Written by a client and shared with their consent.
To have an eating disorder is to experience skinny love. A toxic love, a tarnished one; it is a love fueled more by dreams than reality. It begins with a gut feeling that rises when the mirror becomes too close a friend, knowing that you are sinking yet craving a chance to push away the angel and devil perched tightly on your shoulders. Picking yourself apart, you start to lose sight of everything that made you who you are. Your eyes become ridden of any spark and are replaced with circles only seen in cliche hypnosis videos. Deeper, deeper, deeper until you are stuck. A personal veteran of this love, I believe many who have struggled with an eating disorder, such as anorexia, may be as well.
Watching as you shed not only weight but spirit is haunting. It comes to you at night when sleep is unreachable. The guilt consciousness that the cycle of starvation is ultimately a despicable thing, yet the very thing that motivates you to intensely work out, eat healthy, and do better until that’s all you become. Like a moth to a flame, when you see something you crave to be, you will continue to walk that line until it breaks and you are falling. Until then, however, you walk the line. It may shake as the concern and furrowing brows from friends and family pressure a reality that you are not ready to meet. Yet faster and faster the pace quickens, and the walk turns to a run. Unable to break, you are sprinting and getting farther and farther away from understanding where the fault lies. Words and signals are lost, and the continuous disorder signs become a routine process. There are set times and meals, as nothing can exceed a certain caloric limit, and you must burn this amount to meet the required justification. Going back to a time when numbers were simply math problems and hunger was not overthought is a dream from which there is no return. This is the tightrope I walked, the one I continue to walk.
There is a vulnerability intertwined with that sentence. The long line had broken at last. I plummeted and hit the ground hard as the months of pleading for recovery turned to a demand that formed a rock-solid cushion to break my fall. It was hard; the feeling of support was there, yet it lingered as a sense of disappointment was ever pressing. You can take it, hold it, and bury it, but that guilt only rises as the building of resources turns to seem like you are more of a patient than a person. Constant eyes, trailing up and down from certain clothes choices, the shaking of heads even when a non-approved item not meeting the requirements is ordered, even the sad stares that come at the most arbitrary times. You notice things just as you did once the cycle started, and yet it is a new cycle, one that can feel just as imperfect.
As recovery progresses, and the growing spirit becomes more uplifting to those around you, you, too, begin to believe that the struggle will soon diminish. Yet, something rarely expressed is that, like a trick of fate, the disordered mindset can still exist even as and after you recover. Just as healing your body can be demanding, the healing of your soul is more complicated than anything else. While your body changes and your head cheers on the growth that is now “oh so right”, your soul may still yearn for the old body and mind that could tell itself to say no. To my veterans of skinny love, you may see now that it is okay to admit to entering this battle once more, because this disease brings forth this mental battle like a wound to the heart that only wishes to beat free again.
This is where that vulnerability kicks in. Recovered, having gained the weight back, I fell once again into a time where I let the depleting voices swarm my anxieties and overcome all the positive ones. It was winter, and my thoughts became void of warmth, for only bitter and ruthless thoughts were let in. I was able to convince myself it was more mindful than the last time, and with it, I kept most of my recovered thoughts. However, the teeter continued to totter as I went up and down with the guilt and understanding of what and who I wanted to be.
My soul, now tarnished, writes this as a story to those who need to hear that being recovered and still struggling doesn’t mean you are a failure. It does not mean that you are in a constant struggle that everyone will hear about. It means that you are a human with a disease that many cannot grasp. It means that to shut out the inner anxieties, you must outlaw the outer ones, causing you more complex confusion.
There are days when lights shine almost obnoxiously and ones when light is nowhere to be found. It is vital, then, to search for this light in any form it can be found. Spend your day living and being, yet take the time then to recall and seek your glimmers. Finding the shining moments, the ones to cherish and hold onto them tight. Sit with them, use anything to write on, and pour out your thoughts, even share with others, just take those glimmers and let them burn bright. It takes a strong person to find the light in the dark, but it is even more prominent to be able to turn the light into new motivation. With more peace of mind, depleting voices turn to soothing meditative reminders that ease you in times of pressure. Becoming able to stop and turn your inner narrative, deleting the food and body-related anxieties, and replacing them with better-focused sentences. I run through these inner texts in my mind often now. When reassurance is needed, I let myself hear my stress and turn to think of what is at the root of my conflict. Taking the time to fight back against the toxic ideas involved, bringing forth the glimmers I have felt, and reframing the habits to understand that everything you choose to do can be and will be normal if you just breathe. Take a breath, hold it in, and release it. Soothingly, mindfulness can be exuded from a body worn from struggle.
Running down a tightrope is and will always be nearly impossible. Walking one is rare, and not many can do it, but it can be done. I am walking a tightrope, as I balance a life that I want with one pulling me behind. Taking my triumphs and failures with me, my desire to finish is abundant, and while the line may thin and thicken at times, at the end of the day, that is okay.
Skinny love is ruthless. That love, however, can be replaced as love for a new beginning becomes the rising power over all else. I am reaching for it, and I now feel my heart beating as it races towards the future.
