my desire to get better. Hearing 'Eat it to beat it', 'You deserve recovery' or 'One day at a time' were popular phrases that never helped me. Because they were phrases applicable to everyone, I concluded that only the sickest of victims deserved to accept these phrases to implore them to find help. But when my Mum told me and only me that what I was doing wasn't working, it clicked and I got it... Not anyone else, not someone with a different BMI, not someone older or younger but me, specifically, was engaging in behaviours that weren't working. It was the first time I didn't compare myself in a phrase. It was the first time I looked at my life and whole-heartedly asked myself: 'Is this working for you? For your family? For your goals?' For the first time, I curated an honest, raw and extensive answer curated entirely to me.

YOU GIVE UP THE THING YOU WANT MOST IN THE WORLD, BECAUSE THAT'S THE THING THAT WILL DESTROY YOU.

For many, the things they want most in the world are beautiful, untouchable and pure: A loving family, a flat screen TV or their dream job. But for others, their greatest desires aren't simple and in chasing them, they face the great consequence of having their life destroyed. For these people, every day, they have to make the choice to give up what will ultimately destroy them or give in to its temptation. It seems so wrong that what one person wants could bring them nothing but joy, yet their friend will spend the rest of their life suffering, perplexed as to whether or whether not they choose to surrender to what they want. In my listeing and giving into anorexia, all that I am and all that I could've been has been annihilated in a variety of unthinkable ways. I envy those who will never understand what it feels like to have a coping mechanism that others judge you for having, that others beg you not to use and that others will leave you over if you do. Anorexia makes me feel safe, secure and in control. Yet it's because of its equal isolation, physical repromand and social judgement that prevents it from being an acceptable want. I wish anorexia was just a car, a pretty skirt or an engagement to Timothee Chalamet but this phrase allowed me to come to terms with how it's just not and never will be. Perhaps it's unfair but it's just as naive to explore a reality that will never be right to exist. There's no time to feel sorry for myself because in no world will anorexia not destroy me and those I love so. I have to spend all of my time to focus on recovery and alinging my actions with the only truth that is right to exist. And that truth is bound within an instaiable love that I have for my family, friends, life and the love and fulfilment that these things recirpocate to me.

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As a writer, when I cover a topic that feels inextricable to convey and discuss, I know it must be deeply important to me. So I confess to you, Dolls, that I find it inextricable to express just how much I hope these phrases can mean to somebody else what they have meant to me. Because it is no exageration to tell you that these phrases have saved my life before and that they will very likely save it time and time again in the years to come. 

Kisses,

COS x