Proof That Life Without An Eating Disorder Is Better.
Many people believe an eating disorder creaes control, safety, and perfection. I believed it too, at times, even when deep down i knew I was miserable. Everything about my life without an eating disorder is better.
I never thought anybody would ever cook me dinner again. In fact, I never thought I'd cook myself dinner again. For so long, food represented restriction and not connection. I didn't think I'd ever see the love that can be found in food again because it was such a loaded, complex thing, despite it being so simple for others. Four weeks ago, I let somebody cook me a home-cooked meal for the first time in many years. My boyfriend asked me to have dinner with him and his daughter, and I was so tired of allowing my eating disorder to deny me beautiful memories. I didn't want to be weird and difficult and say no to something I wanted so desperately to say yes to. I also didn't want to explain to him that it was hard for me and have it be a whole thing. I just wanted to do something perfectly lovely and normal without the fuss, the stress, and the eggshells. I wanted to have the boy I liked do something for me that is so normal and such a sign of love. And as I sat there with them, there were no tears like there used to be. As I sat there with them, I wasn’t telling myself I didn’t deserve to be happy. As I sat there with them, I wasn’t consumed by the fear of being healthy. Instead, as I sat there with them, I was smiling, and I was laughing with a man and a beautiful little girl who liked me for who I was, instead of sitting beside an eating disorder who always told me I was worth absolutely nothing. Since that night… most nights… we have eaten together. This is not something that scares me at all anymore. Because life without the eating disorder removes the fear and is replaced by the comfort of being loved, truly loved; not manipulated, abused and disrespected.
I want to mention that though my life is better without an eating disorder, it is still messy and complicated. But life should never be so incredibly difficult that the day defeats you with just its thought. I am going to share a few things about my life that I am struggling with to provide proof that even so, everything, and I mean everything, is better without anorexia. For many months now, I’ve been watching my great-uncle decline from stage four, incurable cancer. I see him every week, and every week I don’t know what to expect. Though I try not to expect anything at all because it tends to break my heart on the weeks I think he’ll be in good spirits and then he barely talks. I long for his smile. I long for his cheeky grin. I long for his jokes. And sometimes, I sit and wait for him to come back to us, but I can see my uncle is being clouded by his fear of dying and his pain. So I just sit there with him in silence because I know sometimes he doesn’t feel like talking. And that’s okay. As long as I am with him and as long as he is still here. I can be strong, very strong; I have gone through a lot on my own, and I have seen much unkindness in this world. But sometimes, I get in that car, after keeping my composure for hours in his presence, and I fall apart on the way home. I’m used to the ritual of the dusk drive home; the sunlight hitting my mirrors, the rays in my eyes, the sound of the engine and the rolling highway and wondering if this will be the last time I do that drive. This is one example of something that troubles me, something I lose sleep over, something that wakes me up at 3 am and leads me to send him another paragraph telling him how much I love him. But it is not a lack of troublesome that equates to a better life. It is a lack of purpose, belief, and love. My uncle spent many years watching me die, as did my entire family. And although he is surely in immeasurable pain and fear, I know that one of the highlights in his last days is knowing that he saw me survive something he thought I wouldn’t. My uncle is a man of few words. But I will never forget when my mum told him it was my three months of recovery, and he said with a smile on his face, ‘And she looks all the better for it.’ In these last few months of life, he may have lost many things, but it is one of the utmost pleasures of my life to say that at least he knew that I would not be one of them. We have spent his final months sharing champagne, beers, lunches, afternoon tea, and everything he thought we’d never share again. Everything about this is proof that life is better without an eating disorder.
All my relationships have either started with me in hospital or ended with me in them. I have been so vulnerable in my relationships. So much about them has been beautiful and loving, but nonetheless, they have been under abnormal circumstances in which I haven’t had the capacity to experience love in the way it deserves to be experienced.
But to fall in love without an eating disorder is an entirely different experience.
To fall in love without an eating disorder is to feel the sun on your skin, to taste life on your tongue, to feel energy in your body and butterflies in your stomach. Love is experienced so much more wholly when it’s not on an empty stomach, and when you can and want to say yes to everything. There are many things in life that you will look back on and not care about, but there are only a few that you will look back on and remember deeply. I know that one of those things, for everybody, that every good human deserves to treasure with exceptional fondness and warmth, is love. To have a love that goes beyond looks, money, and profession, to have a love that feels unthinkable and too good to be true, to have a love that makes you sleepless on one hand but makes you fall asleep instantly on the other, to have a love in which nobody ever stops trying, one that means everything to you, that gets you up every day, that makes you want to be a better person; that is something that I want to remember with my whole mind and my whole heart. I want to look back on my life and know that I gave it my all, that I never turned sour, that I forgave easily and that I gave freely. I can't do thatw ith an eating disorder; instead rigidity plagues me and instead of my purpose being memories, it is something far sadder.
Life isn’t simple, but life without an eating disorder is simply wonderful.
Love,
Luka x
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