In which she breaks her silence...

I am healthy no longer anorexic.

I have family who loves me.

I have a job that I adore, and that makes me feel worthwhile.

I am finally rebuilding my life after things started to implode in 2010...

And I hate my body

I HATE my body

There's no getting around that fact.

And I'm angry about it.

It seems as if many ED recovery blogs show recovery as all lightness and fluff. You push past the fear, you post smiley "Operation Beautiful" affirmations on your bathroom mirror, you do a lot of yoga, and ... and you are recovered. Slim, beautiful, worthy of admiration because you came through the fire and look amazing for it.

What about the rest of us?

What about those of us who careened past recovery weight and are now tipping precariously into the overweight, or even God-forbid, obesity range?

We hear it all the time - love your body. YOUR body. And typically the person spouting that is still acceptably slim, slim enough for society to accept her, while not so slim to be considered anorexic anymore.

What about the rest of us?

Those of us who are fighting the Buddha belly and the thunder thighs; those of us who are not slim by society's standards, those of us who really are overweight and yet we are constantly bombarded with the message that we are to LOVE YOUR BODY.

I don't want to love this body. This body is overweight and tired and has high blood pressure. 

This body is too-round and too-curvy and too, dare I say it? Too large.

Does loving my body mean not taking care of it? Have I loved my body so much that I've put it in danger? Did I listen to those affirmations too much, forgetting that loving my body might mean keeping it a healthy weight? Not around 155-160 pounds for a small-framed woman of 5'3"?

My ED doctor says I'm not overweight. My GP tells me not to stress about my weight.

But how long should I love this body, before love kills me as anorexia tried to?

And why is it that it seems as if the strongest advocates for "loving your body" are those who are slim, those whose bodies don't offend society?

Bad News — Especially for an anorexic

TRIGGER WARNING — Numbers are in this post.

I found out today that I am at least 10 pounds overweight, and most likely, because I am small-framed, about 30 pounds.

I need to lose 30 pounds.

I am speechless.

I knew I was heading in this direction, but of course no one wanted to say anything to me. Who wants to say to a recovering anorexic — the eating disorder voice is still very strong — that she needs to lose weight. I wouldn't.

But weight does effect health, and now I am in the position that I need to lose instead of gain.

I had hoped that I might be able to move past weight. I had hoped that this, all of this, wouldn't be a focal point of my life.

I had hoped to achieve recovery, but right now it feels as out of grasped as when I was at my thinnest.

I can't believe this.

I am so upset.

I am not always strong

Today I did something I've never purposely done since developing anorexia.
I threw up my food.
I had tried to unsuccessfully several times before, but for one reason or another, it never worked. Then I read how other people do it. And this time it did work. My stupidity never ceases to amaze me.
I was feeling very desperate because I had ate some Christmas treats — two cookies and a small snack bar.
Little things, really. But all of the sudden the food felt dirty inside me and I knew I was not worthy of eating. So I threw it up and then called for my husband, crying about what I had done.
I am very ashamed of myself. I didn't want to admit to anyone that I did this. But I promised I would always be honest on this blog.
This has to be one of the worst things I've done since developing anorexia nervosa. I feel like a hypocrite, writing about recovery and about being positive and forgiving oneself. I even underwent the anointing of the sick on Thursday. So many people are trying to help me fully recover, and then I go and do something like this?
Why do I keep learning new ways to hurt myself? Why do I keep learning new ways to keep myself from recovering? Why can't I forgive myself?
I am feeling a lot of pressure. To gain weight and recover. To write honest and helpful posts on my new blog at HealthyPlace.com. To finish up an incomplete class. To complete some freelance articles.
I think part of me doesn't want to recover. I've thought of that before. It is a hard thing to admit. Who would I be if I weren't anorexic? As each year passes, the memory of who I was fades and the person I have been becomes stronger. Sometimes it feels as if I will some day become trapped for good, and that will be the end.
Some people have accused me of romanticizing anorexia. Well, there was nothing romantic about puking up Christmas cookies into the toilet. There is nothing romantic about starving yourself until it hurts to eat, and the food makes you feel dirty inside. I cried and prayed constantly for all this to be over. I just don't understand why recovery seems to be so hard. It's not like I've been afraid of hard work before.
But each time I try to make a step forward, I find a way to shove myself three feet backwards.
There is definitely nothing romantic about any of this.

