Recovery is a mind altering thing. You turn your whole world upside down while your still stand right side up. Its confusing, sometimes miserable, and almost always you get lost and are made to find your way again.
I hate the mood swings it brings me. The depression everyday I get from either eating or not eating. I hate the confusion between right and wrong. I hate feeling lost. I love when I get a moment of seeing what I really look like in the mirror, though I always tell myself its not good enough. I love when I enjoy food for once instead of counting everything in it right away.
I am trying so hard right now. Pushing myself, pushing my mind though it wants to stay in my eating disorder. Its confusing. I even made my quotes collage on being beautiful. But I can't help feeling sad, disgusting, and alone. I want to sleep, I want to cry, I want to stop for a moment to rest.
I was looking through photos of my past. Through the times of anorexia and the awkward months of recovery and the year of remission (yes remission is how I think of it). I look at the times I was underweight and say I need to be there! Look how great I looked! How happy I was- but a small part of me reminds me I wasn't happy. I was dead inside- yet I wish I was still that thin that beautiful. I look at the time of recovery. Slowly gaining weight then putting on more weight then intended. I feel I looked disgusting and so fat.... I think ew how could I ever let myself get there. How could I have ever been happy- yet I was. I was relearning what happiness even was. And then remission. Its closer to me now, at my set point weight (or I assume is me now). I still think I look fat, too round a face, too chubby of arms, huge thighs. But I am happy. I was happy. And now I am there with the fat but sad. I want to be just happy again.
Can I trade the eating disorder for happiness? That would be too easy right? I know I still want my eating disorder in ways. But if I looked at life as being happy and an eating disorder being not exactly life but death, could I honestly say I would rather have my eating disorder in exchange for happiness? Yet why do I still want it. Even though I know its truths, its lies, is depression, its insomnia, its death, its crippling ways, its isolation, its obsession.
why does my brain think this way- I will never know. But I could never say I don't want happiness. And for now I can't say I don't want my eating disorder. But the two can never exist in the same body.
You said everything exactly the way I feel it too. you have a way of putting everything into writing so beautifully. I do the same thing about looking at past pictures of myself when I was thinner. I look at them and immediately start planning the next diet so I can be that thin again. Then my real voice comes back and tells me that at my thinnest I was the most unhappy. I think our brains think that way because we are so used to having the ed for protection and control so even though we know how unhealthy it is to keep our eds we arent willing to let go of the control and the way our eds make us feel. It is a vicious cycle that I know we can all break one day. We just have to keep picturing what our lives will be like when we can wake up and live not immediately focus on food or not eating food or exercising. Keep thinking poisitve Allee and you will achieve everything you want to oneday. :) Nicole
I use this site so much as a way to get out my feelings- every bit of them since I have so much trouble getting them out in real life. Writing seems to be a really good outlet for me. So as soon as I cant understand my feelings or have really strong ones whether they are good or bad, I come on here and just start typing away.
Thank you also for making me feel not crazy! I thought I was nuts doing that with my pictures! I do it all the time no matter what. I have never stopped doing it even when I was in "remission". It sucks!
Im so glad that you have something like writing to help you express what you cannot yet say. Maybe the writing will eventually help you to get your feelings out verbally. Your writing on here not only helps you but others as well because alot of us are going through exactly the same things. I have learned so much from others on here and have felt so much support and comfort in knowing that someone else somewhere is feeling the way I feel. You are definitely not crazy! Sometimes I find pictures of when I was smaller and hide them so that I can stare at how thin I was and put myself down for no longer being that way when no one is around. It's like Im trying to punish myself for not having a perfect body. I am trying to becoms more aware of it now and when I feel myself obcessing, I rip up the pictures and throw them out. Just knowing that those pictures can be dangerous is a start. As long as you know you can try turning them into positive things like you mentioned before that you were not happy at a certain weight in a certain picture. Maybe we should take pictures of ourselves when we are having good recovery days so that when we look at those we can focus on how we felt and not looked on that day. Take care Allee and keep writing! :)Nicole
please please dont look at past pictures--please dont --i did that too when i first started recovery, and it was awful..think of your future, your life, your loves instead of old pictures when you were hurting yourself. i know you couldnt have been that happy in your pictures. dont look back...
it takes time to change the ED mindset, it wont happen overnight. you might not like how you look now, but in time that will change. your mind is distorted from the ED so you are not even seeing the real you anyway.
i always wonder--when i look in the mirror since mine is distorted , what the heck am i seeing????? i dont know....i wonder why the image comes out scrambled.
think of your future, your health, value your health cause guess what? some people dont have it and it is not goood to lose your health...at all.
Hey Allee,
I know how you feel about recovery being sucha rollercoaster, you can go from laughing to crying in a flash, because you are not using food to control emotion anymore, well that's what I have found with me, and therefore they need to get out somehow.
But although it is such a ride..I bet you know you are progressing, if you think of how you were at the start of therapy V now? You are not running back to the ED for shelter you are seeing it for what it is and you are in search for your happiness.
Keep going hun, as bumpy as it is, we know we are worth it in the end.