I battled my way through the storm, endured the pain and the agony of hospitalisation...I fought my way this far....
But I know that my battle can't just end, here. I know that in this fight for my life, I need to be fearless...
It was some time not long before I was discharged from inpatient care at the hospital, probably my nineth or tenth weekend home with my family. I had received the osteoporosis diagnosis several months before, back in February...but, on having been referred to a rheumatologist by my consultant, I had a new sense of hope shining in my heart and filling my body with its glow. For his view on my condition was crucially different to that of my consultant's, in that he had been assertive in his conviction that I had not, by any means, reason to despair on account of the current state of my bones. Rather, he had maintained that there was much I could do to improve things: that I still had time, being only in my early twenties, to improve the delicate structure of my skeleton, and prevent the osteoporosis from getting significantly worse. As long as you maintained your recovery, he had told me. I had smiled eagerly and had promised that I certainly would.
And as we climbed those beautiful mountains, surrounded on all sides by rolling dale and lush green valley, with the majestic forms of spruce and cypress and pine tipping their needle laden branches gently in a breeze which carried with it the warm caress of early spring, I had felt, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, so, so free...like a kestrel on the wing which has finally learned how to stretch its beautiful wings, to soar above the clopuds and embrace the infinite sublimity of an endless, cornflower blue sky.
And just like that kestrel, I felt, at that moment...almost, weightless. my weight meant nothing to me. It didnt matter what my weight was...that number, or the knowledge of that number, did not hinder me in any way, from ascending higher and higher into that beautiful endless sky...did not stop me, from spreading my wings...
But then the winds changed and the spring merged into the summer; summer's light and golden warmth finally being replaced, by the darkening horizon of autumn. and as the days became colder and the flowers and buds began to shrivel and die, so too did that short, transitory sense of happiness that I had found; that fleeting sense of true and pure freedom. And, like the leaves being carried away by the autumn gusts, so too did my willingless to recover, slipping through my fingers to be borne away by that cruel, harsh, pitiless wind, to be cast down mercilessly to the cold, hard earth.
It's so true to say, that recovery is something which we have to choose...not once, not twice, but again and again and again, every single minute of every single hour, of every single day...
It's a fight which we cannot afford to falter in; a for it is, I now recognise now, a battle in which there can only ever be one loser. Us, or ED. A fight which is, as some of us know all too well, ultimately a fight to the death.
because, even if I (I use myself here, as representative of anyone suffering from an eating disorder.) were to "survive" living with an ED (if you could call a life with an ED actually living. There's a big difference, after all, between the two terms...surviving does not necessarily have the same meaning as living in this context.). But what I say to you now is this. Surviving, with my eating disorder...is more or less equatable to a living death. Because even though you are alive, it is as if you are dying inside...the person who people knew and loved you as, has been cruelly and maliciously taken away, murdered by the bloodstained hands of the eating disorder. And all that is left is the ghost of the person who used to be.
I often ask myself... how much of me, is there actually left? And, if I do not choose make that concscious, difficult, terrifying, but absolutely crucial decision to recover, every minute of every hour of every day...will there be any of the real emmy left, at all? Or will there just be left a hollow, empty, inanimate shell, a shell wholly in the possession of the demonic thing which is my eating disorder...
Looking back now, I know that I didn't truly realise...
that I had become little more than a shadow, of the girl that I used to be...
Strong and healthy bones..
A smile which was genuine, not feigned...
my happy, carefree, bubbly personality...
a love of life and of everything it contained...
hope in my future and belief in myself...
all of this, ED either twisted, corrupted with its taint, or simply destroyed and broke it completely..or took it all away from me...
in exchange for nothing, but this...
self hatred and loathing, self disgust...the deepest and strongest hatred, for the most precious posssion I will ever have..my body...
which drove me to abuse and neglect my body to the brink of its existence.
weak, brittle, fragile bones which could snap with one single fal or stumble...
a smile which hid behind it a hundred tears, untellable pain, and a silent, unspoken, soundless longing, that if only they knew, if only they knew, what really lies deep inside me. If only I could just reach out to them, but it was as if separated from them by the vastest and most deepest of abysses; a massive and unbridgeable divide which I would never be able to cross...
Despair, isolation, depression and loneliness... shutting myself away from the world...
I lost all my passions for the things which I loved, that fervent enthusiasm for life which I once had, evaporated like thin wisps of smoke.
A desire to end my life...because in my darkest hour you made me believe that I did not deserve to live.
I have wasted, so many, many years...
There has been so many tears, so much agony, so much heartache and suffering and pain...
I know that it is time to stop...being afraid, and letting the fear of the voice hold me back.
Because I have proven that I can be strong, and brave, and fearless... I wouldn't have got this far, if I had simply spent all that time since recognising that I had an eating disorder, cowering in a corner, allowing the fear to pin me down. There is something we all need to realise now...each and every one of us, including myself.
That we all have the strength and the courage and the determination, deep inside us, to overcome any obstacle, surpass any barrier, achieve anything that we set our heart and minds to.
That is why it is so important, to have belief that there is a recovery. That you, and not your eating disorder, will be the one who wins that fight in the end.
Yesterday I came up with some more Christnmassy sort of goals too, as there are a few things which I really hope to achieve over the Christmas period...more details on this tomorrow!! <3
Thank you so, so much, for always being there for me...
I wish you all a truly special and beautiful Christmas...
Remember...fate loves the fearless...
be brave and stand against your ED!! <3 xxx
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