Uncertainty

I wake up. Uncertainty has tugged away the covers. Cold air snuggles around my sleepy limbs and breathes my warmth into its lungs. I have nothing to do and nowhere to be, but uncertainty doesn’t care. It likes me to wait. So I wait.

“No plans today,” I would say breezily if someone were to ask “it’s going to be a chilled one.” but nobody asks and as I drag myself to the bathroom at least I am spared the sweet torture of pretending that this is OK.

It isn’t ok but perhaps I am not OK? The mirror hanging precariously over the sink is smudged with flecks of dried water like the tears which come to settle me to sleep. It is morning now though and not the time for crying. Instead, I watch myself rubbing white foam onto my teeth with a bristled stick. I spit all of the strangeness we accept down the sink and am left with all the of strangeness we cannot.

I am full of strangeness. Perhaps it would not come as a surprise to say that it is not the type which is accepted. My strangeness comes from tugging hands wanting me to be somewhere else but in their effort, holding me still. My strangeness comes from my outsides pushing in; my skin trying to hide under my skin. My strangeness comes and goes. Uncertainty stays.

Uncertainty is in my words; in the way that they wander aimlessly across the page, take unexpected turns and settle in the place that they started. It is almost as if I have never been anywhere; my story is ruined by the fact that I know I end up here. Living in the present is living in a permanent plot spoiler and so, instead, I take myself to all of the places I could go, to all of the things I could be, to all of the things that aren’t yet written into permanence. I travel to the unknowns, to the unstable, to the unclear and all that is clear is that this daytime dreaming doesn’t make me feel better. When I wake up, yet again, uncertainty has tugged away the covers.

Accepting the impact of childhood trauma

I am the tracing paper girl, grown into a tracing papered woman. I am an outline of skin drawn on A4, a shape resembling a human. Nobody gets to see tracing paper me.

Tracing paper girl is a thin scribble, she is a thick blotted scream, she is sad twisted upon sad, her lines are unclean. She is loud in her silence, the way she slips over my outline and merges with me. Tracing paper girl was drawn with another’s hand, she has my outline but not my insides.

Tracing paper girl, I want to draw you away, the lightness of you resting on me is too heavy; the knowledge that together, we are one picture.

Grief

Hovering above my head, is a balloon . I watch it float. The sky is linen crisp but my pegged heart hangs sodden. They say it will pass, as if your unused plate is just a cloud and not a shattered life.

Believe me, I have have taken apart my memories and tried to put me back together, tried to put you back together, but all I can build is an incomplete that is just, less. I am tired of searching for you. I want to stop searching for you.

Sometimes my imagination reaches for the string of the balloon. I tug it down and hold its full body against my skin. I am strong enough to pop through its tense membrane, to destroy it with blunt fingernails, but I need it because I need you.

You are gone. The balloon stays; a passive watcher of my time without you, a critical presence lingering when there is joy, when there is laughter, when there is new. It is then, in those moments that this sorrow; this held in, puffed up, burst full pain, is the heaviest lightness of all. You are gone.

The balloon pulls me to the ground without ever leaving the space just above my sky stretched hands. I still reach for you and I know if you could, you would reach for me to. You would take my hand and say softly, let me go. Grief is a balloon.

PTSD in a pandemic

I listen to their words; of how much you have changed their world, how hard you have been and how much you have taken. I hear their shouts of adoration for your challenges and your gifts; the new perspectives and the banana breads. And I wonder why I do not see you; why I do not feel you.

2020, you did not repel my imagination forward to the promise of new year, you did not tug my memory back to a time before it all. You were just you and I was just me; two concepts which collided, two ingredients in a mixing bowl, uncertain of what they would become because what they had been is

unspoken.

Did you know that I was spinning before we met? You slipped into the air current barely noticed. They say you are traumatic, I say so am I.

I could not gather enough foundation for you to shake. I could not grasp enough safety for you to snatch. I could not exist how I wanted long before you said that I could not. I lived in my lockdown long before I was told to lock down.

But still I listen to their words, of how everything is changed, and how I hope it is true. How I hope that my past and all that was taken will find its vaccine and the silent creep of memory will no longer feel like a virus.