The broken road of anorexia

For almost two months, I have woken up afraid. Something shifted within my brain and I can't seem to get back on track. I struggle with simply being, and yet I have no explanation for this sudden change from when it seemed as if I were, to quote a friend, "traveling the yellow brick road to recovery" from anorexia nervosa.

Now the bricks are broken into sharp little pieces and the yellow paint is faded, and whatever was guiding me down the road to recovery has abandoned me. I don't understand why it is so difficult to simply get up and face the world.

I don't grasp why I have (again) decided that I am not allowed to eat more than 800 to 1,000 calories daily, that I am not worthy of eating enough food to sustain a child. I have lost several pounds over the past few weeks, and now each morning at the scale I pray that the number goes lower, and lower, and lower...

I don't get why each time I am faced with a blank computer screen in order to write an article or paper, I freeze up and need to resort to either extra tranquilizers, a glass of wine or two, or any combination of things before my mind unlocks and my fear begins to subside and I can breathe again.

I feel as if I am now walking the broken road back down to anorexia and each time I try and bring myself back, the voices within my head scream I am not worthy. Not worthy to eat. Not worthy to live.

Not worthy.

I'm again starting to feel tangled in the web of anorexia; its tentacles wrapped around me. I still eat, but I look for ways to restrict. I still rest and try to take care of myself, but increasingly feel guilty about what a lousy graduate student and wife I have become. I still take part in life; however, I am afraid each time I must meet a new person and I always wonder if I have said the wrong thing.

According to my evil anorexic doppelganger, anything I say is wrong and I am a hopeless case who will never recover.

Now I am writing a memoir about my experiences with anorexia for one of my classes, and I cried when I wrote the prologue because it is about when David left me.

I fear each day he will see my struggling as a sign I will not get better, and this time he will leave for good.

I thought all this wasn't noticeable until I really looked at my face in the mirror the other day and realized it is beginning to again take on that gaunt, anorexic look. Then my blood tests came back and my doctor confronted me with my restricting, which he knew about without even asking me. He says my whole demeanor changes when I am restricting.

I think I know what it is. I become sad inside, fearful I will descend further and not find my way back this time. It is hard for me to hide sadness with a smile and some carefully applied makeup. I believe sadness fills our eyes, and nothing can hide it.

I am sad. I am sad that the road to recovery seems broken down to me and I am sad about all I stand to lose if I can't find my way back.

I am sad that I still want to follow the broken road of anorexia. I am sad that I still crave thinness after all this time, that I am addicted to sharp bones and a concave stomach.

Most of all, I am sad that I am beginning to believe that anorexia holy. I am sad that I am trying to convince myself that this is what God wants; that He wants me to eat less to become closer to him. That fasting is a good and right thing to do. I know am subverting God for my own purposes, and deep down I know that is evil.

I can't keep all this sadness out of my eyes or my drained face. I've lost my smile again, my sense of happiness and excitement about the future replaced by fear and anxiety.

I am sad . . .

Bones and flesh

Do I really want recovery? I have had anorexia for three years now, and I have become used to the sharpness of my bones. The protruding collarbone, the feel of my clavicle, the jutting of the hipbones have become familiar. The leanness of my face, the prominent vein on the left side, the absence of flesh are all embedded into my soul.

What will I feel when my breasts become round and firm again? How will I handle the curvature of my hips, the roundness of my buttocks? My stomach already feels as if it is becoming rounder and more feminine, and it frightens me.

But my bones do not always feel friendly to me. It still hurts to sit. My hips hurt when I lie down, no soft layer of flesh to cushion against. I walk out of the shower each morning, and often am shocked by my reflection, not recognizing the emaciated frame as my own. I look at my arms, stripped of flesh and looking anorexic. My collarbones appear too prominent. A girl with anorexia on a proana site once said I “beautiful collarbones.”

What happens when my body once again changes? Being in treatment full-time so far has raised more questions than given answers.

