ED Chronicles: Car Conversations
This entire series of posts consists of the diaries I kept throughout the duration of my eating disorder. Some were written on the pages of notebooks, other on a word document, some half-formed emotion-filled scrawls of teenage angst, and others a bit more subtly written. All of them here have been read, re-read, and largely rewritten. Not so much fixing grammar and poor handwriting, but to expose the thoughts and feelings and inner workings of my anorexia-manipulated mind at the time of writing. While the language, names, and certain situations have been modified, altered, or completely obliterated, the essence of the entry remains.
For those of you reading this with any kind of active eating disorder, or disordered thoughts about food or body, please note this comes with a big trigger warning, as these entries contain detailed descriptions, numbers and ED behaviours. DO NOT READ FURTHER if this describes your current mindset.
If this is not you, please read on. And I hope you take something away from these very personal and very real moments of my journey. And know that the girl depicted in these chronicles is not the same woman who is now posting them here. She is just a part of the story that is now who I am and how I exist in this world.
In the words of Lewis Carrol,
“"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then." - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
I can no longer retreat to the inner world of anorexia, even if I wanted to. I am here in the healthy world of late night drunk food and lazy sunday mornings, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.
November 2015
Sometimes I worry about you.
Driving down the DVP, in the passenger seat of J’s little blue matrix. We were coming back from dinner at a restaurant in Little Italy.
Don’t. I’m fine. I smile, touch his hand resting on the gear shift.
I ordered two salads, one as an appetizer and another as a main. J never said anything at the restaurant. Just that the salads looked good. But he was quieter than usual.
You don’t eat very much, do you?
I eat more when I’m not around you. I play with the elastics on my wrist.
Foods not always easy for me. I was kinda anorexic in high school. I’m better now though.
Are you?
I eat, you know I do. I still got some issues, but I’m in a totally different place now.
What kind of place were you in?
I thought of the therapists and doctors offices I had been dragged to by my mother, the screaming matches and dead silences in cars and doorways, the hushed phone calls, the excruciating hunger and then the release of numbness.
I didn't eat for three days once.
Jesus.
I weighed less than 100 pounds.
J eyes me. You can’t weigh much more than that now.
I might have lost a little the past couple months actually. I think its the running since I got Jaeda.
Gotta keep eating those snacks. Don’t go back there.
I don’t want to. It’s not a good place to be. It wouldn’t be a good place for us to be.
I plan on staying around as long as I can. I’ll love you at your best and I’ll love you at your worst.
With words like that, I felt like I didn’t need to ever eat again. But I could. He would love me, either way..