Recovery from an Eating Disorder without the weight gain

I think I am not alone in saying that getting better without gaining weight or changing what I was eating was something which I have desperately searched for. I wanted to find that place where I could have both the positives of the illness and the ability to experience the positives of everyday life.

I have learnt that place doesn’t exist. Sometimes I forget that I know that and go out searching for that place again, determined that it is possible; unwilling and unable to finally accept the devastating reality that it isn’t.

Those times of searching are getting shorter and further apart.

And here I am, having called off the search party, having settled on the reality that place doesn’t exist.

I have battled through the weight gain, I have allowed my body to maintain a healthy weight, I have eaten and I have started to live life. But what is recovery beyond those ESSENTIAL building blocks? Is it possible to describe recovery from Anorexia without mentioning what is necessary and essential but rather what makes the essential things possible?

It will be different for everyone but for me…..

Recovery goes so far beyond food and weight. It is the most complicated, muddled, messy and painful experience to express let alone to live. It is about changing the way I interact externally with the world around me and changing how I interact internally with myself. It is integrating compassion, compromise and imperfection into EVERY ASPECT of my life despite those things going against everything I’ve ever learnt about how to protect myself. It is living in a way that is gentle on myself when society has a sick admiration for those who ignore their bodies and minds. It is putting myself first. It is being utterly scared, directionless and lost. It is wanting to go back but having to trust that there is another way. It is uncertainty. It is vulnerability.

It is the hardest and best thing. It is letting go slowly and changing slowly until, for the first time, I get the positives of everyday life without needing to have an Eating Disorder  in tow.

Recovery isn’t what I imagined,

Madasanegg

 

 

 

 

 

Guilt, weight gain and the recovering body

I am ashamed and guilty. It comes over me in waves and it makes me want to run away from myself. This body (which has taken months of nurturing, patience and courage to heal) repulses me and I want to hide it and the physically obvious care that I have shown it.

I feel judged, vulnerable and unsafe in a body which is cared for and healthy. Fundamentally I am uncomfortable with the idea of looking after myself and even more embarrassed by the idea that anyone else will be able to see that I am doing so.

I fear getting hurt; I fear I am becoming ‘too big’- OVER confident and TOO much. I pin it down on to my body because the waves of self loathing are easier to direct onto something measurable.

But the truth is that I haven’t learnt to fully trust that it is ok (and incredibly necessary) to nurture and respect myself DESPITE what the Eating Disorder says.

Rather than getting lost in a focus on weight, shape and measurements I choose to carry on, I choose to turn away from over simplifications and I choose to believe that by doing so, one day I might feel worthy of the care and respect I am showing myself in the process.

Recovery is the hardest thing we are likely to have to ever face. If there was ever time to treat yourself gently, it is when you feel the least able to.

Hugs and courage from a fellow traveller,

Madasanegg

 

Choice and recovery

I have ‘messed up’ doesn’t seem to cover it. I am gutted. Totally and utterly gutted.

After months of recognising eating disordered thoughts and saying to myself “no thanks, that life is not for me” and “that is not an option- not even once” I’ve had a moment where I recognised that I was thinking in a disordered way and backed myself into a place where I thought “I don’t have a choice but to do that”.

I chose to take the Eating Disorder route BUT I didn’t choose to feel like that was all I could do.

It sounds like an over simplification but….

There is ALWAYS another option than the deceptive world of an Eating Disorder. If you don’t chose that option, it isn’t because recovery isn’t possible for you it’s because in that particular set of circumstances, you don’t know what your other choices are yet.

Keep searching for choices and don’t give up if you stop seeing them for a bit,

Madasanegg

 

 

 

When your Anorexia is screaming at you to lose weight again (or something equally unhelpful you’ve worked so hard to stop) remember this….

Would you talk to someone the way you talk to yourself?

Really?

Didn’t think so.

But you don’t understand. I’m different. I deserve this.

Maybe you don’t see it right now but those thoughts are the illness. I’m having them as well. We are in this together stranger.

You are no different. Nothing you have done or ever will do warrants the way this illness makes you treat yourself. You are perfect how you are. I don’t know you but I do know that. I also know that you’ve probably heard this all before BUT there is no arguing with this- you really don’t deserve this whether you can believe it now or not.