I waver between recovery and wanting to let anorexia nervosa run its course. The first offers life, which is both exhilarating and frightening. What do I do with life once I have it? How do I continue without being anorexic, which has been my identity for years? Who will I be then? The choices are endless, but I have forgotten how to chose anything but restricting calories and love and living.

I could go home and let anorexia run its course. There is a part of me that wants to do that so badly. Just live with this identity, continue on until I reach the lowest weight possible. Then release. Sweet release from all the pain and hurt of this world. I would have no worries, no fears. I wouldn’t have to make any choices. I would be surrounded by beauty and love; the perfect love of God and my Savior, Jesus Christ.

I would walk in the sunlight and never feel left out. I wouldn’t feel sad or angry or disappointed in my many failures. Joy would suffuse my being, and it would be forever.

Flesh. I am scared of flesh. I am scared of gaining too much weight, of having too much flesh. Don’t people realize that the smaller I get, the safer I am? Now I have given that up by coming here to the River Centre. I will again have some flesh; the safety of being smaller and smaller is being destroyed by all this food and drink.

I still want to be small, as small as possible until I am floating into nothingness. I see nothing beyond that.

How could I have given up on my goal to become so small that nothing would ever hurt again? How could I have committed myself to this? I am so frightened by this week, every fiber of my being says to run as far and fast as I can.

But I am not being held here against my will. I could leave right this minute. I could dump my breakfast in the toilet and never say a word. I could refuse to eat.

I could leave right this minute. So why don’t I?

Saying good-bye

Tomorrow I will travel to Kentucky, see my family and say goodbye to my grandfather. I so wish I could have gotten there while he was still alive. I feel like my heart has been broken so many times these past few months, I have no heart left inside me. Maybe numbness is a good thing.

I am trying to eat more, because my sister said the other day the family doesn't want me to die and have to go to two funerals. Deep in my heart, I do care I am hurting them by having anorexia and that my mother feels she is watching her daughter die. It's just that the feeling is so deep, it can't really touch me.

But I realize I have to find strength within me. Strength to face family members who haven't seen me since I developed anorexia and now look like a shadow of my former, vibrant self. Strength to answer questions about why I can't eat. Strength to face the food that will be served and the expectations I cannot meet. I need to be there for my family and I need to say good-bye to my grandpa. I don't need to be a worry or a problem right now, and I'm afraid my presence will only make things worse.

Strength to stop thinking about all the things which have broken my heart this year — probable miscarriage and the death of my dream to have a child, losing a position because of my illness, the complete explosion of my eating disorder symptoms from rampant laxative abuse to carving so deep into my flesh I still feel uncomfortable wearing short-sleeve shirts to counting every single calorie which enters my mouth.

But the hardest thing will saying good-bye to my grandfather; I will never again be anybody's grandchild. Seeing him laid out in the coffin will frighten me, and Southern funerals are just different; it is a different world I will be traveling to tomorrow and anything outside the small zone created by anorexia frightens me.

Maybe that is the hardest thing, knowing my present and past will collide during the next few days and I'm not sure I am ready for it. I have tried to run from my Southern roots for decades for various reasons, and have failed and tomorrow I will be in two worlds, with my anorexia swirling all around me, gnawing at me, just waiting for a way to make things worse.

It is so easy to use grief as a reason not to eat; it is so easy to use anything as a reason not to eat.

And in the end, perhaps the hardest thing — saying good-bye to my anorexia. I want to hold onto the only constant in my life; my ability to restrict and lose weight. Part of me wants to stay anorexic forever, then I won't have to feel grief and pain. 

But I also won't feel joy and happiness, and I miss feeling those emotions. Being thin is a poor consolation, and flatness and apathy are poor substitutes.

My grandpa led a full life, one with joy and pain mixed in. He loved his children and grandchildren, never quite got over my beautiful Mamaw (although he had a long and happy marriage with my step-grandmother, Dean) and was interested in many things until he recently got sick.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. It's late and I'm tired and I'm grieving. I want to get better and live a full life, but I'm afraid. That's all I can manage to say right now.

Bargaining with recovery

I have to decide whether I want recovery or death from anorexia. As I wrote earlier, I have been bargaining with recovery. I want to be healthy and live a full life, one filled with love and learning and joy and laughter, and one without fear.

