(no subject)
This is an assignment from my non-fiction class. We were supposed to read a piece about how to become a writer, and in response we had to write our own reflection on how to become something. I thought I was going to write about how to become "recovered" -- apparently my story had other ideas. It is about recovery, but mostly about how I can't tell someone how to become recovered because I don't know how yet.
The reason for this is to tell you how to recover, but if I do that, I’d be lying to you and to myself. Obsession is a crippling thing and I don’t deny that I have an issue with it - I’ve read every story ad watched every movie I can about eating disorders. The only book that didn’t feel like complete bullshit was Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted. It was honest, raw, and frightening - all the rest praise their own recoveries, talking about how happy they are now, about eating whatever foods they like and loving their bodies. I say it’s horseshit.
I sort of recovered, once, without any real help from anyone. At the time I’d had a boyfriend who only wanted me to “get better” and so I did, simply because that was what he wanted. I didn’t do it because I was ready to eat normally, or because I planned to push anorexia out of my life - I just did it because. It wasn’t a good reason or the right one to recover. So I started eating and hating myself so much that I almost thought killing myself was the answer. I gained weight and hated myself more; every time I ate the guilt that consumed me was so overwhelming that sometimes I couldn’t even breathe.
Everyone knew by then - my secret wasn’t my secret anymore and they were going to take it away from me no matter what I did so I might as well go quietly. By then my mother knew, shared it with her husband, and my little sister just wasn’t as blind as I’d wanted her to be. And they had seen me eating now, said I looked healthier and cried because I was better, which just translated to me as having gotten noticeably fatter. But I couldn’t take it back - they knew too much, knew what they should be looking for this time; I couldn’t throw up or they’d know, couldn’t take a ton of laxatives because they’d know, I had to eat or they noticed. I had lost everything.
So I gained weight. In truth I can’t tell you how much - I was too afraid to ever get on the scale to look during that time, too afraid that if the number was too high I’d rekindle my relationship with a razorblade and do more than carve up my skin.
The years between then and now didn’t get easier; they tell you it gets easier, recovery, but it’s a lie. But I’m a great pretender; as an anorectic you had to be an excellent liar and once I mastered that skill, well, I never un-mastered it. I still didn’t - don’t - eat normally, but my weight was normal; my weight was that disgusting thing called average. I hated myself, but everyone else was so happy to see me “healthy”, so I kept pretending I was ok with this, with getting fat and secretly hating myself more than I did when I was starving. I had visions of cutting my own skin, surgically removing the fat from my body while blood pooled red at my feet, leaving behind a beautiful, gruesomely gleaming skeleton - a perfect, thin skeleton.
A feeling that strong doesn’t just go away, doesn’t just stop or disappear; that feeling just festered and infected every part of me. I never learned to love the fat rolls on my stomach when I sit down, or the way the fat on my thighs and ass jiggle when I run up the stairs. It made me sick with hate - still does.
I don’t care what other books say - you don’t have a sudden, grand epiphany that starving isn’t healthy because you already know this, and you just don’t give a shit. Instead, you reach a point where you realize you’re terrified you’re going to die every time you can’t catch your breath and your heart starts trip-skipping in your chest; then you realize that you don’t really want to die and you struggle every goddamn day for even the smallest semblance of normalcy.
I struggle every day trying to convince myself that I want to eat normally and have a healthy body; I’m a goddamn liar. After that initial push, I spend the rest of my time telling myself that I don’t want to get fat, can’t eat that much/that food/anything. I get on the scale - another pound down and the obsession is like a drum beating in perfect rhythm with my heart. If I can lose one more pound, then a couple more and then just a little more… And just like that all those old habits come crashing in, start controlling you again. I get terrified of even gaining an ounce. I weigh in every day, naked in the morning, and if the number is down the gnawing twist of hunger in my stomach at 6am makes me fucking smile. Then I remember how much I love starving and being thin - I just can’t tell you why. I wish I knew.
Every day is a back-and-forth in my own head: the fear of being fat versus the fear of having to depend on laxatives, the fear of being fat versus the fear of getting caught and having it all taken away again, the fear of being fat versus the fear of being sick and having my son taken away from me. It always comes back to fear. Being fat is my biggest fear - the kind that wraps a fist around your heart, squeezing, and tries to claw its way out of your throat, stomach dropping, and you’re suffocating kind of fear. And the fear of what happens if you really let this go.
There is no way for me to tell you how to be recovered - there isn’t a way for me, not that I’ve found - and it’s a process that stops and goes, retreats and then surges forward. There are no steps to follow that work for everyone, no “how to recover guide for idiots” that cures all of this - all the fear and hate and desperation.
