2 (and a Half) Years Later: Truths I’ve Learned Since Starting Recovery

I was 15 when I developed anorexia. I lived for over a decade in the ebb and flow of an eating disorder, my existence dictated either by terrorizing screams or tantalizing whispers; neither voice my own. 

For many years I thought I was in recovery. For even more years I was in denial I had a problem in the first place.

I can’t be anorexic. I eat. I’m just active. I thought that I was just doing all the things I was supposed to do, eating clean, intermittent fasting, keeping up a workout routine with cardio and hiit and strength conditioning and all that. 

I was praised for my efforts. You’re so good, so healthy. Friends would compliment me on the salad I picked at as they ate pizza. I was transfixed by the dripping cheese like it was forbidden fruit.

I was admired for my abs. Strangers asked me what sport I was training for. I was almost embarrassed to admit I just did a lot of sit-ups. 

The summer before I went into treatment I was at a pool party. You’re so skinny, Look at your veins! A girl squealed. My cheeks burned at the attention to my underweight frame.  I’m  jealous. That veins are sexy this season. 

July 2017. SIck handstand. Sick body. About a month into recovery, still pretty underweight.

That’s the fucked-up truth of it all. Even at my sickest, where I was having heart palpitations and losing hair and having no period for eight years, I was being complimented for my body, admired for my discipline, praised for being so “healthy.”

Two and a half years into recovery, I am far enough away from my eating disorder to have gained some clarity. So here’s some real, hard truths that I have finally learned to accept.

Important Truths In Recovery

Female bodies need body fat. More than men. It’s pretty rare for a female ever to be able to have a visible six pack, without being underweight for her body, without messing with her hormones.

Eating disorders are mental illnesses. You cannot judge the health of someone with an ED by their physical appearance.  I have been more anorexic at a “healthy” BMI, than I was at my lowest weight. 

Diets don’t work. The fuck with you mentally and physically. They leave you feeling trapped and powerless around food, molesting the beautiful and balanced intuition around eating that was instilled in us at birth. 

I was good at dieting. Really good.

Until my biology kicked in and screamed for the nourishment I had been denying it for so many years. Now I can’t afford not to eat. I’ve traumatized my body and my mind, and now both live in perpetual fear of being starved again. Like fostering a neglected or abused animal, my recovery has been a slow and intricate process of regaining my body’s trust and rewiring my brain, day in and day out, trying to stay consistent and committed when habitual fears and behaviours you thought were stomped out resurface. 

Last year I was ashamed to say that I was in recovery. After 10 years of living with an eating disorder, and still managing to obtain two degrees and a career, I thought I should be over this. But now I realize that veiling my experience is only perpetuating the stigma around eating disorders and other mental health issues. 

I am bringing the ugly, unglamorous, and painful parts of my life out of the shadows and into the light, because it’s in exposing the demons that they lose power. Not only in my own psyche, but for other people who may be experiencing the same feelings, but unable to recognize them for what they are. Lies.

I am still in recovery. And I will continue to be until it is something I no longer need to think about. But right now, I still wake up and face whispers of my demons. Some days I feel ready to take on the world, and others I actively avoid mirrors, pull out that old meal plan from my days in treatment.

On days that I feel overwhelmed with nostalgia for the comfortable numbness and fleeting highs that came with anorexia, because I still have them now and then, I remember the loneliness, the isolation, the loathing I felt for myself, and the values I sacrificed in the drive for thinness. 

It’s this body, changing and growing, softer yet stronger, that is giving me life. Every day, it feels less foreign. I am finally coming home to myself, living the life I want to live, and being open to the possibility that the best is yet to come. 

This, is recovery. Don’t settle for anything less.

Stay tuned for my next post getting more into the myths and misconceptions about eating disorders. For more myth busting about health and bodyweight, there’s this post here as well: gaining weight in isolation

xoxo

Jordan