But I also want to be thin; to be the thinnest one around, the one who is pointed to and whispered about, the one people wonder, "How did she get so thin?" I asked my husband the other day if I looked "anorexic" and he answered (honestly) that I do. I was secretly pleased. I also was angry. For me, it's about being thin and then again, it's not about being thin. Being thin is the outward manifestation of my inner pain.

It's like the morning ritual of the scale — the number is never right. If it's lower than the day before, I'm pleased for just a moment (then - what about tomorrow? why isn't it lower by two pounds? three pounds? am I not a good enough anorexic? anybody else would have lost more, damn it!). If the number is higher, the war within starts (should I be glad? upset? I know I need to gain weight. But what if ... what if I ate too much, the wrong thing? what am I supposed to feel?) And if the number is static, I just shake my head, thinking the number will be better tomorrow.

There are moments that should have shocked me into recovery. Times at the store when I start to see black, the ground rising up to meet me, my knees shaking as I sink to the ground, sitting and pretending that I am fascinated by what is on the floor. Days when I have read a page three, four times; finally realizing I didn't understand one word because my brain didn't have the fuel it needed to process the words on the page. I ask myself — since when did it start taking me two hours to read fifty pages? Moments recently when I couldn't pull myself out of bed before noon, all because I remember, hey, I'm still anorexic today and that changes everything.

Then there was Saturday. I had my usual breakfast of yogurt; my heart broken by recent events and unable to eat more. I went to take my morning shower; the hot water always feels like a refuge from my world as long as I don't look at my body closely. Looking is a no-win situation since my relapse. Sometimes my eyes are open like Eve's, and I see the protruding hip bones and prominent clavicle; other times, I see the huge thighs and enormous stomach.

Muscles weakened, dizziness hit me, heart raced. I sank to the ground, shampoo still in my hair. A rare thought — I need more food — crossed my mind, and my husband fed me pieces of a cereal bar as I sat in the bathtub with the water running over me.

Not enough. I stood up, rinsed the shampoo out and quickly rubbed in the conditioner. I continued to feel weak and again sank to the bathtub floor. As I rubbed soap over my body, I reflected that I had to take a shower sitting down at the age of forty-four. Shaking all over, I tried my best to finish my shower as the hot water began to fade and I began to grow cold. The simple joy of the shower was gone, and my hair was damp with conditioner I didn't have the energy to rinse out.

I crawled out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my head and sank to the floor. And for the next hour, I couldn't move without my husband holding my arm. I felt old, older than the oldest person. I felt ashamed. And I felt scared.

I can't continue to bargain with recovery. As I wrote after a recent post, "Recovery isn't failure," on ED Bites, I am becoming more and more tired of anorexia being part of my life. I will fail either way. I can fail at recovery and win at anorexia. I could become the thinnest, but I will lose my soul and my life in the end.

Or I can fail at anorexia and win at recovery. The possibilities both frighten and thrill me. The thought of finally being free of Ana, to be able to eat and breathe and live without fear ... My mind swirls with thoughts of two very different futures ahead of me.

I step forward.

It will take more courage to embrace recovery than anything else I have done in my life. But ... no matter how many times I panic, no matter how many times I rage that recovery is a lie (at least for me), that a return to normal life is an impossible dream painted by my doctor ... no matter what I tell myself, I still believe in dreams.

I step forward ...

(A poem)

"Labyrinth

 Or the twisted path of Anorexia"

I wake up
Lost
Remembering who I was
Knowing who I am


I throw the label
Anorexia
At myself like a dirty bomb
A well-aimed hit


The fallout destroys
Reader, writer, wife
Lover, sister, friend


Human being
No more


I trace the steps
The path through this
Labyrinth
Anorexia


Turning in circles
Dazed, confused
Wasted body
Revealed


Not human


Recovery
Recovery
Recovery
Recovery
Rec........


Meaning lost
Not by familiarity
But by contempt


I want to take
My wasted body
Apologize for 
Its pain


Outer pain
Shown through
Translucence
Fine lines
Dead eyes


Stroke the fine
Blue veins
Protect the
Fragility I have
Both desired


And hated


Soothe the inner
Hunger
Remembering food
Offered
Denied
Thrown away


To say
'I'm sorry'
I know others
Hurt you


And then
I did too.

