The Hunger for More...

And so, it's back, again. Back again like a fluttering moth, one that refuses to go away, no matter how many times you flap your hands in a vain attempt to ward it off. Ignoring it doesn't help, either. But you don't want to hurt it because it's not there to harm you, exactly. It's not like a wasp with its malicious sting, or a blood-sucking fly which wishes to prey upon your blood. Both of those insects make me think of Ed: remorseless, predatory, parasitical. But this moth is slightly different. My old friend, the "extreme hunger". I groan and sigh and bemoan its presence in my life, once again. But yet I cannot condemn it. Because I know that it's there for a reason.

Since coming back from Mas Banyeres, the extreme hunger also returned, and in force. It was with some gloom that I duly acknowledged its presence, having naively assumed that Barcelona had seen the end of it: that niggling, yearning desire for more and more, even when I'd eaten enough to be physically stuffed. It's something I only really get in the mornings, but this is a fact that I have quickly started to hate, and deplore as much as its actual existence. Because the mornings are the one time when I like to write Morokia. Since coming home, I've barely written anything. And one of the main reasons for that is the fact that in the mornings the EH is proving slightly more than a bit of a distraction.

Take this morning for example.I woke up and then about half an hour later I had sat down to breakfast. The bowl of weetabix was quickly consumed, followed by a slice of toast and a load of peanut butter. After a portion of cheese I decided that it was time to stop and try to write for a while. Give me the next item, please, the hungry voice screamed in desperation, already eyeing the next food on the list which hangs in my mind every day, the all-too-familiar meal plan. Half a toasted bagel with seeds and spread, and then a soft boiled egg or some baked beans. No, I shouted back at it, in frustration. Just wait a couple of hours, darn you!! I want to write, I don't want to spend all of my wriitng time just eating....!!

About half an hour later - and with one sole measly paragraph done - I finally gave in, and ate. And was very quickly not just full, with food, but with self-disgust and and self-hatred, as perusual.

At the fact that I couldn't hold out and wait until everyone else ate, as a normal person would, insert quotation marks here, as that's what the voice in my head says in my brain. Not to mention at the bloating of my stomach afterward.



In Spain, the EH was still there, though, of course. Just not as sharply prominent; or rather, I was more effectively able to ignore, even defy, it. In the mornings I gladly thrust myself into jobs and tasks which would divert me from it. I did not eat as much there as I do at home at breakfast. And weirdly, by doing so, it was almost as if the EH was suppressed. Whatever the case, I was not eating as much, and didn't experience any cravings to do so, either. But now I am back home, on my meal plan again, and now this. What's going on?? How do I respond to these cravings and mental hunger?

No point trying to deny it, there's a hunger...for more.

But also there is a different sort of hunger. A hunger, a desperate need, to defeat ED once and for all.

So does that mean giving into the extreme hunger...and actually, really doing it, this time. Not just eating that wee bit extra, but actually making a conscious, concrete effort to increase amounts throughout the day.

But there's so many challenges and obstacles preventing me from doing this. People's comments spin in orbit around my head. You look well, Emmy. You look the picture of health. You look so much better now. And then, last year, one evening in my library, the stranger there. What chubby cheeks you have. That one still lingers in my memory, slowly twirling on a sharply pointed axle.

My heart's telling me I should try to gain a little more weight, to go beyond this...minimum. But doing that is so, so hard, when the world tells me that I look "healthy" as I currently do.

But can they see what's happeneing on the inside? Can they see my weakened bones and nutrient-deprived ovaries??

Having a hunger for true recovery might well mean....ignoring everyone's else's interpretations of me, the way I look, and behave. It's not about them, after all. It's about, well, myself. And my body, which I alone know more than anyone else.

But the path ahead is dark and covered in shards of ice. I step upon them, and a shiver runs through my body, at this pitiless, icy coolness. And I am afraid that that ice is going to crack, and that I will crack, along with it.