Secret Filthy Fantasies
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 16 2016 The Hunger High (Nostalgia)
I want to get skinny again. Like really skinny. Boney skinny. The kind of skinny that doesn’t necessarily look “good.” Except on ballerinas and runway models. The kind of skinny that makes people stop and stare, even if its not how they want to look.
I was that kind of skinny when I was sixteen. Part of it was being sixteen, but more it was because I didn’t see the point in eating, and could do without food for a day or more. Instead of craving for sweets or salt or sugar. I craved hunger. And whenever I achieved that state of dizzying gnawing emptiness, it was a hit that kept me floating.
At the moment, I still have that rational side of my brain wanting me to be “healthy”, stopping me from restricting to the point where I don’t feel hunger. To the point where my stomach is so unaccustomed to having food that all signals, cravings, and temptations fade to nothing. To the point where food becomes something almost intangible, necessary for other people, but not for you.
Riding the hunger high, you become more powerful than food, unbending to its beckoning sirens. You can talk about food, about eating food, in all kinds of massive, preposterous amounts, but you feel safe, knowing that you’ll never be compelled enough to actually do it.
Coasting on this hunger high, you are free. In its emptiness you are satisfied. With a lightness, you drift and float, unanchored, nothing to hold onto but hipbones, and nothing to lose except what you already are doing expertly.
The tricky part is not letting other people sabotage this space you’ve created.
They see prison walls where you see sanctuary.
They say they want to help you, to “free” you. They don’t get that you’re just trying to escape the lions.
They get nasty, unleashing biting words, bitter tears, when you sit in front of an untouched plate.
You’re angry that they’re angry.
They don’t get it. It’s nothing to do with them.
All this friction, all this pain, over what? You’re still standing, walking, and running. Running miles. Surely it’s healthy people that can run miles? You’re not sick, so stop saying that. You get up before the end of the meal. Not because you're full. You were never really hungry. But your sit-bones are in agony. Chairs are a lot harder these days.
I’ve been there, bony ass in stone-hard chair.
I’ve teetered on the edge, I’ve toed the canyon. I’ve even fallen some ways down.
But never too far, or so deep that I couldn't crawl my way back up.
There's always been someone or something pulling me back towards the surface.
Sitting here today, on an ass much less bony, I think I could jump. I could let go of it all, propel myself off the ledge, and do it all the way. Find the override button for my rational thinking brain and let Ana takeover.
We could hit the sweet spot, that beautiful haunting bliss. Immaculate ice cold euphoria.
Rational brain chimes in: this is insane! This is sick and unhealthy and dangerous. And selfish. Because I also know the messy aftermath from falling even just half way down the canyon. Halfway down, you can still see the blue sky above, the promise of warm sunshine. With battered weary limbs, you claw your way up the sides, emerging a friend or two fewer than you had before tumbling into recluse.
…But what if you didn't only do it half way?
What if you jumped head first, eyes closed, to the depths of the crevice, so far down the sunshine couldn't penetrate? Just you and ana, a tangle of long lithe limbs, hurtling downwards, soaring beyond doubt, beyond fear, beyond reason…
It wouldn’t last, but perhaps the bliss of that freefall would be more worth it than the numbers on a calendar yet to come. Its other numbers that keep you captivated, high, and weightless.
The two minds forever at war, every action riddled with guilt and shame. Like an endless game of tug o war, both sides exhausted but relentless. The only way it would seem to end the struggle would be to cut the rope. But what’s the rope in this metaphor? With nothing to hold onto, I would be left grasping at air.
-J, 2016