You just fight, all the time, and mostly against yourself.
The reason for this is to tell you how to recover, but if I do that, I’d be lying to you and to myself. Obsession is a crippling thing and I don’t deny that I have an issue with it - I’ve read every story ad watched every movie I can about eating disorders. The only book that didn’t feel like complete bullshit was Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted. It was honest, raw, and frightening - all the rest praise their own recoveries, talking about how happy they are now, about eating whatever foods they like and loving their bodies. I say it’s horseshit.
I sort of recovered, once, without any real help from anyone. At the time I’d had a boyfriend who only wanted me to “get better” and so I did, simply because that was what he wanted. I didn’t do it because I was ready to eat normally, or because I planned to push anorexia out of my life - I just did it because. It wasn’t a good reason or the right one to recover. So I started eating and hating myself so much that I almost thought killing myself was the answer. I gained weight and hated myself more; every time I ate the guilt that consumed me was so overwhelming that sometimes I couldn’t even breathe.
Everyone knew by then - my secret wasn’t my secret anymore and they were going to take it away from me no matter what I did so I might as well go quietly. By then my mother knew, shared it with her husband, and my little sister just wasn’t as blind as I’d wanted her to be. And they had seen me eating now, said I looked healthier and cried because I was better, which just translated to me as having gotten noticeably fatter. But I couldn’t take it back - they knew too much, knew what they should be looking for this time; I couldn’t throw up or they’d know, couldn’t take a ton of laxatives because they’d know, I had to eat or they noticed. I had lost everything.
So I gained weight. In truth I can’t tell you how much - I was too afraid to ever get on the scale to look during that time, too afraid that if the number was too high I’d rekindle my relationship with a razorblade and do more than carve up my skin.
The years between then and now didn’t get easier; they tell you it gets easier, recovery, but it’s a lie. But I’m a great pretender; as an anorectic you had to be an excellent liar and once I mastered that skill, well, I never un-mastered it. I still didn’t - don’t - eat normally, but my weight was normal; my weight was that disgusting thing called average. I hated myself, but everyone else was so happy to see me “healthy”, so I kept pretending I was ok with this, with getting fat and secretly hating myself more than I did when I was starving. I had visions of cutting my own skin, surgically removing the fat from my body while blood pooled red at my feet, leaving behind a beautiful, gruesomely gleaming skeleton - a perfect, thin skeleton.
A feeling that strong doesn’t just go away, doesn’t just stop or disappear; that feeling just festered and infected every part of me. I never learned to love the fat rolls on my stomach when I sit down, or the way the fat on my thighs and ass jiggle when I run up the stairs. It made me sick with hate - still does.
I don’t care what other books say - you don’t have a sudden, grand epiphany that starving isn’t healthy because you already know this, and you just don’t give a shit. Instead, you reach a point where you realize you’re terrified you’re going to die every time you can’t catch your breath and your heart starts trip-skipping in your chest; then you realize that you don’t really want to die and you struggle every goddamn day for even the smallest semblance of normalcy.
I struggle every day trying to convince myself that I want to eat normally and have a healthy body; I’m a goddamn liar. After that initial push, I spend the rest of my time telling myself that I don’t want to get fat, can’t eat that much/that food/anything. I get on the scale - another pound down and the obsession is like a drum beating in perfect rhythm with my heart. If I can lose one more pound, then a couple more and then just a little more… And just like that all those old habits come crashing in, start controlling you again. I get terrified of even gaining an ounce. I weigh in every day, naked in the morning, and if the number is down the gnawing twist of hunger in my stomach at 6am makes me fucking smile. Then I remember how much I love starving and being thin - I just can’t tell you why. I wish I knew.
Every day is a back-and-forth in my own head: the fear of being fat versus the fear of having to depend on laxatives, the fear of being fat versus the fear of getting caught and having it all taken away again, the fear of being fat versus the fear of being sick and having my son taken away from me. It always comes back to fear. Being fat is my biggest fear - the kind that wraps a fist around your heart, squeezing, and tries to claw its way out of your throat, stomach dropping, and you’re suffocating kind of fear. And the fear of what happens if you really let this go.
There is no way for me to tell you how to be recovered - there isn’t a way for me, not that I’ve found - and it’s a process that stops and goes, retreats and then surges forward. There are no steps to follow that work for everyone, no “how to recover guide for idiots” that cures all of this - all the fear and hate and desperation.
You just fight, all the time, and mostly against yourself.