Tied In Knots

Knots are like little twists and ties in your muscles that make it hard to move with ease and agility. Did you know that if malnutrition is occurring, knots appear more readily and rapidly? But it isn't just these physical knots that plague my body; it is the knots of my life that keep what should be simple, instead, complex, tiresome and hard.

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Yeah, my life's a mess, but there aren't that many people who actually have their shit together right? A little tongue and cheek, Dolls, doesn't change the simple, concrete fact that I write to you in the hopes that I reach just that one other person who feels like me - alone and lost to the absolute darkness that their mind has become. When I was a little, little girl, my grandparents were my universe. I adored them with everything that it meant to be me. We got each other - I know this from the endless memories I can recall of us running around laughing, cooking and playing dress-ups. But I think my anorexia got the better of all of us. Equally, we were heartbroken by its destruction of the free-spirited, confident, funny, charming, charismatic little girl I was. And I have and always will understand that. What I cannot ever come to understand, though, is the sadness I feel that it created a conflict and a distance that up until anorexia had always been quite literally nonexistent. 

Love tore us apart - The love for me, the love for experience, the love for everything it meant to be Luka, Grandma and Bapa.

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The line of having a healthy relationship with my bodyweight, calories and food is completely ravaged with knots. I'm broken by the ease that doesn't exist for me. I'm broken by the torment of anorexia's voice. I'm broken by my fear of fighting it. And the more I fall apart, the more I become entangled in knots. The knots are the words that repeat, the numbers that appear more and more and the food that becomes less and less. 

The knots accumulate like dust in a corner, my strength dying forevermore, and my wits end fraying.

I do not know anymore what it is to breathe a breath of fresh air, with a mind void of agonising thoughts and a heart burdened by the feeling of unworthiness. Seeking help feels impossible. Though I must remember it is not if I wish to free myself of the replaying torture of calculation day in and day out. I must be brave if I wish to change the knots I'm encapsulated in. I must be willing if I want to live.

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The shopping - a chore for one but is an unimaginable difficulty for me.  It's much too overwhelming to think of how many times I'm expected to eat, then what I will have for said expected moments and finally, the exact quantities of food those meals entail. I don't ever want to eat but when the few foods I chose to eat are out of stock or season, it's very challenging for me to overcome the hurdle in the moment and come up with an alternative or reach some sort of resolution. Often, roadblocks lead to my freezing because I feel as though I must overcome quickly. In my perfect reality, if I were to shop in a way that felt 'safe' or marginally easier, I'd probably need to spend a minimum of 3 hours at the shop. So to cram this sense of safety into a 30-60 minute window is a task that I'm sure you can imagine, I loathe, I dread, I worry over. The knots in my stomach tie with every new little section I encounter - The cheeses and deli is one, the pantry is another and the freezer is too. Knots tie and tie me in circles until I feel like I'm suffocating in a rope of them by the end. I can only just remember a time in which the shopping brought me glimmers of excitement and desire. It was much easier to be me back then.

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Sometimes knots are felt infrequently. But for me, my knots are always there. For it is not just a physical pain that spurs my memory of them, it is the mental anguish that brings them on, something I experience numerous times throughout every day, at the very least. They are the type that love to linger and learn new tricks, adapting to strenuous conditions and enhancing their power when they do. They say a problem shared is a problem halved, Dolls, and I believe that in unison we can at least begin to release ourselves.

Kisses & Hugs,

COS xo