Who am I without Ed...

It is a common thing for anyone suffering from an eating disorder that they feel as if their identity, their whole personality, everything which defines them, essentially - becomes directly and inexorably linked with their eating disorder. So much so, that often, the individual human being who they once saw themselves as being, the person who other people saw and knew and remembered - that person disappears, hidden away, replaced by another identity, that being an identity which is bent to the will of the eating disorder. I can definitely relate to that, because for years, my identity and my eating disorder were really, inseparable. And I did nothing to change this.

During my stay in hospital, this was one of the questions that the cbt therapist that saw me once a week tried to post to me. But at the time, you know, I was actually unable to answer. Who are you without your eating disorder, Emmy? I chose to dismiss, even ignore the question: for it came at the wrong time, a time which I was unable to properly arrange my thoughts and fight off the cloud of depression and sense of hopelessness which had overcome me during my inpatient stay, just after the diagnosis with the osteoporosis. I truly believed that, if Ed was gone, there really wouldn't be any of me left: I would be a nobody. So much of my identity seemed tied up with my eating disorder: from the things that I did every day, the way in which I lived my life; the things that I said and the way in which I saw myself, the way which I thought about myself and my position in society, in the world, in my own little anorexic bubble.

But that was the past...

and I now realise what I didn't, couldn't allow myself to see, back then, when I was that depressed, frightened, and wretched young girl in hospital. A desolate young girl with an eating disorder, who could see nothing on her horizon but siffering and bleakness. Who had, completely and wholly, lost all trace of hope.

but now...now the way that I think about myself, how I think about my future, how I think about my place in the world, my role in it, my identity as me, Emmy - has changed. Through storms and rain and mist I have passed, but now, as I continue my slow climb upwards, I look towards the horizon once again, and I can see a beautiful new brightness, blazing, strengthning, pulsating like a beating, living heart.. At times, I even can feel it, in little dapples and fleeting touches upon my skin. These are the times like today, when I catch a glimpse of what real, true recovery is really like.

I know, deep down in my heart, that I was wrong, all those months ago, when I surrendered myself to despair and hopelessness, and believed that I was nothing without an eating disorder...

And I am reaching out with outstretched hands, to the real, true Emmy. The Emmy without an ED.

I thought in an upcoming post I would share with you how I am currently going about finding the real Emmy. It is my quest of self-discovery, upon which I am reaching out to find, the real me. <3 xxx