THE FUNDAMENTALS OF ANOREXIA

This is everything at anorexia’s core- the bad & the ugly, there is no good.

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A is for avalanche - the stable ground that will constantly be crumbling beneath you. It will be cold, freezing subzero temperatures, turning parts of your body that were once free and willing into melancholic frozen sculptures of stiffness. The avalanche will never go away. Sundays. They will only be small avalanches, but the next they will be so big that you will forget about the last one. But most importantly, you will be scared, so scared that you won’t wake up the next day. You will be so afraid of food. You’ll be so afraid of change that you'll wind up stuck in your ways over and over again, losing the frivolousness that it is to be young, happy, and to have choices.

N is for the never-ending storm, the waves that go up just as they come down, the eerie whispers of the raging wind, and the ice-cold grass, freezing at the tips as it blows. It's a storm that feels relentless even during the periods in which it lulls, especially in those periods, because it's in its silences that you think you're relieved, but it isn't relief that you feel because it isn't gone, it is just waiting.

O is for the outskirts you will be on in life, looking in from the edge of what is a full cup that others drink and you don't. As you watch their fulfilment grow, you will watch yours diminish, and what is originally a sense of perplexion will grow into a sense of failure, knowing that you knew what it took to retrieve a different outcome and rolled your life away despite it. They told you recovery would be hard, and out of fear, you let it be so, even harder as you never tried to learn of anything remotely different.

R is for the rational that you will seek but not find, dealing with an irrational monster that strips you of truth and reason. It will be there to misguide you when you need guidance the most. You will be wandering in the dark, convinced you are in an illuminous, magical light. You will be oh, so confused and oh, so lost when, expecting a perfect tan brown, you come out pale, white, and sickly.

E is for exposed, the way you will become after a certain amount of time has elapsed, and the eating disorder, the mental illness, begins to be expressed externally. There will be no hiding it anymore. And when that day comes, you will understand judgment and concern in a way you never have. People will think their opinion is owed, and so you will forever be living in the debts of other opinions, ones beyond the opinion you have of yourself, which at this point will be remarkably poor. You will have to learn to manage your triggers; otherwise, you will feel constantly inconsolable and vulnerable.

X is for xenophobia, to fear anything perceived as foreign, except that what feels foreign is the thing that feels natural for everybody else, one of life's necessities: food. And in addition to fearing food and health, you will be left feeling as though you're the foreigner in a world full of people who fit perfectly in place.

And so instead of fearing something within the world, you will learn to fear something within yourself.

I is for myself, the person I lost along the way a little more, every day. I lost myself as I found comfort amidst emptiness; physically, psychologically, and socially. I lost myself when I was buried head deep in the lies of anorexia, genuinely believing they would be the truth to save me from my suffering. But anorexia doesn't save, it steals. It steals a person's light until their nothing more than a ghost of who they used to be or could've been.

C is for the care you will need, the care of professionals, and that of those who love you. It is a very lonely battle otherwise; an abyss of loneliness that begins to exist in your daily life. Care will feel like hot cocoa on a Winter’s night. Care will relieve you of your pain, even if just for a few short moments, and it will be the only thing capable of relieving it, so you'd better make sure you surround yourself with those who do care for you far beyond the trap your illness has you encapsulated in.

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And just like that, I’ve wrapped anorexia up in a neat little bow and tied it off. But being anorexic isn’t neat or simple or just fine. And you mustn’t ever, ever forget that.

Kisses,

COS x