Middle Ground

So, I am dusting off the cobwebs and getting back in the blogging game. It’s strange being able to write freely again after an intense, caffeine fuelled term of revision breakdowns and exams. I now have time in abundance which is liberating but also terrifying when you're a stickler for routine and thrive off structure. Although I resented the 8am starts in Starbucks, followed by repetitive afternoon revision sessions in Café Nero, the monotony was strangely reassuring. Now the sun rises at 4am and I’m left with the entire day to do whatever I want: great in prospect but daunting in reality. I’m back home after having finally completed my first year at University, finishing with a first which was very unexpected but relieving – perhaps providing the reassurance that I’m not entirely useless at my degree. The fact I’ve completed first year is an achievement in itself: having to take medical leave last year, I seriously considered leaving altogether. I felt out-of-place in a city bursting with social events and societies, wanting to retreat into my safe-but-entirely-limiting-shell and of course, sucumbing to anorexia was the easiest choice.  I was given the ultimatum: leave completely and probably end up back in hospital, or sort my shit out and repeat the year. Unsurprisingly, I chose the latter, unwilling to give up something I had worked so hard for. Yet as October approached, I felt sick at the thought of returning to Durham. The same routine, the same unhealthy associations with a place that was meant to be my fresh start. My friends were in second year whilst I was in the same lecture theatre but surrounded by new faces. Everything was the same but different. I was different: I had gained weight, deemed healthy enough to continue with higher education yet my old-disordered-uni-life was lying dormant, ready to welcome me back like an old friend. I walked and controlled and told myself that Things Were Better Now So I Must Be Better. 

I had to make the decision to actively feed myself, something which is agonisingly difficult when intuitive eating feels like an alien concept. There were no reminders from hospital staff or family, no consequences from skipping a meal. You can function, prosper even, academically and socially, if you just convince yourself that That Is Enough. Nobody has time for breakfast anyway, lunch is an awkward time and it would be better to work through that pesky 12-1 window. You go to dinner invitations because you wouldn’t want to miss out on fun, but you plaster on a smile and eat your carefully measured plate of food, satisfied that you are Living The Dream. Functioning anorexia seems a hell of a lot easier than full-blown restriction so you settle, happy that you are In Such A Better Place Now.

It’s only when you step out of this bubble, watch your friends enjoy food and alcohol, scoff down a packet of Oreos simply because they fancied them or grab chips after a night out whilst you eat the bag of chickpeas you have allowed yourself to soak up that vodka diet coke, do you realise how far from ‘normal’ it all is. Unlike first year where I actively welcomed back the gruelling starvation routine, I had fallen back into the safety of anorexia without even realising it.  I envied them, craving spontaneity but terrified of the repercussions. Spontaneity meant straying from my neat regime of timetables and measured portions of porridge. It meant discarding the rule book of Not Eating After Six, drinking the shots bought for me rather than palming them off on my already drunk friends, going out for a meal, and not automatically picking the Supergrain salad.  It meant rewiring my entire brain, finding normality in a world that seemed completely abnormal. The hardest part was people assuming I was Over This By Now. It is tiresome for others, but most of all yourself. You go down the same godforsaken road time and time again, despite knowing the outcome but utterly blinded by the fabricated familiarity. Better to be stuck than suspended. The assumption that people can recover out of frustration is inaccurate – it is this exact repetition that is most grounding. When everything else has changed, anorexia remains steadfast, unforgiving but ultimate. 

This is why recovery cannot and will never be linear. My therapist once asked me what ‘recovered’ meant to me. “Better,” I replied. “Living a normal life without ever restricting.” I craved finality, the whole putting-the-past-behind-me – of course thinking in extremes like always. Now eight years in, I'm aware this is unrealistic. Drawing a line and declaring a truce with anorexia is the ideal scenario but deep down, I know that truce will never be adhered to. One of us, most likely me, will crawl closer and closer to the line, hovering on the cusp of my Old Self – the self I associate with Control and Achievement. Even if not actively reaching for it, anorexia would somehow find a way to sneak over the line, taking my hand and dragging me back down the familiar path of shrinking safety. The inevitable rekindling is something I tried so hard to deny in my Ideal View Of Recovery. Ideal Recovery was Health and Happiness, Smiles and Spontaneity. There was no room for relapse in this vision, that simply defeated the point. Just as recovery was rebuked in Relapse Mode, skulking back to old routines when reaching the Perfect Point meant failure. And failure, of course, was not an option. It’s only now I realise how similar the two worlds are. Both require finality and achievement. I have to achieve at either shrinking or growing. I can’t afford a single slip up or that will throw the whole process off-kilter. That’s a lot of pressure. It also means that by achieving one, I fail at the other. Essentially, there is no winning.

