It’s been a few years since I’ve been on here. Don’t really know what I’ve been up to except teaching high school and going off to treatment.
Tonight I was looking at the very first entry in an incomplete journal book, beginning date of 10-15-2008. I was in residential treatment at the time.
There was a line written in that entry that I found poignant as I reviewed it. It read: My eating disorder cares more about me than I do about myself.
Nine years later, that’s probably still true.
On the opposite page of the journal entry, I was responding to the assigned question: If I can’t be the weight I want, then . . .
So last night I looked at the “what’s”, and here is what I discovered and evaluated to see if the fears I hd written have come true because currently, according to my treatment team, I’m at a healthy weight.
At first glance, I was surprised that it didn’t seem these fears had come true. Then I thought and wrote more, and here’s what I found.
First fear:
Other fears that came true were not feeling that sense of emptiness and weightlessness you find when you are skinny. *I should probably write more on why being empty in invisible is important.*
The fears that didn’t necessarily come true but at the same time did not go away are about people caring for me. I don’t really feel cared for, but I can acknowledge that I have made some connections. Whether they’d grieve if I’d die, I know not.
Another fear I can’t write about with authority is the fear that I’ll be dirty, fat, and shameful from the abuse. I don’t feel as . . . I don’t know. Do I feel dirty since I gained all my weight back? My first answer is no. I am truly blank and non descriptive. I don’t carry around any feelings, but others do, and they feel dirty and shameful, but I honestly don’t know if weighing 80lbs would put that feeling away. I think it’s worse at being this size because some are more active, but we’ll always feel fat, dirty, and ashamed, regardless of our weight.