Anorexia tubing

He tried to be gentle. A nurse stood by one side of the bed, holding my hand as I anxiously eyed the hollow tube that would soon be placed inside my nose and down my throat, snaking its way through my body and into my stomach, ready to continously feed me 24/7 until I was able to feed myself.

It was the throat part that broke me.

Slowly the tube was inserted into my nose. Then it hit my throat, and gagging and wretching, I threw up on the floor, the nurse's shoes, and in my hair.

At least I know bulimia's not in my future. I hate to throw up.

The tube was again pushed down into my throat and I started crying as I again retched, leaned over and puked.

Third time. The tube again was gently pushed down into my throat - it had to go in there; it needed to reach my stomach to feed me.

This time I didn't move quick enough to throw up on the floor. The bile - there wasn't much in my stomach, anyway, after a month of starvation, landed on the pillow.

Shaking, I wiped my lips with a tissue. I swallowed hard and breathed slowly,  nodding that he should continue to push in the tube. Gulping, gulping, I ignored the gag reflex, albeit with a lot less ease than I am able to suppress hunger.

The tube finally made its way to my stomach, but a certain part needed to open to allow nutrients to flow through the tube and into my stomach.

It wouldn't open. They said I needed to relax in order to allow the tube to enter its final destination.

Relax? I just puked three times, I was shaking and crying, and I was still trying to cough up the tube like a cat coughs up a fur ball.

So the nurse and the technician started using imagery, as in imagine I am in Tahiti and there is this handsome man with a tiny small bathing suit and I am being fed some luscious tropical fruit . . .

STOP! Fruit? Food? I hadn't eaten more than about 100 calories a day in more than a month, I'm still terrified of food, and the thought of anything luscious made want to hurl a fourth time.

Poke with the tube. The stomach wouldn't open. Wiggle the tube and poke some more. The stomach still wouldn't open. Threaten to leave me to go watch the Super Bowl and come back tomorrow . . . I grabbed the technician with both hands, pulled the front of his shirt and dragged him toward me, saying through a gagged throat, "We are staying until you get this damn tube in my stomach, I don't care how long it takes. Forget the Super Bowl!"

Finally, 45 minutes later, he placed a thinner wire through the tube, nudged and prodded, and the tube slid in.

I could be fed and he could go watch the Saints triumph.

The tube still gags me and my nose runs constantly, trying to dislodge this foreign object out of me. But for some reason, it has given me an odd sort of permission to eat. I'm told that happens to many anorexic patients; maybe it's a breaking down of defenses, maybe it's just a sheer desire to get the damn thing out.

I'm still eating what most people would consider minimal. I have been told they don't want to shock my system with too much food too soon. It takes my one hour to eat a simple meal. Small bites, chew until very soft, swallow and gag it past the tube. Then repeat about a thousand times.

And that's eating anorexic-style.

Tube day

I get my feeding tube today and I have to admit I am very scared. I'm scared it will hurt. I'm scared of the loss of control. And yes, I'm scared of gaining weight.

This relapse wasn't about weight loss. The drop in pounds was incidental. But any anorexic would be lying if they said they didn't care about weight gain. Because the weight lost is an outward symbol of the inner pain I feel, and part of the stripping of skin and reappearance of protruding hip bones and prominent collarbones shows that to the world.

And then of course there is this world's current obsession with being thin. When I was trolling the pro-ana sites (not allowed here, and that's part of the safety of the hospital), I saw pictures of thin, tanned women who were so beautiful it ached to look at them and think I could never, ever look like them. I know that many of the photos are lies - Photoshopped to show a flawlessness that doesn't exist in nature; I bet many of them get pimples and under-eye circles and have a little flab here and there.

But it is hard not to buy into the lie, and if you are already suffering and your mind tells you not to eat, why not try to be like one of them?

But I want to like being me - dark, wild curly hair, a smile that many say is beautiful, a slender (not skeletal) body, and a few little lines near what my husband calls my "cornflower blue eyes."

