Now, maybe I'm wrong (probably. But also probably not) but these people are not experiencing a real recovery. And if they are the certainly aren't documenting it online. Because I can promise you, an eating disorder sufferer faced with an entire pizza and then dessert at their kitchen table will not be utterly thrilled. I would probably cry.
And I don't understand this need to make recovery seem fun or positive or easy. It's not. It's really, really not and I don't understand this false image being projected. I understand the #recoverywin's because eating the above pizza and ice cream without throwing it back up despite the fact that it took you two hours and you cried and possibly screamed a bit is a genuine win.
But I'm sorry, recovery is crap.
It sucks. It's miserable and painful and in many instances you spend a decent about of time sinking deeper into the psychological side of your eating disorder while your body is busy healing.
Recovery isn't a fun positive journey in the slightest and I think it's irresponsible that it's being projected as one because it just makes people (me) feel like a failure because as rubbish as recovery is it's no way near as rubbish as the absolute hell of an eating disorder. So the fact that you can't get better just fuels the disorder you're trying to recover from because there's nothing like the sense of guilt that comes from feeling like a failure to become a reason to self punish.
When you're in recovery you suddenly get to eat. Hoorah. Except you've forgotten how to eat normally so eating becomes your own type of personal hell, being terrified of over eating and having no sense of perspective on portion size anyway so everything is too much. At least if you're going to keep it down. There's a good chance you'll have a few pretty horrific side effects to all that nourishing food too. Bloating being the most common. Bloating till your stomach is rock hard and distended so you could pass for eight months pregnant #realrecovery #posivibes I think not.
When you're in recovery your body uses the food you eat to heal your organs first, then muscles and bones etc. You're body rebuilds itself after you've relentlessly attempted to tear it into nothing. So you gain weight, a substantial amount, but the least important (hair aside, maybe) thing to heal is your brain. Your thoughts and emotions. So on piles the weight and the eating disorder is still there. When people say it's devastating to hear they look better, this is why. In their head they're still functioning at the same level they were -20lbs or more. Gaining weight is excruciating no matter how well you rationalise it. And the more you gain the more you're screaming inside your head and the more you want to lose. But you're in recovery, and you know it's inevitable that you're just going to gain some more.
This tends to be the most common time for relapse, it's also the longest period of recovery. There's no telling how long it will take for the healing power of food to have a positive effect on your brain. I can tell you since my initial relapse at fifteen I've been in and out of relapses and only ever reached the glimmer of feeling ok or comfortable. It can take a long time.
Sometimes when you're in recovery you'll be put on a diet that follows the Minnie Maud approach. Part of my wants to roll my eyes so hard they'd roll down the hill into the river but the other part of me is angry because of how damaging I feel that approach is. How little it teaches portion control before discharge. Now there are absolutely other ways than eating 3000+ calories a day. And how utterly miserable it made me at first to be shovelling that volume of food down my throat. How unwell it made me to have that amount of food in my body. And how after discharge I genuinely couldn't stop eating that amount of food because no one taught me sodding portion control and within a few months I was using the tips I'd learnt in treatment to purge. Wow. Such a #superposi #realrecovery
Except these things. They are the reality of recovery. The guilt and misery and down right physical pain. Recovery is miserable.
But it's essential.
For me positivity isn't worth a single thing during recovery. Part of me is a pessimist with a been there done that attitude because this is the umpteenth time I've been round this crappy roundabout.
But honestly what pushes me is the reality of my situation as it stands.
Recovery is shit. I hate it. I end up angry and resenting everything because I don't want to do it and I turn into a petulant child faced with something they don't like.
But it makes me miserable, I stop enjoying food and obsess over the ins and outs and ups and downs. The scale is tantamount to the guillotine every morning and despite the fact that weight gain is my aim, if I do gain I can easily end up in tears. Again.
I get so bloated it's painful, I get sharp stabbing pains in my lower stomach like everything is stretched so tight I'm going to break.
I suddenly experience thoughts and feelings that I'm truly ashamed of, I feel like if I recover I'll be a failure of an anorexic. As if that is a bad thing. As if I want to be unwell or the best anorexic there is. Unable to recover.
