My eating disorder’s been in a ~ m o o d ~ for the past few weeks. That cranky old jerk. I guess it makes sense. I’ve been feeling a lot of the stress from our upcoming move and there are so many moving pieces. It’s hard to plan when you don’t have answers or any direction to work off of. With so much up in the air, I feel like I’ve been pushed off a cliff and I’m waving my arms up and down as fast as I can, trying not to fall.
It Me
With all that going on, my ED welcomes me in with open arms.
I’ll protect you.
I’ll help you.
How messed up is it that with all these variables in my life right now, my ED is my constant? It’s always there for me, in a way. I’ve mistaken it for comfort and a sense of grounding (because that’s exactly what it wants me to do). A lot is culminating at the end of this month; a couple of big events on top of my big move. And big things – events, changes, etc- are big triggers for me. I’ve been feeling these triggers emanate anxiety and lots of ED dialogue telling me I need to “get into shape” for this.
So with this event coming up, I started thinking about the ways I wanted to “prepare” aka change for this event. I started stressing about how fast it was coming up, when I quickly caught a glimpse of a quote while scrolling through insta. “You can’t hate yourself happy.” Holy. Sheeet. Have you ever seen a sign that resonated with you so deeply, that you can’t help but take it as a sign from the universe? This was directly talking to me. All these things that I was planning on doing to get ready (let’s be real, I’m talking about losing weight), are not acts of loving myself. Don’t get me wrong, they can be. You can certainly nourish your body with nutrient dense food because you love your body. You can certainly monitor your sugar intake and drink a gallon of water a day because you love yourself. But I know I wasn’t planning on doing all those things because I love myself. My ED wanted me to do those things because it tells me that right now, as I am, isn’t good enough. The very underlying theme of my eating disorder is that I’ll finally be happy when I’m skinny. My eating disorder was telling me that I will be so much happier, so much more secure at the end of the month during this event if I am thinner than I am now. And here was my reminder, telling me that I can’t hate myself happy. I can’t do all these things out of hate for my body and then one day wake up suddenly loving myself. When I read that quote, I smiled and teared up and got all giddy. There I was, my ED holding my hand, leading me to the place that I mistake for comfort and security simply because it’s familiar, when I get this sign. It tells me, hey, you actually don’t have to go down that road again.
It’s been a few days since then and the serendipitous energy has passed. Suddenly the quote is just a quote and everything feels hard again. That’s the reality of living with an eating disorder and also just living, because #life. But it IS kind of cool thinking back to how that all went down, and sitting here writing about how I was able to separate myself from my ED. These are all signs of growth and I can find solace in that. I am growing. I am healing. It gets better.
Monika Zsofka 