And I want to eat normally - sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes a bit of junk food, most of the time just boringly healthy. I'll never be a big eater - that's not been my nature for most of my life, and I am a bit of picky eater even in the best of times. But I could, in the past, scarf down some popcorn at the movies and slurp it down with a regular icy Coke,

I don't want to sit at my plate and eat one grain of rice at a time, one pea at a time; slicing a banana into miniscule pieces so small that I can't even taste it. I don't want to shred my allowed half piece of bread into tiny pieces, balling it up until I can't taste the yeasty taste of whole grain bread with the little piece of nuts because I have crushed the life out of it.

And I don't want to mark my body with red ink, the color of Ana, writing across my hip "Ana Wins." She is not going to win, not if my doctor and others have any say about it. (It's too bad, because I actually like the color red. Maybe someday it will again just be a pretty color for me.)

Just like anorexia has been crushing the life out of me.

So today is tube day. I am scared it will hurt. I'm afraid maybe it won't help. I feel like it marks me as someone who could not get past the demon of Ana without medical help, without tube feeding.

But the choices are either reclaim my life or die Ana. And she doesn't deserve that honor.

When I do die, I hope people will remember me as someone who fought and won, someone who was kind and funny and full of life, a good writer and someone with an insatiable drive to learn new things. Not someone who cowered under Ana. Not someone who sat at her computer and counted every single calorie, and couldn't even take a sip without fear.

And I want to be remember as someone who liked a good hamburger with Swiss cheese, mayo, ketchup, Vidalia onions and a cold beer once in a while. (That's in the future, ha ha.)

When I'm not anorexic

When I'm not anorexic, I will be:

a normal weight

less anxious

happier

healthier

more able to take daily life's ups and downs

able to eat freely and without fear

Now, when will I reach that mythical land of "not anorexic?" Next month? This summer? Next year? Never? (Right now, my bet is on the last option.)

Is this a shallow dream? Am I feeling like many people do when they think "When I lose 10 pounds?"

Or will it really mean healing for me? Because right now, I still count every calorie in my head. I still look at food as the enemy, even though I feel hunger. I'm still afraid of gaining weight and I'm still afraid of being obese.

As I sat getting my hair colored today, I wondered how many women really accept themselves for who they are. For there we were, having chemicals applied to our hair in the vain hope of stopping time and being young again. But I looked in the mirror and saw a 43-year-old, her face strained by starvation and worry, and wondered - "When will I be free?"

When I'm not anorexic, I will be free.

"just think of the starving children..."

As if I don't feel guilty enough about having an eating disorder, someone recently told me I needed to think of the starving children in (insert country here).

I do think of the starving children. I traveled to Haiti to help children and others on a medical mission - against doctor's orders. But it didn't stop me from starving myself - I gave most of my food away on that trip - and it didn't stop me from feeling guilty.

If I could give all the food I haven't eaten while anorexic, I would. But comments like these are not helpful.

Neither are these comments: Just eat. (Gee, I hadn't thought of that! Let me just grab that doughnut and scarf it down and I'll be all better), I'd love to be anorexic - for a little bit (Really? You mean I can turn it on and off? and Be careful what you wish for - I use to wish I would be really thin - And now I am!), You actually ate something? (Well, even anorexics eat something; if I didn't eat at all, I would already be dead), I didn't think you would want to be invited because it involves food (Yes, I just like be left out of fun things with friends because I have an eating disorder), and my all time favorite (from a relative, no less) - You just need to pull yourself together!

Hope - when there is none

I've hit rock bottom - twice - in the past week.

Tuesday was a hectic day, with my mother-in-law having surgery and my eating schedule being disrupted. I panicked after eating dinner at 7:30 at night, broke into hysterical tears and cried over and over - I don't want this in my life anymore, I don't want to be anorexic. This was after adding up all my calories and seeing I went over my self-imposed limit of 1,000.

Then Wednesday, the voice (the bitch!) in my head kept saying 'you're fat, you're fat.' I bought a pack of laxatives and swallowed them before I could change my mind. You see, it was punishment for trying to eat normal.

Now I feel like shit - bloated after an evening and morning of diarrhea, tired from little sleep.

But I must continue to hope I will get better - the alternative is death.