I hate how I look, I hate my clothes fitting differently and my dysmohia that had been relative stable runs wild and I start completely imagining things on top of my inability to see a realistic image of myself.
I feel guilty every time I eat.
I feel guilty every time I inevitably slip up and have a lapse.
I hate myself with more intensity than I ever do in relapse because recovery is difficult and painful and directly challenges everything you feel you know about yourself. And even if you can see yourself without an eating disorder, you just start hating yourself for throwing everything away and falling into this horrific trap.
But some how the alternative is worse.
Eating disorders are painful. Throwing up until your insides burn and your skin is cracking really hurts.
Laxatives really hurt, I remember the first time I took the, I genuinely thought I might die.
Losing all your friends and family because you can't see them because socialising involves food or spontaneity or energy that you just don't have.
Feeding rules are painful. As are IV fluids getting pumped into you at triple speed making you puff up like the Michelin man and you arm sting until it finally goes dead.
Being unreliable at work and school and the constant fear that you'll lose your job and be unable to pay your rent.
The terror that you'll rub off on your younger siblings or your children and the crushing guilt because you can't recover for them and you love them to the ends of existence.
Taking your children to the beach and not being able to eat an ice cream with them, or any of the food you've laid out for their birthday party.
Having your kidneys shut down is pretty painful.
So are stomach ulcers.
And when your hair starts to fall out it can make you want to die. And while that's a massive over reaction, by this point you've lost your ability to be rational so the reaction is completely real and harsh.
Realising that your boyfriend is vaguely repulsed by your body sucks. Especially if you're neurotic and anxious and feel utterly worthless. Because if you don't understand why he's with you in the first place then realising how unattractive you are becomes hell every time you're not together.
And then I would assume death kind of sucks. And a death of an eating disorder is bound to be just as dramatic and painful as the disorder itself.
I'm writing and more of this is flowing out than I expected. So I'm going to stop that there because I've more than made my point.
Recovery is crap and horrible and sometimes kind of traumatic but it's essential. The alternative is endless suffering and guilt until you die. Hurting everyone you love in the process and then leaving them to pick up the pieces.
You don't tragically fade into nothing and then cease to exist like the romanticised idea pro-eating disorder people seem to promote. It's loud and angry and desperately sad. And everyone will be hurting alongside you although they won't feel the extreme amounts of physical pain.
So you have to recover because the only other option is death.
And in the irrational misery of an eating disorder death seems like a decent option, but dying of an eating disorder is just prolonging and extending the pain that is making you want to die in the first place.
So you decide to give recovery a shot. And it's just as hellish if not more so.
So I don't understand these people, these little communities of #realrecovery that isn't really real because they're all bloody grinning so hard their eyes might pop out at the thought of a bowl of macaroni cheese.
The only positive I find in recovery is that you probably won't die anymore. Oh and the occasional trip to Pizza Express with people I love washed down with a glass (or bottle) of wine. But I mean, I did that while I was in not recovery so I'm not sure how much that counts.
I just wish people were honest. I wish people weren't demonised for hating weight gain or having to eat. Because it's all part of an illness that they're still suffering from. Making me feel guilty for hating my body or being unable to be positive. Not being in some sort of warped #realrecovery just makes me feel even more rubbish. And I should be allowed to say that because whoever decided that recovery was a great, fulfilling experience probably hasn't ever had to recover from an eating disorder.
Or possibly a little drunk. Although even when I'm a bit drunk I still think it's shit.
I've realised recently that I actively avoid saying I'm in recovery even though I could never do anything other than strive for health and stability now my general mental health is more under control. Of course I'm in recovery.
But I hate saying it, and not because of the best anorexic thing I mentioned above. I hate it because I think it's shit. And hard. And definitely not #superposi.
In short, recovery is absolute pants because it makes my pants not fit and that makes me hate myself. But seeing as a coffin doesn't care whether my pants fit or not I have to keep fighting.
And that is a #REALRECOVERY
