I have been in hospital now for several weeks, on an eating disorder programme. My insurance runs out in 11 days and I will return home, to continue my recovery journey on my own. Being in hospital, eating is not a choice. There are nurses that sit over you, making sure you way every meal, drink every glass of milk, limit physical activity and keep you away from the bathroom after eating. In the real world, I will have to do this work myself. I wish I could tell you that I have been reborn, that I no longer obsess of every morsel that passes my lips. That I don't have nightmares about weighing scales and clothing labels.
But that is simply not the case.
I am still repulsed by food, repulsed and yet obsessed by it. Rationally, I know it takes a certain about of madness to be afraid of a piece of toast. To want to run from a potato. To feel a stab of pain as the numbers creep up at every weigh in. When I look down at my thighs, I swear they have doubled in size already. I have taken to hiding my body under loose tops because I am ashamed of how plump I look. Because if I don't hide myself away, I will spend the day pulling and pinching the flesh on my hips and sides, providing myself with 'evidence' of how fat I have become.
The simple fact is, that I hate the body I live in. I can't remember a time that I didn't, and there is no quick fix for that. There is no word, no pill, nothing anyone else can give me to change it. The very notion of loving my body, or even accepting it, is alien to me. I feel at times like a petulant child, throwing a tantrum because I cannot have the toy I want. Except instead of a toy, I want a different body. I want one that looks like women in magazines and movies, to be long and lean and yet still have perfect, voluptuous breasts. I want recovery from my eating disorder, but I want a full body make over to go with it.
The hardest thing for me to accept is that my body is the way it is, and it is not long and lean. Starving myself did not change that fact, because I cannot change my basic physiology. How do you learn to accept yourself when you have spent your entire life wishing to be someone else?
My friends and family are happy with my progress, they are every kilo as a victory. For me, every kilo is a defeat. Not because I am gaining weight, although that voice in my head rages everytime I step on the scales, but because I am still waiting for the penny to drop. To wake up one day and realise that my body is okay, and I don't want to take a scalpel and carve out the excess flesh.
So yes, I can eat. I can chew and swallow and keep the food down. But I hate every second of it, and some days it feels like that will never change. That I will always be eating against my will, that this is my life now. I will never be happy just the way I am
And that scares me more than toast.