That then means finding the allusive ‘middle ground.’ Despite initially thinking this was a bit of a cop-out, it’s also a welcomed relief to not constantly be darting between black and white. Middle Ground means a happy medium, a begrudged but dormant ceasefire between Relapse and Recovered. It allows me to be ‘in recovery’ but have bad days, go to the gym but rest on my days off. It’s a continuous, ongoing process – one that is slightly less impressive than waving the recovered flag but equally, a hell of a lot more preferable than remaining a revolving door patient. It’s realising that nothing changes if nothing changes but allowing the changes to happen naturally rather than forcing them. It’s being ok with stillness and silence. It’s accepting imperfection and inadequacy. It’s laughing and crying. It’s recovering and living. 

A Letter To My Eating Disorder

Dear Anorexia,

It feels strange to address you in such formal terms - after all, we are old friends. You have been there for me when nobody else has, made me strive for perfection and filled me with a sense of purpose. Because of you; I was able to cope when the turmoil became too much, numbing emotion and rejection with your watchful guidance. Only - you didn't stop there. Your grasp tightened, my view narrowed. You became my dictator rather than a friend, dominating every single aspect of my life. For seven years, I have been rooted in this stagnant cycle of lies - a bony, bereft existence, caught in your gnarled grasp and brainwashed into your warped way of thinking. You made me lie to the people I love, isolate myself until friends drifted away, leaving me with only you to turn to for comfort. You stripped me of all self worth, confidence, ambition, prospect. Turned my dreams into wild fantasies and ruined endless opportunities.

I can count on one hand: sobbing soliloquies written in hospital journals, medical reports filed in dog-eared folders, mundane moments spaced between bone caged crumbs. Stuck in a child's body with deteriorating osteoporosis, denied of womanhood and the chance of ever starting my own family. You made me think I was special. Uttering convincing words, encouraging notions of restraint and sophistication - but there is nothing superior about self starvation. The agonising pain of hunger that tears through you at night, the hollow eye sockets and throbbing head - all prototypes of the same sick game. You left me blinded, desensitised, weak. Even death didn't fill me with fear, I saw it as a strange sense of accomplishment. No, I didn't want to die, but you made me not want to live. 

Seven empty years. Insipid days that dripped into each other, robbed of an adolescence. I missed out on drunken parties, next morning regrets, messy girl's holidays, breakup dramas. None of that even registered as important when the only thing that mattered was watching the number drip lower and lower whilst fooling everyone around me. Instead, I smoked cigarettes as appetite suppressants, drank mugs of black coffee and sat alone in clinic waiting rooms whilst the world went by. You landed me in hospital, made me spend the supposedly best summer of my life crying in hallways and downing bottles of sickly supplement in a frantic attempt to escape. I met other tortured ghosts who scuttled through the days with adverted gaze, yearning for the same sunken skulls and porcelain clean skin. You made me lie my way out, fooled me into thinking I wasn't sick enough, not deserved enough to get help.

But now I see the blunt reality, the truth that you sheltered me from for so long. There is no end goal, no golden promise. You will never make me happy. While I am still stuck in your twisted clutches, I can't live the life I so desperately want to live. I refuse to let you take any more of my years. I will no longer let you dictate where I go, who I see, what I do and what I eat. I won't let you ruin university just as you tarnished the rest of my education. I am MORE than you. I'm also a girl who drinks her cappuccino froth with a spoon. I write poetry in hardback journals. I love to bake. I adore everything Parisian. I'm passionate about veganism and animal rights. I like to read about wildflowers. I'm fascinated by history. I'm a feminist. I'm a daughter.

I want to live in the grey area. After years of darting between white and black; starvation and depression, extreme highs and excruciating lows, I want to settle in the hazy middle ground. I want to cry and laugh in the same breath, to eat fruit and chips in the same day, to go to bed at 4am but still get up early and eat breakfast. I want a life WITHOUT you in it. So anorexia, you can take your twisted rules, your pathetic demands, your skewed lies - you are no longer welcome. It's time to try something different. It's time to find myself again.