An Eating Disorder Thought A Day

The Blog Post for this week, Dolls, is all in the title. I want to allow those without anorexia to delve into my mind for 7 little moments to develop a greater understanding of exactly why it is that anorexia is not just a mental illness, but one with the highest mortality rate. Life is beautiful; however, there is no doubt that when one has an eating disorder, it becomes equally taxing, laborious and unforgiving.

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Monday 

I don't deserve to be satisfied for every meal of the day. This hit me the most at midday when I wanted to restrict in some way, shape or form for the rest of the day. I felt guilty. I felt afraid of weight gain. I felt I wasn't a good enough person to not feel a constant agonising state of starvation. My body, no, I, didn't deserve substantial, adequate nourishment.

Tuesday

I need to weigh myself every morning to implement anorexia's place in my day. I gather so much from that number on the scale. It drives not simply validation but additionally, the actions I will take for the day. If it's low enough, it's easier to eat. If it's higher, I view myself as 'bad' and 'unworthy' of nice things. 

Wednesday

I don't believe I'm a beautiful girl. I believe that without the things I do to make myself more palatable to the eye, I am nothing but dull eyes and an imperfect body with unsymmetrical features. The only thing I can do to make myself pretty is get my nails done. Over the years, it's the one activity that allows me to see any part of myself as beautiful. If I have nails that I don't think are perfect, then everything I dislike about my appearance becomes exacerbated, sending me into a spiral of self-loathing and self-hatred. It's awful. I feel like a failure. I feel like I'm an ugly ogre. I feel out of control like everyone is judging me, watching me and then scolding me behind my back. I am not a beautiful girl, I say to myself again, not for the first time and certainly not for the last.

Thursday

Today I wanted nothing more than to chase the feeling of nothing- the numbness hunger brings, the feelings it suppresses, the sense of control that intensifies. I didn't care about its dangers, or worse, I knew of them and pushed on with my selfish desires to engage in ED behaviours anyhow. It can be a cruel world, and I let that get the better of me, believing in ways of life that were modelled for me by people who were supposed to protect my childhood innocence and didn't. So, really, a day that began by chasing nothing was one that, in the end, I wanted nothing more than to remember what it felt like to feel something.

Friday

'I want to sing like the birds, not worrying about who hears or what they think.'

I used to not eat in front of people who I didn't know because I was so ravished with fear that either they would judge me, labelling me as 'weird' for what or how much I was eating or they would comment on my appearance which is the one thing that steers me off course the most, replaying in my mind like torturous music. I wish I could be free to be a bird, not minding who said what and being controlled by the prospect of the unknown. 

Saturday

If the number on the scale is not what I want, I have to restrict without a margin of doubt. I cannot be kind to myself. I cannot indulge in an act of grace towards myself. I punish myself, recounting words of extreme and unfair unkindness in my mind, such as 'pig', 'lazy' and 'greedy'. It's a wicked game, one in which I rarely win and constantly lose. 

Sunday

I so desperately want to be normal, to fit in, to be a part, truly a part of this life, not one foot in and one foot left latching on to the strict rules and governing of anorexia. I fear other people commenting on my disordered eating habits when I try to normalise my situation, but perhaps I'm looking at everything wrong... Maybe I need to fear the fact that I'm so desperately outcasted more than I fear others' acceptance of what is, when I truly stop and look, an unacceptable way of living. But that is so scary, to come to terms with something I am too scared to come to terms with... Because I'm afraid of change, I'm afraid of living, and I'm afraid of food.

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7 days aimed at educating resulted in me learning more about my ways, my life and me, myself. I hope my transparency taught you half of the things it ended up teaching me about myself. Raw honesty can be so healing, not just for the world, but for the person speaking with an honest tongue themselves.

Kisses & Hugs, COS xo