An eating disorder is a war with your mind. One that you will never win. You will never be thin enough to shut the ugly voice in your head. Never. No matter how thin you get, it will never be enough. You could weigh 0 pounds and the voice will still tell you what a fat piece of crap you are. It is hell. A living hell.
The sad thing is that you believe every word it says. It has brainwashed you. You are at its mercy. It lives to punish you. It will keep punishing you until you decide you don’t want to listen anymore. It sounds simple, but it’s not.
I remember telling my mom about it. How the voice tells me I’m fat, I’m a pig, I don’t deserve food, and what not. She was crying and said, “Just tell the voice to shut the hell up.” I began crying, telling her I can’t.
It had become my companion. Sick as it was, I felt that it was my friend. For someone who has never experienced an eating disorder, I know that it sounds crazy. It is. It promised me happiness, love, a beautiful life. But there were strings attached. I could only have those things if I was thin. The thinnest. The best at dieting. And of course, as I said in the beginning, you will never be thin enough. So as long as the e.d. is your “friend”, you will never have the happiness, the love, and the beautiful life it promised you. Never. The perpetual catch-22. You will forever be trying to catch up to the dangling carrot. As soon as you’re almost close enough to grab it, it’s yanked far away from you. Laughing manically at your stupidity, “Did you really think you would get it? Look at you. You’re disgusting. You have a long way to go. Fat chance at winning.” This is who you consider your friend.
I listened to that voice for years. Believed it for years.
When I began recovery, it got really pissed. “They’re going to make you fat. They’re lying to you. I’m the only one who tells the truth.” And on and on.
As I said before, I let it have its say. Then I went on with getting better. It was hard. There were times the e.d. voice won. But I forgave myself and marched on. Eventually with time, the voice quieted down. Not overnight for sure. We’re talking a few years here. At times of stress, it likes to pop in and see how I’m doing. I politely close the door. That’s one visitor I don’t need.
For recovery to be successful you have to believe two things: you deserve recovery and you can recover.
To be completely honest, I did not believe those two things when I began. I was hoping I cold find a way to “maintain” my eating disorder. To somehow have it waiting in the wings for me. To bring it out when I needed it most and then put it back when I no longer needed it.
I learned quickly that was not the case. If I was to get better, I had to say goodbye to it.
What helped was that my treatment team believed in me when I did not. They cheered me on. They encouraged me. By no means did they let on that it was going to be rainbows and roses, but they had the confidence that I could do it. They also let me know that it was in my hands – not theirs. They could only do so much. The bulk of the work fell on my shoulders.
Slowly though I began to believe them. Yeah, I can do this. I can overcome this. I will be in the overcome statistics.
Now you may not believe you can recover right now. It’s a scary thought, I know. But I also know that you can do it. Just like my treatment team before me, I believe in you. I believe in your strength. I believe in your courage. I believe that every time you fall down, you will get up and try again. You will beat this disease and live the life you were born to live. I have faith in you. You will too.
No one was put on this earth to live a sucky life. You were born with the intention to have a beautiful and joyous life. That is your right. Don’t let this disease rob you of that.
Where you are is perfectly fine. What you have done in the past is perfectly fine. Most importantly, who you are is more than perfectly fine.
Stop beating yourself up. Start loving yourself.
Everything you’ve done in the past is just that. The past. You did the best you could with what you had and what you knew.
Everyday is a new day, a chance to begin again. Forgive yourself for whatever imperfections you believe about yourself. Strive to do better each day.
What I’m saying may sound like a fairy tale right now to you. Something that you think you’ll never be able to accept. The more you practice the concepts of recovery, the easier they become.
But first please forgive yourself. Just do it. I promise you’re nowhere near as horrible as you think you are. Not even close. I used to tell my therapist horror stories about my past, trying to get her to see how bad a person I was. She wouldn’t play my game. She wouldn’t agree with me.
