Recovery Musings
I’ve never ever been able to really and truly recover. The word RECOVER makes me shudder to begin with. Recover what and from what? I am painfully aware that I can never recover those wasted years where my life was consumed with nothing more than calories and weights and numbers and mirrors? The eating disorder has become so much a part of me that I wonder what is me and what is the disorder. We've been living together for 15 out of 25 years. EDs change you and shape you and I'm sure it will always be there to some degree in my life. It might not be optimistic but I'm being honest when I say that my best hope is for me to be able to ignore the voices that I know will always be there. Being able to bat away the thoughts that flutter like butterflies all the time in my head.
So many of my friends and family members have already retreated and withdrawn their support unintentionally, to protect themselves and because they cannot stand to see me the way I am and continue to be year after year: sick and not getting better. Some friends have severed all connections, refusing to have me in their wedding party, not inviting me out because it's "too painful" for them. Others act like it doesn't exist although it's the elephant in the room.
I'm afraid to admit defeat by going IP again or by telling the truth when people ask "How is recovery going?". I just smile and say everything's fine. Deep down I wonder, what if I fail again? Who else will leave me and who am I going to disappoint? This fear keeps me from trying, keeps me perpetually stuck. If you don't try you can't really fail... or so it goes in my head.
I want to be more than this disorder. I want my son to grow up and be proud of his mother instead of end up abandoning me too when this gets to be too much for him to bear. I don't want him to ever blame himself for me being sick or to shoulder the burden of a sick parent. I want him to remember good times together and not to remember me being too weak and tired to do anything or to depressed to go anywhere with him. If this disorder does kill me I at least want him to see that I fought a good fight and didn't give up.