The Hardest Part of Recovery (And How to Make it Through)

Starting Recovery is Hard

When I first started recovery, I did not know what I was in for. I remember receiving my first meal plan and feeling like I was on the verge of a panic attack, when the breakfast on it seemed like more than I would eat in a day.  Every meal felt like jumping off a cliff. My hunger went from zero to a hundred. I was not supposed to run, or even walk more than what was “essential”, but sitting still for longer than thirty minutes felt impossible.   The first stage of recovery is ruled by the fear of the unknown: everything is all so different and all so new. Your life is turned upside down and you have no idea what it will look like, or what your body will look like in a week or a month or a year. This initial stage is definitely the most overwhelming.  However, it was not the most difficult.

It Gets Harder

Having been in recovery for almost three years, I’ve come to realize its the stage much later on, the climax, so to speak, where shit really hits the fan.  It's a part I’ve found myself treading in often, more like flailing and sputtering, before allowing myself to be dragged under. It's the part where you’ve gained weight, enough that your body looks “healthy”, but your mind is yet to catch up.  To keep going, to still eat without restriction, when you are in a body that feels unrecognizable, is the real challenge.  

For a long time my body felt foreign.  Half asleep, I would wake up and reach for hipbones, only to find them blanketed with flesh, like the body I had known had  been stolen away from me in the night. And sometimes, I think that would have been okay, if I could have distracted myself enough with other things in life, to eventually get used to my new form. However, what made this process exponentially harder was the fact that I was still hungry.  I was terrified to eat, because I was terrified I would never stop. Even though I had gained weight, my mental and physical hunger seemed to only be increasing.  

I would fight to sit down to a dinner on my meal plan that seemed ridiculously large, only to find myself going for seconds and thirds.  I loathed myself for doing it. Feeling “fat” and yet still hungry. Hating food, terrified of eating, and yet still consumed and obsessed with it.  I would fall asleep at night, tearing myself apart for eating too much, sleeping with pillows wedged in between my legs so I wouldn’t have to feel my thighs touching.  And still, the next morning, waking up with my first thought being what I would have for breakfast, and my thighs still touching.  

“Healthy” Body, Anorexic Mind

There were always two voices screaming at me.  Every time I lifted a fork to my mouth was a shouting match of “too much” and “not enough.”  Everytime I went out to walk my dog, I would find myself breaking into a run, obeying the voice screaming at me to go faster, for longer, to show some god damn discipline… and then returning to a walk, on the brink of tears, when the other voice demanded that I stop and get my ass back in recovery.  I was always on edge, always quiet, tensed and bracing, because my head was so. fucking. loud. It was honestly quieter when I was just anorexic. At least it was only one voice then. 

This place of “healthy” body, and anorexic mind, this no-man’s land, is a place I’ve been to many times.  Like so many people in recovery, it is at this place where I would relapse. I would fight, and flail, but that anorexic brain was still raging so loudly that I would find myself reeling back, eating just a little less, sneaking in a little more running, making excuses to be as active as possible, without making it obvious I was “exercising.”  And I would lose weight again. Never so much that I was back where I started, but enough that it felt like I had permission to eat, permission to rest, permission to be in recovery.  

This place of almost-recovered-but-not-quite may not be as new and drastic and surreal as the start of recovery.  Food is less scary, change is less scary, and it's not the same fear of the unknown. But it is the part that is painfully real.  It's the part where you are simultaneously grieving for the body you once had, and kicking yourself for not letting yourself enjoy it while you had it.  It's being obsessed by your body, noticing every ounce gained and millimetre of flesh there that was not the day or the hour before, and yet shirking away from mirrors and pictures because you cannot stand to see this casing that cannot reconcile as yours.

The War Within Yourself

You can’t accept this body- you don’t want to accept it- because that feels like admitting defeat. Like giving up on yourself, and your vision for your life because you lacked the strength or discipline to keep the flesh from smothering your bones For so long, your only motivation each day was to weigh less than the one before, and to continue watching the scale creep up, feels like utter failure.  You feel like there's some horrible flaw in the root of your person that still keeps you reaching for food when what you wish more than anything is to carve your old skinny body from the flesh of this imposter.  

However it's not your wish. It’s anorexia’s.  It's the voice that's commandeered your being for so long, that it's become indistinguishable from your own.   And it's only when you continue to push on through this no-man’s land, and fight the demons that are disguised as allies, that you can start to disentangle you, the real you, and what you want, and what you value, from the disease that's held you hostage for so long.  

The closer you come to beating your demons, the louder they scream.  If you can just hold on a little longer, it does, in time, get easier.  One day you will eat a meal, put down your fork, and be done. You will be able to feel the flesh on your body and appreciate its softness.  You will be able to look in a mirror without searching for the gaps and hollows and angles that once gave you comfort. You’ll be able to go for a walk and not think of how many more calories you would burn running.  And most significantly of all, you will feel at home in your body. You will no longer be at war. The screams will soften, until they are whispers, and then breaths, and then...gone.  

This is the hardest part of recovery.  The final part. You’ve gained the weight, faced the food.  Now you just need to keep going. Keep eating, keep riding it out, without judgement, without backing down or turning back.  

The only way out is through.