Instead she told me, “Kelly, you did the best you could. Now you’re learning new ways to cope. Forgive yourself. I’m not going to join you in gaining up on you and your past.” She was also the first person who ever told me that I was fine just the way I was. I didn’t have to be smarter, prettier, or Lord knows, thinner to be a better person. I was fine just being me.
So now I’m telling you: You are fine just the way you are!!!!!! Believe it! Live it!
It’s as easy as that. It’s said to be the most fatal of all the mental health problems. Ten percent of all sufferers will eventually die. It is somewhat a form of suicide. Death can come quickly or slowly and painfully.
If it doesn’t physically kill you, it will kill you emotionally. That is 100% guaranteed. All your hopes and dreams for the future will be gone. Down the drain. You will be an empty shell of your former self. Your life will be on hold. For how long? Well, that’s up to you. The e.d. will gladly stick around forever if you allow it. You shouldn’t. It’s not worth it. Believe me, it’s not.
I’m not saying my life is perfect now that I’m freed from it. It’s far from it. But what’s different now, is that I can face my problems head on with a clear mind for once in my life.
I’m also not going to lie and say that I wasn’t tempted to go back to it a few times, especially in my early years of recovery. It was that monkey on my back, taunting me, teasing me. “Come on, Kelly, just one last time. You know you want to. You know it’ll make you feel better.”
The difference between now and then is that I don’t give much thought to the voice in my head anymore. I know it’s telling me lies. Before I would believe every word it said. And I would follow it’s advice blindly.
The voice hardly ever comes around anymore. But when it would when I was in the early stages, I had to learn to deal with it. I found the easiest way was to simply acknowledge it. (If I tried to ignore it too much, it just made it louder.) I listened to what it had to say. I didn’t take too much of what it said to heart. What I did do is stop myself, get quiet, and ask, “Ok, what is bothering me? What is it that I’m trying to run away from?” Sometimes I could see the problem clearly. Other times I did not. But I wouldn’t fall back into the e.d.
I can’t. I honestly believe that my body could not handle another relapse. It just can’t. I spent way too many years abusing it to no end. It will not put up with another one.
It’s so easy to fall back into the hole. So easy. Each time you fall back, you fall back down to your lowest point. You continue to go deeper and deeper until one of two things happen. One: You die. Two: You hit your bottom and get help.
It’s all up to you. No one else. Just you. No one can save you. No one can pull you up and dust you off. Now there will people to guide you and help you along the way. But the work rests on your shoulders.
Recovering from my eating disorder was the hardest thing I have ever done. Aside from my son, it’s my greatest accomplishment. Was it easy? HELL NO! Was it fun? HELL NO! Were there times when I felt like giving up? HELL YES! Was all the work and tears worth it? HELL YES!
I kept chugging along. Taking one step forward, two steps backward, and so on. I made it. My prayer and wish for you is for you to do the same.
Also didn’t feel deserving of it. Pretty sure many of you know the feeling.
One night I was on a recovery website looking at the survivor’s wall. People who had recovered would post encouraging things to others who were suffering.
One sentence in particular stood out the most. I’m paraphrasing, but here it is:
The fact that I’m still alive shows that God has not given up on me.
That one little sentence made me cry, brought me to my knees, have a revelation. It was like a religious experience and I’m by no means religious.
I thought back to all the times He could have taken me, but didn’t. All the times I flirted with death. All the times I prayed for death to come and take me.
But He didn’t. I was still alive.
I didn’t want to be most of the time, but I was.
Now I’m not saying I jumped on the recovery bandwagon the very next day. But it got me thinking. It got the ball rolling.
It would still be a few months before I found myself crying in my doctor’s office about how I can’t stop the starving and purging of what little I did eat.
But maybe there was some hope for me. Maybe I was being kept alive for some reason. Maybe I wasn’t hopeless. It was like a light had been turned on in my head.
And now I’m saying it to you. The fact that you’re still alive is because God hasn’t given up on you. So don’t you give up either.
