Today I want to quit. Today I want to just forget every therapy and nutritionist appointment I’ve made and go back to not being accountable. Today I’m tired of my brain and my heart experiencing emotions and I want to be numb again.Today I’m tired of my meal plan and I’m so sick of trying to eat enough. Today I don’t feel like smiling and today I don’t feel like seeing the glass half full. Today I feel as worthless and helpless at the eating disorder tells me I am.
Today is a day I have to try like hell not to go back to the eating disorder.
I keep this picture in my head from when I was a freshmen in college, clear as day. I was so sick. I was running myself into the ground with soccer, schoolwork, nursing clinicals, games on the road, and a recent death in my family. I remember lying face down on my bed in my dorm room after taking a shower. I hadn’t been feeling well lately. My roommate was blow drying her hair before we went down to the cafe for dinner. I was so tired, I closed my eyes and tried to drift off to sleep. I remember feeling my heartbeat, but it didn’t feel like a normal heartbeat. I remember it felt slow and thready and skip, then suddenly speed up and pound for a second. It seemed hard to draw a breath in and out, and my body ached.
I keep that picture in my head because it is a terrible reminder of what the eating disorder can do. The unpleasant reality of having walked the fine line between death and living. I keep that memory close because of days like today. I have lived to begin to tell the story of recovery, and although there are days like today I want to fall back on the eating disorder, I know I don’t want to die from it. The realities of anorexia are harsh and the statistics are terrifying to me because I can remember times where I must have been so close to being one, like on the day I can remember so clearly.
Today is a hard day; it is one of those times I can’t get out of my own head. I think it’s important to allow myself to have days like this, because pretending all the grief and anger and frustration isn’t there will only make it worse down the road. My promise is that I make tomorrow be better. Tomorrow I do things like think about something in my life I’m thankful for before I eat, read a page out of my book of affirmations, or say a prayer when I’m feeling down. Tomorrow I won’t short myself and be proud of how far I’ve come and confident at how much farther I can go.