And that is exactly my point. You cannot argue with this illness. I’m sure there are a million and one things you could come up. I am sure you could describe in detail why you should do X, Y or Z. Plus it would only be once, right? It wouldn’t be that bad if you just….

STOP.

When someone is angry and shouting at you they aren’t really in the mood for a sensible debate. I am yet to meet someone who is better at talking sense when they are @*&%ed off.

Walk away. Come back to it if you need to. Now isn’t a great time to make a decision methinks.

You have come a long way and now isn’t the time to turn back.

Love, strength and hugs stranger,

Madasanegg

 

 

What to do on difficult days in recovery

Today has been a difficult day in recovery.

All I’ve wanted to do is to go back to what I used to think was the answer; focusing on food and weight, because today they weren’t what I ‘used to think’, today they really did feel like the answer.

Many professionals will tell you that on a difficult day you need to get out your box of ‘recovery tools’ and remind yourself of all of the things you have learnt.

What the professional don’t always tell you is that on these days sometimes the illness is so strong that you want to shout “screw recovery, it’s too friggin difficult and it isn’t worth it anyway”.

The last thing you want to do is force yourself to sit down and go over a list of ‘reasons to get better’ and in fact you are so firmly in self destruct mode you intentionally don’t do what you know you need to do.

The reality is, within all of us is the knowledge of what we need to get well and what we need to do. No amount of forcing yourself to get well is going to work if you don’t want to get better. It’s a hard fact to swallow (pardon the pun) but one which is ultimately uplifting when you realise that you do want to get better, even on the bad days.

I can choose to not eat and I can choose the live my life how I used to but fairy-tales of simplicity and mindless oblivion aside, I know I was desperately, desperately unhappy. All I need to do is look back on the few blog posts I managed to hash together during that time to get a small glimpse of the hell I was spiralling towards. The memories of it are so much sharper and painful.

So what did I do on my difficult day? Nothing. I didn’t read anything I had written to myself, I didn’t throw myself passionately into thinking how great life would be without this illness and I didn’t think about what I had to lose if I got sick again.

I just went through the motions and did what I had to do. No overthinking and contemplating. I just did what I always do now that I am recovering because eating is non negotiable these days and going back is not an option.

And what have I learnt? I don’t have to force myself into recovery because I want recovery. A difficult day hasn’t knocked me or taken that away. I have times where relapse seems like a good idea but I know (and more importantly cannot forget) that it isn’t.

I want to get better and if you are reading this, I have a feeling at least a part of you wants to as well. That part isn’t going to go, even if you lose site of it for a while on a difficult day.

Bring on tomorrow!

Keep fighting,

Madasanegg

How to manage other peoples expectations of you in Eating Disorder recovery.

You won’t eat that type of food. You won’t be able to cope with a normal weight. You will loose weight when you get out of hospital. You will always be underweight. You won’t want to come out for a meal. You don’t enjoy eating.

The list is endless.

The people around you are trying to be understanding but they are understanding your Eating Disorder and not you.

The answer? You need to tell them again and again and again that you are doing things differently now.  The problem? Recovery is exhausting and telling people again and again and again is just too much sometimes, especially when your illness is going to try and make you feel ashamed of just living normal life.

So what do you do? You hold onto the fact that your recovery is yours.

You don’t need to justify the decisions that you are making. It doesn’t matter how other people think you should act in recovery, it doesn’t matter how other people do recovery and it definitely doesn’t matter what your Eating Disorder thinks you should or shouldn’t do.

I like chocolate brownies A LOT. I’m going to continue to gain weight although I’ve reached a place that is safe- because that is normal for MY BODY and that is what is right FOR ME. I get excited about going out to eat and trying new foods. The illness is what makes me feel guilty and ashamed of these things but these things are awesome and these things are ME and MY DECISIONS.

It takes an incredible amount of strength to defy your Eating Disorder and it’s even harder when sometimes it seems even the professionals are expecting a ‘half recovered’ life for you.

Go for your version of recovery whatever that means for you and however much you have to defy expectations. The Eating Disorder and it’s frankly CR*P expectations for you, can go do one! Nobody wants you to be ill and more importantly YOU are allowed to not want you to be ill.

Give yourself the permission to live the life you deserve,

It’s about time don’t you think?

Madasanegg